OPHTHALMIC DISEASES AND BLINDNESS.

The special observances with regard to the blind that are mentioned in the Old Testament, would indicate that they were a numerous class at the time of the Exodus. ' Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way.' In the New Testament we not only have special instances of our Lord's giving them sight, but repeated references, in general terms, to the blind as a class, who found in Jesus evidence of His Messiahship by their recovery of sight at His hands.

It is notorious that ophthalmic disease and blindness have always been very common in the East, and are so still. Egyptian ophthalmia has long been known as one of the most severe and destructive forms of inflammation of the eye. In proof of this it is only necessary to refer to the military annals, both English and French, of the Napoleonic and other Egyptian campaigns. Various causes have been assigned for its prevalence in Egypt and other Eastern climes, especially intensity of light and heat, together with searching winds filling the air with fine sand and other irritating matters, which may be sufficient to account for its wide-spreading prevalence at certain times. But the Egyptian ophthalmia is also contagious and communicable by the transfer of the purulent secretion from one eye to another. By this kind of ophthalmia the sight is often rapidly destroyed, and even the whole eye disorganised. It has sometimes spread with fearful rapidity as an epidemic through multitudes of people, leaving no small numbers permanently blind.

We cannot, however, suppose it to have been by any such form of disease that either the men of Sodom or the Syrian army, as recorded 2 Kings vi. i8, were struck blind. The infliction was doubtless miraculous in both cases, and in the latter may possibly have taken the form of temporary amaurosis, i. e. sudden paralysis or suspension of function of the optic nerve, to be after a while restored. This also may probably have been the case with St. Paul (Acts ix). The intensity of the bright light from heaven may have been sufficient to destroy the functional power of the optic nerve to a degree that would have been permanent but for its gracious restoration by the hands of Ananias. When it is said that ' immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales,' the language is evidently metaphorical.

We are also disposed to regard the case of Elymas as one of temporary loss of the visual function. (Actsxiii. ii.) St. Paul, addressing him, said, ' Behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season. And immediately there fell on him a mist (ἀχλύς) and a darkness (σκότος); and he went about seeking some to lead him by the hand.' Some have sought to explain the first word, translated ' mist,' as indicating such opacities of the cornea as frequently result from disease. But Hippocrates uses a similar term to indicate murkiness or gloom, and it would seem more natural to understand it here as describing the man's first sensations ere he became more completely dark.

The case of the two blind men who followed our Lord,¹ addressing Him as 'Thou Son of David,' and crying for mercy, does not admit of any confident opinion as to the cause of their blindness. There is no ground for supposing that they were congenitally blind, but rather that they were among the many others who had long been permanently blind from disease. That they afford us a signal illustration of the power of faith in the Divine Physician cannot be doubted. When they came to Him in the house, Jesus said unto them, 'Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto Him, Yea, Lord. Then touched He their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened.' That touch must have had a virtue in it unknown to any surgeon oculist, or mesmerist, and unpossessed by any remedial agent.

The case of Bartimaeus² seems altogether analogous to that of the two men just mentioned; but the blind and dumb man of Matt. xii. 22 appears to have been a case of demoniacal possession, who, when healed, both spake and saw, and gave occasion, as did Bartimaeus, to the admission that the great Healer was indeed the Son of David, predicted to give sight to the blind.

Cataract is the most frequent cause of congenital blindness, and this we may with great probability assume was the nature of the case of the man blind from his birth, recorded in the ninth chapter of St. John's Gospel, who was well and publicly known to be blind. The case is remarkable, not only from the signal and miraculous nature of the cure, but also from the judicial enquiry that followed, and from the solemn and impressive discourse of our Lord to which it gave occasion, as well as to the wrath and angry discussion of the Pharisees. Whether cataract, or any other form of congenital defect, was the cause of the blindness, it is impossible to suppose that it was by any inherent virtue in the subsidiary means employed, no doubt for wise reasons, by the Divine Healer, that sight was given to 'one born blind.' 'As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world,' said Jesus. ' When He had thus spoken, He spat on the ground, and made clay of the spittle, and He anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay, and said unto him. Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which is by interpretation, Sent). He went his way therefore, and washed, and came seeing.' 'And it was the Sabbath day when Jesus made the clay, and opened his eyes.' Were such proceedings enjoined by our Lord with the view of rendering manifest His exercise of supernatural power and the inadequacy of the natural agents employed.? Or was it more signally to condemn the Pharisaic making void the law, and to show that the Son of Man was Lord of the Sabbath?

The case mentioned by St. Mark³, where the restoration to sight was not at once complete, but by a double exercise of Divine power, seems still more distinctly to show that the cure was not due in any way to the natural external means employed. The description given by this man, when only partially in possession of sight, that 'he saw men as trees walking,' rather indicates that he had not always been blind. It was only when Christ had put ' His hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up,' that 'he was restored, and saw every man clearly.' The word 'restored' (ἀποκατεστάθη), whilst showing that sight had at one time been possessed, throws no light on the cause of the blindness. Cataract, when not strictly congenital, often occurs very early in life, at three or four years of age; and had this been the case here the man might have retained some knowledge of sight. But it is more probable that sight had been lost by some of those forms of inflammation or other ophthalmic disease which were common, and had occurred at a more advanced age. In either case, had the cure been by ordinary means, sight would not have returned immediately, but gradually. Had the case been one of cataract of the congenital kind, some time would have been needed to admit of the man's learning to judge both of form and distance. In Chesleden's well-known case of a child on whom he operated at the age of 14, and who had been blind from birth, the lad at first had no judgment of distance, or the shape of things, whatever might be their size or form, and only gradually acquired a knowledge of things by sight, requiring for some time to aid his judgment by the sense of touch.

The blind of our day have reason to be thankful for the efforts that are made to enable them to come to the knowledge of Him who is 'the light of the world' though deprived of the ordinary means of becoming acquainted with His revealed truth. It is said that in Cairo there are now thousands of blind, and that in the island of Formosa they amount to seven or eight thousand. For the blind in Formosa there has recently been produced a Chinese primer in raised type, to enable them, as well as those in our own land, to read the Scriptures in their native tongue, and thus to look on Him who, not only still gives sight to the blind, but also teaches His disciples to be imitators of Himself.

1) Matt. ix. 27-31.

2) Luke xviii. 35-43; Mark x. 46-53.

3) Mark viii. 22-26.