Knowledge, Theory of; Mind and body; Perception; Senses and sensation
In the Philosophical Transactions of 1826 will be found the account
of a case by Mr. Wardrop, which is very interesting; it is that of an
intelligent female of mature age, who was born blind; in her infancy,
operations were performed on both of her eyes, but they failed, one
eye being irrecoverably destroyed, and the other useless from closure
of the pupil; on this eye Mr. Wardrop successfully operated: but it
was not with joy that objects for the first time were perceived; she
was confused by the appearance of a new world, now for the first time
opened to her sense of sight; hitherto she had known it only through
the sense of touch, and touch and sight had still to be reconciled.
"On the sixth day, she said that she saw better than she had done on
any preceding day, but I cannot tell (said she) what I do see; I am
quite stupid. She seemed, indeed, bewildered from not being able to
combine the knowledge acquired by the senses of sight and touch, and
felt disappointed in not having the power of distinguishing at once
by her eye, objects which she could so readily distinguish from one
another by feeling them.
"The next day, on examining with the eye the tea-cups and saucers, and
being asked what they were--I don't know, she replied; they look very
queer to me, but I can tell in a minute when I touch them. So with an
orange which was lying before her, she could make nothing of it until
she actually touched it. When the experiment was made of giving her
a silver pencil-case and a large key to examine with her hands, she
discriminated and knew each distinctly; but when they were placed on
the table side by side, though she distinguished each with her eye, yet
she could not tell which was the pencil-case and which the key.
"In six weeks after the operation, she returned home. At this period,
she had learned a great deal; she had acquired a pretty accurate notion
of colours, but with regard to forms and distance she was still very
ignorant. She had also great difficulty in directing her eye to an
object, so that when she attempted to look at anything she turned her
head in various directions, until her eye caught the object of which
it was in search. She still entertained, however, the same hope, which
she expressed soon after the operation, that when she got home, her
knowledge of external things would be more accurate and intelligible,
and that when she came to look at those objects which had been so long
familiar to her touch, the confusion which the multiplicity of external
objects now caused would in a great measure subside."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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