You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In February, 1950, Brachah B., a six-year-old Yemenite girl, was referred to the Lasker Center of Hadassah, Jerusalem. The child had been born blind, on account of bilateral congenital cataract, and only some time after her fifth birthday, following a surgical operation at the Department of Ophthalmology, Hadassah Hospital, Jerusalem, did she begin to see. For her vision to be at all adequate, it was necessary that she wear spectacles, and this Brachah resolutely refused to do. It was in connection with this specific and apparently well-defined problem that our professional help was enlisted. This circumstance afforded us the unique opportunity of observing the reactions of the child, and of her mother, to the belated "gift" of sight.
On the February 24, 1950, Brachah and her mother paid their first visit to the Lasker Center. Mrs. B. was a small, dark, very thin woman with a depressed and careworn expression. Her dress was tattered but meticulously clean. At her side was the child, bent double, almost on all fours, and clinging with hands and mouth to