Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1885 — Color-Blindness. [ARTICLE]

Color-Blindness.

It has not been the duty of the writer to investigate cases of accidents which might have been caused by defects of sight, but he has been assured by officials that a solution will hereafter be found in them for those hitherto insoluble mysteries where men, otherwise credible, have so flatly contradicted themselves ’ and the l of the case. By one prominent officer he was told that, being upon a train at night, delayed by some slight accident, he himself took a red lantern, and going a proper distance back, placed himself on the track in the way of an oncoming train, but, finding his light not observed he was compelled to dash it into the cab to attract the engineer’s attention, and arrest him in his progress to a collision. Upon the examination of another engineer, his superior officer being present and convinced of his marked color-blindness remarked that, but a short time before, the man had run into the rear of a train properly protected by a red light in the hands of a brakeman some distance in the rear, that the most careful investigation had resulted only in the suspension of the brakeman for not having gone far enough back, but that he was now satisfied that the color-blindness of the engineer had been the real cause of the accident. Some slight or minor accidents recently led to the discovery that another engineer had by some oversight not been tested in his division, and this led to his examination and detection there, and to his conviction by the writer as a color-blind. Still another case now presents itself. An engineej some time ago ran over and killed a brakeman, holding a danger signal on the track in front of his engine, and no satisfactory explanation could then be given; but the division examiner predicted that he would probably be found color-blind, and on his examination this proved to be the case. —Dr. William Thomson, in Popular Science Monthly.