Tag: blindness
-
Public health awareness of cataract
Hosam Halim Amal Halim Menna Elbendary Walaa Asaad Salah Eldean Elsherbini Dalia SabryEgypt During our humanitarian medical outreach campaigns in poor and remote areas, we observed a high prevalence of visual impairment among many patients who presented with advanced medical, surgical, and oncological diseases. Their family members are preoccupied with earning a livelihood, and no…
-
Charles Bonnet Syndrome: The landscape of my mind
Ceres Alhelí Otero PenicheMexico City, Mexico Today I awoke feeling hopeless, disconnected from my body and from my thoughts. All I could sense was the void that my loss of vision represented. I kept thinking how beautiful it would be to see clearly as I opened my eyes. Then suddenly the room began to distort.…
-
Charles Dickens and the Victorian perception of blindness
Curtis MargoLynn HarmanTampa, Florida, United States Charles Dickens (1812–1870), the most recognized English author after Shakespeare, left a legacy of fictional characters, many of whom are inseparably associated with the cruelties of the Industrial Age, poverty, and disability. On his first trip to America, Dickens went out of his way to meet Laura Bridgman (1829–1889),…
-
Book review: Life Unseen: A Story of Blindness
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom In her new book, Selina Mills, an award-winning journalist who is legally blind, takes us on a journey through the cultural history of visual impairment and blindness. It is both informative and empowering, weaving together research and the author’s personal experience. Throughout time, loss of sight has been associated with…
-
Blindness and visual sensory distortion in Thomas Bewick’s woodcuts
Stephen MartinThailand The artist and naturalist Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) was one of the Enlightenment’s leading polymaths. He wrote groundbreaking books on birds1 and mammals,2 as well as an autobiography, which is absorbing and charming. This Memoir of Thomas Bewick3 is a delightfully detailed window on the eighteenth century and Regency periods, focusing on his ordinary…
-
The new pandemic
Maite LosarcosNavarra, Spain It is just another day. The traffic light is red as pedestrians cross the street before you, always in a hurry. At last, the light turns green, but just as you prepare to start the car, the world goes white. People shout, cars honk, and rage fills the place, but you cannot…
-
“Troubled in my eyes”: the risks of reading and writing
Katherine HarveyLondon, England, United Kingdom On January 1, 1660, a young Londoner named Samuel Pepys began to keep a diary. Over the next nine and a half years, he recorded both events of national significance—the Restoration of King Charles II, the Great Plague, and the Great Fire—as well as the minutiae of his private life,…
-
Pieter Bruegel and The Parable of the Blind
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the ditch.”—Matthew 15:14, King James Version 21st Century The Netherlandish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder (b.ca.1525-d.1569), who lived and worked in Brussels, was considered “the most perfect painter of his century.”1…