' The
guards in the morning had marched past the hospital with their
band; on hearing the music, he had got out of bed and gone to
the window to look at them. Seeing the bright barrels of
muskets, he must in his mind have connected them with the sounds
which he heard, and mistaken them for musical instruments.
Twenty-four hours after the operation the pupil of the eye was
clear. A pair of scissors was shown him, and he said it was a
knife. On being told he was wrong, he could not make them out;
but the moment he touched them he said they were scissors, and
seemed delighted with the discovery.
"From this time he was constantly improving himself by looking
at, and examining with his hands, everything within his reach,
but he frequently forgot what he had learned. On the 10th I saw
him again. He went to the window and called out, 'What is that
moving?' I asked him what he thought it was. He said: 'A dog
drawing a wheelbarrow. There is one, two, three dogs drawing
another. How very pretty!' These proved to be carts and horses
on the road, which he saw from a two-pair-of-stairs window.
"On the 19th the different colored pieces of card were
separately placed before his eye, and so little had he gained in
thirteen days that he could not, without counting their corners
one by one, tell their shape. This he did with great facility,
running his eye quickly along the outline, so that it was
evident he was still learning, just as a child learns to read.
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