domingo, 16 de setembro de 2012

Impressionante

É impressionante a cegueira e o modo como a Helena Matos procura, contra todas as evidências, fazer de conta que hoje não aconteceu nada em Portugal, a ler: Revolta-te por mim

terça-feira, 8 de novembro de 2011

Seeing for the very first time



William Cheselden is known for the first operative surgery of full recovery blindness. The blind was a thirteen year's old boy. His eyes were covered by cataract from birth. Cheselden describes how the boy saw the world for the very first time:

Observations made by a young Gentleman, who was born blind, or lost his Sight, so early, that he had no Remembrance of ever having seen, and was couched between 13 and 14 Years of Age. By Mr. William Chesselden, F.R.S. N° 402, p. 447.

  Though we say of the gentleman that he was blind, as we do of all people who have ripe cataracts, yet they are never so blind from that cause, but that they can discern day from night; and for the most part in a strong light, distinguish black, white, and scarlet; but they cannot perceive the shape of any thing; for the light by which these perceptions are made, being let in obliquely through the aqueous humour, or the anterior surface of the crystalline, by which the rays cannot be brought into a focus upon the retina, they can discern in no other manner, than a sound eye can through a glass of broken jelly, where a great variety of surfaces so differently refract the light, that the several distinct pencils of rays cannot be collected by the eye into their proper foci; therefore the shape of an object in such a case, cannot be at all discerned, though the colour may. And thus it was with this young gentleman, who, though he knew these colours asunder in a good light, yet when he saw them after he was couched, the faint ideas he had of them before, were not sufficient for him to know them by afterwards; and therefore he did not think them the same, which he had before known by those names. Now scarlet he thought the most beautiful of all colours, and of others the most gay were the most pleasing; whereas the first time he saw black, it gave him great uneasiness, yet after a little time he was reconciled to it; but some months after, seeing by accident a negro woman, he was struck with great horror at the sight.

terça-feira, 25 de outubro de 2011