An essay on blindness, in a letter to a person of distinction : reciting the most interesting particulars relative to persons born blind, and those who have lost their sight : being an enquiry into the nature of their ideas, knowledge of sounds, opinions concerning morality and religion, &c. interspersed with several anecdotes of Sanderson, Milton, and others : with copper-plates elucidating Dr. Sanderson's method of working geometrical problems / translated from the French of M. Diderot, physician to His most Christian Majesty.

  • Diderot, Denis, 1713-1784.
Date:
[1780?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An essay on blindness, in a letter to a person of distinction : reciting the most interesting particulars relative to persons born blind, and those who have lost their sight : being an enquiry into the nature of their ideas, knowledge of sounds, opinions concerning morality and religion, &c. interspersed with several anecdotes of Sanderson, Milton, and others : with copper-plates elucidating Dr. Sanderson's method of working geometrical problems / translated from the French of M. Diderot, physician to His most Christian Majesty. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    We afterwards faw him thread very fmall needles. May I beg the favour of you. Madam, here to fufpend your reading, and think how you would go about it, were you in his cafe ? Should no expedient of- fer itfelf, I will tell you that of the blind man’s. He places the needle’s eye tranf- verfally between his lips, and in the fame diredion as his mouth i then, by the help of his tongue and fudion, he draws in the thread, which follows his breath, unlefs it be much too large for the eye •, but, in that cafe, he who has his fight is little better off. He has a prodigious remembrance of founds •, and the infinite diverfity we per- ceive in faces, he perceives in voices, with numberlefs minute gradations, which efcape us, as not fo much concerned to ob- ferve them. Thofe gradations are, to us, like our own face •, as of all the men that we have ever feen, he whom we fliould leaft recoiled, is our very felf. We take notice of faces only for better knowing the perfons; and that we do not remember our own