Years ago, it’s over 40 years ago now, I studied the case of SB, Sidney Bradford, who was blind, almost certainly from birth, and then he got his sight back actually when he was 52 with operations on his eyes, actually it was only one eye that worked, so one eye really, and he gradually, or, no, sorry, he had immediate vision for things he knew about already from touch. He could really see an amazing amount actually the day after the operation. It was quite extraordinary. But what happened, he was terribly excited because he got his vision of course and he thought he’d be able to do everything, drive a car and all the rest of it, but he was actually quite constrained in what he could do and what was very, very sad, and I think we need to know more about this, is that instead of it opening up a whole new life for him as he’d dreamed of, it actually made him sad, made him depressed, and he went into a real depression. First of all, he often wouldn’t bother to see. He’d wake up in the morning and he wouldn’t bother to put the light on. He’d shave in the dark, he continued to live really as a blind man, but the really sad thing was he got depressed. He felt that the world as he could now see it to some degree, was a lot less perfect than he’d thought. For example, he got really upset if he saw peeling paint, if he saw blemishes on things, and I really think that he believed the world would be a sort of heaven, you know, when he opened his eyes, he’d be in heaven and he found it wasn’t heaven. When the sun set, he got really sad by it becoming dark but then when it rose and everything was illuminated, he saw the imperfections in the world shown up by light and he got a clinical depression in actual fact. Now, there’s a new case called Mike May living in California, he’s completely different. He’s younger, but not all that much younger. He was, I think, 46 when he had the operation and he’s a very, very active, highly intelligent man, much more educated than SB but highly educated man, and an incredible chap. He is a world champion skier, blind skiing, and he could ski at 60 miles an hour down a mountain with his wife shouting right, left, right, left, and this sort of thing, you know, and he really had a full grasp of life in every way, and is he getting depressed? No. The wonderful thing is that I think he’s the only known case actually, recovery from blindness, who’s making a real success of it and is not at all depressed. He enjoys every minute of his life, and I think this is because the people who’ve been handling him, particularly his wife and family perhaps, have understood, helped him tremendously, and it’s successful. But I think that in these cases, it shouldn’t just be handled by scientists interested in the scientific aspects of it. It needs people who are really aware of the clinical problems, the emotional problems associated with both recovery of function and also with loss of function, you know. I think a lot more needs to be thought about the emotional side of these things and very sad with SB, and a great triumph, I think, for Mike May. It’s really great that he’s making a go of it, I think.
