A New-Found Sense

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · May 12, 1904

A New-Found Sense

If the eyes of one who had never seen were suddenly opened, the world would be a strange sight. We see not only by means of the physical powers of the eye, but by experience. A blind man whose sight is restored can not recognize his own wife until he touches her face or hears her voice. A man who had never seen until he was thirty years old has sent to the Problem, a magazine for the blind, a remarkable account of his experience when the bandage was drawn from his eyes in the hospital, and he was, as it were, born again into the world:—

What I saw frightened me, it was so big, and made such strange motions. I called out in terror, and put out my hand. My fingers touched my nurse’s face. I knew she was there; for she had just taken the bandage from my eyes, and I knew what I was touching; but I did not know what it was I saw.

The nurse answered me soothingly, taking my fingers in her hand and moving them from her mouth to her eyes, to her nose, chin, and forehead.

“It is my face that you see. Look! You know this is my mouth, my chin, and these are my eyes.”

So I knew that I was seeing what was familiar to the touch of my fingers,—a human face. But the sensation was still one of terror. I seemed so small beside that expanse of human features which was so familiar to my fingers, so unnatural to my new sense.

When the nurse moved away from my cot, I felt a new sensation, which was so agreeable that I laughed aloud. The nurse came back, but not so close as before.

“What is that?” I asked.

“You are looking at the blanket which lies across your feet,” she said.

“Blankets must be very beautiful things,” I said.

“It is a red blanket,” she explained.

Then I thought I knew why people spoke of the beauty of the red rose. This was my first knowledge of colors.

I saw, and yet did not know that I saw. How could I know at first that those new and wonderful sensations meant the birth of a sense of which I knew nothing except in theory? Of course I was expecting to see; but was this sight—this jumble of extraordinary sensations?. The dazzling light first convinced me, for I had always been able to distinguish between night and day. But I could not recognize objects with my new-found sense until I had translated into its speech the language of the other senses.

The one lesson of the blanket was sufficient to teach me the color, red.

Yellow was a different matter. The nurse brought me a cool drink. I could recognize her by sight now. The thing I saw in her hands I knew to be a tray after I had felt of it. Suddenly I felt a thrill of disgust.

“What is that thing on the tray?” I asked. “It makes me sick.”

“It is a lemon. You said you liked lemonade.”

“Then it is yellow. It is the color that nauseates me.”

Any object close to me looked tremendously large. I had often romped with children, yet when I first set eyes on a baby, it looked gigantic.

The first day I sat by the window, I put my hand out to feel the pavement.

“That must be the pavement,” I said. “I’m going to feel of it to make sure.”

“O!” laughed the nurse, “the pavement is two stories below.”

The first meal I ate was an odd experience. When I saw that great hand with a huge fork approaching my mouth, the inclination to dodge was almost irresistible.—Youth’s Companion.