From Eye to Eye

With eyes bandaged a Jew and a Nordic lay with ocular fraternity in Manhattan's Eye & Ear Hospital last week. The Nordic, one Bert Ferguson, had one glass eye. The Jew, one Charles E. Greenblatt, had a gauze-packed socket, into which a glass eye soon would be set. His extracted eye had had a tumor. His other eye was good. But Nordic Ferguson's other eye was bad. It bore a cataract, an opaque thickening of the cornea that prevented light images going through his pupil and striking upon his retina. So hopeless was his case that he had become an inmate of Manhattan's Home for the Blind. And he is only 32.

Thirty-two also is Jewish Greenblatt. Equal also are the color, size and shape of their eyes. Coincidal too were the accidents of Dr. Ben Witt Key, ophthalmologist, knowing both their cases. A sure eye surgeon, and a daring, Dr. Key thought of lifting the thickened cornea from Nordic Ferguson's bad eye and grafting on the peeled ball the good cornea of Jewish Greenblatt's bad eye. The Jew amiably agreed to the graft, the Nordic hopefully received it. And hopefully, with eyes bandaged, they waited for results.