Of human
adults, I heard of two men great in the world of science, both
dead now, in whose eyes the red light had been seen just
before and during attacks of nervous breakdown. I heard also
of four other persons, not distinguished in any way, two of
them sisters, who showed the red light in the eyes: all of
them suffered, from brain trouble and two of them ended their
lives in asylums for the insane.
Discussing these cases with my informants, we came to the
conclusion that the red light in the human eye is probably
always a pathological condition, a danger signal; but it is
not perhaps safe to generalize on these few instances, and I
must add that all the medical men I have spoken to on the
subject shake their heads. One great man, an eye specialist,
went so far as to say that it is impossible, that the red
light in the eye was not seen by my informants but only
imagined. The ophthalmoscope, he said, will show you the
crimson at the back of the eye, but the colour is not and
cannot be reflected on the surface of the iris.
Chapter Sixteen: In Praise of the Cow
In spite of discontents I might have remained to this day by
the Otter, in the daily and hourly expectation of seeing some
new and wonderful thing in Nature in that place where a
crimson-eyed carrion-crow had been revealed to me, had not a
storm of thunder and rain broken over the country to shake me
out of a growing disinclination to move.
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