" He was very much surprised, that those things which he had liked best did not appear most agree able to his eyes ; expecting those persons would ap pear most beautiful that he loved most, and such things to be most agreeable to his sight that were so to his taste. We thought he soon knew what pic tures represented which weft shoved to him, but we found afterwards we were mistaken ; for, about two months after lie was couched, he discovered at once they represented solid bodies ; when, to that time, he considered them only as party•coloured planes, or surfaces diversified with variety of paint ;. but, even then, he was no less surprised, expecting the pictures would feel like the things they represented ; and was amazed when he found those parts which, by their light and shadow, appeared now round and uneven, felt only flat like the rest ; and asked, which was the lying sense, feeling or seeing ? " Being shewn his father's picture in a locket at his mother's watch, and told what it was, be acknow ledged a likeness, but was vastly surprised ; asking, how it could be that a large face could be expressed in so little room, saying, it, should have seemed as impossible to him, as to put a bushel of any thing into a pint.
" At first, he could bear but very little light, and the things he saw he thought extremely large ; but upon seeing things larger, those first seen he con ceived less ; never being able to imagine any lines be yond the bounds he saw. The room he was in, he said, he knew to be but part of the house, yet he ' could not conceive that the whole house could look bigger. Before --!se was couched, he expected little advantage from seeing, worth undergoing an opera tion for, except reading and writing ; for, he said, he thought he could have no more pleasure in walking abroad than he had in the garden, which he could do safely and readily. And even blindness, he observed, had this advantage, that he could go any where in the dark much better than those who can see • and after he had seen, he did not soon lose this valuable quality, nor desire a light to go about the house in the night. He said, every new object was a new de light ; and the pleasure was so great, that lie wanted ways to express it. But his gratitude to his opera tor he could not conceal ; never seeing him for some time without tears of joy in his eyes, and other marks of affection ; and if he did not happen to come at any time when he was expected, he would be so grieved, that he could not forbear crying at the dis. appointment.
" A year after his first seeing, being carried upon Epsom Downs, and observing a large prospect, he was exceedingly delighted with it, and called it a new kind of seeing. And, now, being lately couch ed of his other eye, he says, that objects at first ap peared large to this eye, but not.so large as they did at first to the other ; and looking upon the same ob ject with both eyes, he thought it looked about twice as large as with the first couched eye only, but not doable, that we can any way discover." Mr Cheselden adds, in another paper printed by itself, that he has brought to eight several others, who had no remembrance of ever having seen ; and that they all gave the same account of their learning to see, as they called it, with the young gentleman above mentioned, though not in so many particulars; and .that they all had this in common, that, having
never had occasion to move their eyes, they knew not how to do it, and, at first, could not at all direct them to a particular object ; but in time they acqui red that faculty, though by slow degrees.
Some later observations, however, of a similar kind, seem rather at variance with Mr Cheselden's conclu sions concerning the first notions of vision of those who have been couched for cataracts after having been deprived of sight from their earliest years ; al though, perhaps, the difference may be more appa rent than real. In the Philosophical Transactions for 1801, there is a paper on this subject, by Mr J. Ware, surgeon, who has had great practice in couch ing for cataracts, and who had, in this manner, re stored to sight many young persons, who had no re collection of ever having seen ; all of whom, how ever, he found had a notion of distance, and of the forms of objects, even from the very first moment that they recovered their sight. The case which he particularly describes in this paper, is that of a Mas ter W., whom he restored to sight at seven years of age, after having been deprived of it by cataracts be fore he was a year old.
" I performed the operation," says Mr Ware," on the left eye, on the 29th of December last, in the presence of Mr Chamberlayne, F. A. S.; Dr Bradley of Baliol College, Oxford; and Mr Platt, surgeon in London. It is not necessary, in this place, to enter. into a description of the operation. It will be suffi cient to say, that the child, during its performance, neither uttered an exclamation, nor made the smallest motion either with his head or his hands. The eye was immediately bound up, and no inquiries made on that day with regard to his sight. On the 30th, I found. that he had experienced a slight sickness on the pre ceding evening, but had made no complaint of pain either in his head or eye. On the 31st, as soon as I entered his chamber, the mother, with much joy, in formed me, that her child could see. About an hour before my visit he was standing near the fire, v,ith•a handkerchief tied loosely over his eyes, when he told her, that under the handkerchief, which had slipped upward, he could distinguish the table, by the side of which she was sitting. It was about a yard and a half from him ; and he observed, that it was covered with a green cloth, (which was really the case,) and that it was a little farther off than lie was able to reach. No farther questions were asked him at that time, as his mother was much alarmed lest the use thus made of his eye might have been premature and .injurious. Upon examination, I found that it was. not more inflamed than the other eye, and the opacity in the pupil did not appear' to be much diminished.