Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1875 — Interesting Facts. [ARTICLE]

Interesting Facts.

The organ of vision is considered the most delicate organization of the human frame: yet many who were bom blind have been enabled to see by surgical operations, and the following is an interesting fact concerning one of that class: A youth had become thirteen years of age, when his eyes were touched by a surgeon. Ke thought scarlet the most beautiful color; black was painful. He fancied every object touched him, and he could not distinguish by sight what he perfectly well knew by feeling; for instance, the cat and dog. When his second eye was touched, he remarked that the objects were not so large in appearance to this as the one opened at first. Pictures he considered only part-» ly-colored surfaces, and a miniature absolutely astonished him, seeming to him like putting a bushel into a pint. Stanley, the organist, and manv blind musicians have been the best performers of their time; and a schoolmistress in England could discover that the boys were playing in a distant comer of the room instead of studying although a person using his eyes could not detect the slightest sound. Prof. Sanderson, who was blind, could, in a few moments, tell how many persons were in a mixed company, and of each sex. A blind French lady could dance in figure dances, sew and thread her own needle. A blind man in Derbyshire, England, has actually been a surveyor and planner of roads, his ear guiding him as to distance as accurately as the eye to others; and the late Justice Fielding, who was blind, on walking into a room for the first time, after speaking a few words, said: “This room is twenty-two feet long, eighteen wide and twelve high," all of which was revealed to him with accuracy through the medium of the ear. Verily, “we are fearfully and wonderfully made.” Why are umbrellas like pancakes? Because they are seldom seen after Lent.