Medicine: Sight for the Sightless

A man who had been blind from babyhood until his late 20s tried to tell what it was like to see: “At first the myriad of detail demanded so much attention I had to try not to look at things. There was, and still is, no ugliness in things that can be seen. Even a wad of paper, wet and soggy in a dirty gutter, contains design and color that are not unpleasant to look upon. All things are beautiful . . . and I have found life is beautiful, too . . . Thanks to my good vision, we face a future of independent security here on our Pennsylvania dairy farm.”

The man was able to see again because he got new corneas for his eyes through the Eye Bank for Sight Restoration (TIME, Nov. 11, 1946 et ante). Last week the eye bank’s third annual report told about his case. Other recent cases: a railroad worker, blinded by sparks, now has normal (20/20) vision. A nun from Ontario cried with joy when she saw her doctor’s hands as he completed an operation to graft new corneas on her eyes. A Long Island mother, able to see only light and shadow since childhood, can now see her husband and two children.

The driving force behind the eye bank is a smartly dressed, sixtyish woman named Aida de Acosta Breckinridge. One day last week the telephone rang in her small office on the first floor of the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital. Mrs. Breckinridge answered briskly: “Oh, yes. A little baby’s eyes are wonderful. We’ll call for them tomorrow.” Another Manhattan hospital had called to say that some parents had offered the corneas of their dead child so that another person might see. The Red Cross would handle the delivery to the eye bank. A telegram lay on Mrs. Breckinridge’s desk saying that the next of kin were offering the eyes of a man dying in a Cincinnati hospital. Mrs. Breckinridge arranged for an airline to fly them east, carefully refrigerated in salt solution (results are best when eyes are removed an hour after death and used within three days).

Mrs. Breckinridge reads with difficulty and wears dark glasses to guard her own eyes from glare. Twenty-six years ago she was stricken with glaucoma, an eye disease that often causes blindness. While waiting for her eyes to heal after an operation she began to wonder what she could do for her surgeon, the late Dr. William Holland Wilmer. She raised nearly $5,000,000 among his patients to establish the Wilmer Ophthalmological Institute at Johns Hopkins. Four years ago a group of Manhattan eye surgeons asked her to help start the eye bank. She is now executive director.

Last year, with eyes from the eye bank, 333 corneal graft operations were performed, 90% of them successful. The operation can restore sight only when blindness is caused by damage to the cornea. Among conditions the operation cannot cure is glaucoma.