VI. The Wardrop Case.
James Wardrop reports ("Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1826," iii, 529-540, London, 1826):
"A girl who was observed, during the first months of her infancy, to have something peculiar in the appearance of her eyes and an unusual groping manner which made her parents suspect that she had defective vision, had an operation performed on both eyes at the age of about six months. The right eye was entirely destroyed in consequence. The left eye was preserved, but the child could only distinguish a very light from a very dark room without having the power to perceive even the situation of the window through which the light entered, though in sunshine or in bright moonlight she knew the direction from which the light emanated. In this case no light could reach the retina except such rays as could pass through the substance of the iris. Until her forty-sixth year the patient could not perceive objects and had no notion of colors. On the 26th of January I introduced a very small needle through the cornea and the center of the iris; but I could not destroy any of the adhesions which had shut up the pupillar opening. After this operation she said she could distinguish more light, but she could perceive neither forms nor colors. On the 8th of February the iris (a portion of it) was divided. The light became offensive to her. She complained of its brightness, and was frequently observed trying to see her hands; but it was evident that her vision was very imperfect, for, although there was an incision made in the iris, some opaque matter lay behind the opening, which must have greatly obstructed the entrance of light.
"On the 17th of February a third operation. The opening was enlarged and the opaque matter removed. The operation being performed at my house, she returned home in a carriage, with her eye covered only with a loose piece of silk, and the first thing she noticed was a hackney-coach passing, when she exclaimed, 'What is that large thing that has passed by us?' In the course of the evening she requested her brother to show her his watch, concerning which she expressed much curiosity, and she looked at it a considerable time, holding it close to her eye. She was asked what she saw, and she said there was a dark and a bright side; she pointed to the hour of twelve, and smiled. Her brother asked her if she saw anything more. She replied, 'Yes,' and pointed to the hour of six and to the hands of the watch. She then looked at the chain and seals, and observed that one of the seals was bright, which was the case. The following day I asked her to look again at the watch, which she refused to do, saying that the light was offensive to her eye and that she felt very stupid, meaning that she was much confused by the visible world thus for the first time opened to her.
"On the third day she observed the doors on the opposite side of the street and asked if they were red, but they were, in fact, of an oak-color. In the evening she looked at her brother's face and said that she saw his nose. He asked her to touch it, which she did. He then slipped a handkerchief over his face and asked her to look again, when she playfully pulled it off and asked, 'What is that?'
"On the sixth day she told us that she saw better than she had done on any preceding day; 'but I can not tell what I do see. I am quite stupid.' She 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.
"On the seventh day she observed that the mistress of the house was tall. She asked what the color of her gown was, to which she was answered that it was blue. 'So is that thing on your head,' she then observed, which was the case; 'and your handkerchief, that is a different color,' which was also correct. She added, 'I see you pretty well, I think.' The teacups and saucers underwent an examination. 'What are they like?' her brother asked her. 'I don't know,' she replied, 'they look very queer to me, but I can tell what they are in a minute when I touch them.' She distinguished an orange, but could form no notion of what it was till she touched it. She seemed now to have become more cheerful, and she was very sanguine that she would find her newly acquired faculty of more use to her when she returned home, where everything was familiar to her.
"On the eighth day she asked her brother 'what he was helping himself to?' and when she was told it was a glass of port wine, she replied, 'Port wine is dark, and looks to me very ugly.' She observed, when candles were brought into the room, her brother's face in the mirror as well as that of a lady who was present; she also walked for the first time without assistance from her chair to a sofa which was on the opposite side of the room and back again to the chair. When at tea she took notice of the tray, observed the shining of the japan-work, and asked 'what the color was round the edge?' she was told that it was yellow, upon which she remarked, 'I will know that again.'
"On the ninth day she came down-stairs to breakfast in great spirits. She said to her brother, 'I see you very well to-day,' and came up to him and shook hands. She also observed a ticket on a window of a house on the opposite side of the street ('a lodging to let'), and her brother, to convince himself of her seeing it, took her to the window three separate times, and to his surprise and gratification she pointed it out to him distinctly on each trial.
"She spent a great part of the eleventh day looking out of the window, and spoke very little.