Brighter & Brighter

Carl Klein was a landscape gardener who loved flowers and was distressed when he saw living things destroyed. Reading of the misery and killing in World War II, he grieved and became nervous. In 1942 his sight began to dim. By the end of 1946 he was totally blind.

In his Brooklyn boardinghouse one night last week, Carl Klein, now 40, awoke with a headache. Said he later: "Light-colored dots broke out in my eyes. The dots gave way to circles. As the circles broke away, vision came." He could not quite believe his eyes. But he was convinced when he looked out the window and saw streetlights burning "brighter and brighter." He walked to Brooklyn's Industrial Home for the Blind, carrying his cane in case his sight should fail again. But he did not need the cane. Said Klein: "It's a miracle. I can see again."

Doctors guessed that the miracle was at least partly psychosomatic. The original diagnosis had been atrophy (degeneration) of the optic nerves, possibly due to the pressure of a blood clot. But eye specialists now thought this an unlikely explanation for loss and return of sight. Pressure on the nerves for so long a time would almost certainly have caused permanent damage. The optic nerves, which are extensions of the brain and thus extremely delicate, may be badly injured by pressure for only a few hours. If sight should come back after damage to the nerves, its return would very likely be gradual.

The Klein case, doctors thought, may have been hysterical blindness, which sometimes strikes soldiers in combat. In such a case, recovery is often dramatically sudden. As he learned to look after himself at the Brooklyn Industrial Home, Klein had grown less & less tense and less worried about things. Lutheran Klein had also leaned more & more on religion for repose. Faith, he thought, had helped in his recovery.

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