Looking for an old non-fiction article about blindness.
August 29, 2014 9:06 PM   Subscribe

There have been a few punctuated instances in health. I'm struggling to find a non-fiction article about when [I think] cataracts suddenly became curable and the experiences of those that had newfound eyesight.

There is an anthology of non-fiction, it was a thick paperback with a black cover as I recall. It was assigned for a journalism class more than thirty years ago. The collection had a bunch of great stories [or reportage] but one story about fiixng cataracts [I think] was particularly poignant. The Surgery was to repair vision and the surgery had become available all at once. It detailed a patient who, upon having their vision being newfound and difficult to interpert would throw a shoe to estimate distance because they could understand distance via that means - their newfound eyesight signals were difficult to integrate with their former means of navigation.
posted by vapidave to Science & Nature (2 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
http://www.wfu.edu/art/art111/files/12_tosee.pdf This is the story who want.

It is written a physician---> the
very literate Dr. Oliver Sacks. The condition it deals with is Cortical visual Impairment (CVI). People with CVI "see and don't see". It was, as you say, poignant. One his books became the movie Awakenings
posted by rowboat at 9:37 AM on August 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: That is certainly a story I want rowboat [only partway through and it's more detailed than the one I was thinking of] but alas, it's not the one I was thinking of. Mea culpa for not saying that I read the essay in 1983 or thereabouts. Thank you though.
posted by vapidave at 8:04 PM on August 30, 2014


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