Herr Phefel, of Colmar, who lost his sight when very young, composed a great deal of poetry, consisting chiefly of fables, some of which were translated into French. Among the pupils of this learned blind man were Prince Schwartzenberg and Prince Eisemberg. He died at Colmar, 1809.
Weissemburgh, of Mannheim, became blind at the age of seven years. He wrote perfectly, and read with characters which he had imagined for his own use. He was an excellent geographer, and composed maps and globes, which he employed both in studying and teaching this science. He was the inventor of an arithmetical table differing but little from that of Sanderson.
An Extraordinary Questioner.
The blind man of Puiseaux must be known to all who read Diderot's celebrated "Lettres sur les Aveugles." He was the son of a professor of philosophy in the University of Paris, and had attended with advantage courses of chemistry and botany at the Jardin du Roi. After having dissipated a part of his fortune, he retired to Puiseaux, where he established a distillery, the products of which he came regularly once a year to dispose of.
There was an originality in everything that he did. His custom was to sleep during the day, and to rise in the evening; he worked all night, "because," as he himself said, "he was not then disturbed by anybody." His wife, when she arose in the morning, used to find everything perfectly arranged.
To Diderot, who visited him at Puiseaux, he put some very singular questions as to the transparency of glass, and as to colors, and other facts and conditions which could be recognized only through sight. He asked if naturalists were the only persons who saw with the microscope, and if astronomers were the only persons who saw with the telescope; if the machine that magnified objects was greater than that which diminished them; if that which brought them near were shorter than that which removed them to a distance. He believed that astronomers had eyes of different conformation from those of other men, and that a man could not devote himself to the study of a particular science without having eyes specially adapted for that purpose.
"The eye," said he, "is an organ upon which the air ought to produce the same effect as my cane does upon my hand." He possessed the memory of sounds to a surprising degree, and recognized by the voice those whom he had only heard speak once.
He could tell if he was in a thoroughfare or in a cul-de-sac, in a large or in a small place. He estimated the proximity of fire by the degree of heat; the comparative fulness of vessels by the sound of the liquor in falling; and the neighborhood of bodies by the action of the air on his face. He employed characters in relief, in order to teach his son to read, and the latter never had any other master than his father.
M. Huber, of Geneva, an excellent naturalist, and author of a treatise on bees and ants, was blind from infancy. In executing his great work he had no other assistance than what he derived from his domestic, who mentioned to him the color of the insects, and then he ascertained their size and form by touch, with the same facility he would have recognized them by their humming in the air. This laborious writer also published a valuable work on education.