of her sight, but very
little knowledge of any forms, and was unable to apply the
information gained by this new sense, and to compare it with
what she had been accustomed to acquire by her sense of touch.
When, therefore, a silver pencil-case and a large key were given
her to examine with her hands, she discriminated and knew each
distinctly; but when they were placed on the table, side by
side, though she distinguished each with her eye, yet she could
not tell which was the pencil-case and which was the key.

"On the twenty-fifth day after the operation she drove in a
carriage for an hour in the Regent's Park, and asked more
questions, on her way there, than usual, about the objects
surrounding her, such as, 'What is that?' 'It is a soldier,' she
was answered. 'And that? See, see!' These were candles of
various colors in a tallow-chandler's window. 'Who is that that
has passed us just now?' It was a person on horseback. 'But what
is that on the pavement, red?' It was some ladies who wore red
shawls. On going into the park she was asked if she could guess
what any of the objects were. 'Oh, yes,' she replied, 'there is
the sky; that is the grass; yonder is water, and two white
things,' which were two swans.

"When she left London, forty-two days after the operation, she
had acquired a pretty accurate notion of colors and their
different shades and names. She had not yet acquired anything
like an accurate knowledge of distance or of forms, and, up to
this period, she continued to be very much confused with every
new object at which she looked. Neither was she yet able,
without considerable difficulty and numerous fruitless trials,
to direct her eye to an object; so that, when she attempted to
look at anything, she turned her head in various directions,
until her eye caught the object of which it was in search."

Remarks on the Sixth Case.

This case has been adduced as a proof that the sense of sight is
sufficient, without aid from the sense of touch, to perceive whether an
object is brought nearer the eye or carried farther from it. But John
Stuart Mill rightly observes, in opposition to this ("Dissertations and
Discussions," ii, 113; London, 1859), that the observation we are
concerned with was not made "till the eighteenth day after the
operation, by which time a middle-aged woman might well hav