Pulse

open to him and his wife, but that he expected progress in the ensuing days to be slow. In truth, he judged the girl’s cure more likely if he could treat her without the presence of a father who struck him as overbearing, and a mother who, perhaps by reason of her Italian blood, seemed liable to hysteria. It was still just possible that Maria Theresia’s blindness wascaused by atrophy of the optic nerve, in which case there was nothing that magnetism, or any other known procedure, could do for her. But M— doubted this. The convulsions he had witnessed, and the symptoms reported, all spoke of a disturbance to the whole nervous system due to some powerful shock. In the absence of any witnesses at the time, or of the patient’s memory, it was impossible to determine what kind of shock it might have been. This did not perturb M— unduly: it was the effect he was treating, not the cause. Indeed, it might be fortunate that the Fräulein could not recall the precise nature of the precipitating event.
    In the preceding two years, it had become increasingly apparent to M— that in bringing the patient to the necessary point of crisis, the touch of the human hand was of central, animating importance. At first, his touching of the patient at the moment of magnetism was designed to be calming, or at best emphatic. If, for instance, magnets were placed on either side of the ear, it seemed a natural gesture to stroke that ear in a manner confirming the realignment being sought. But M— could not help observing that when all favourable conditions for cure had been created, with a circle of patients around the baquet in the soft candlelight, it was often the case that when he, as a musician, removed his fingers from the rotating glass armonica and then, as a physician, laid them on the afflicted part of the body, the patient might be instantly brought to crisis. M— was at times inclined to ponder how much was the effect of the magnetism, and how much that of the magnetiser himself. Maria Theresia was not apprised of such wider considerations, any more than she was asked to join other patients around the oaken tub.
    ‘Your treatment causes pain.’
    ‘No. What is causing pain is that you are beginning to see. When you look in the mirror you see the wand I am holding and turn your head to follow it. You say yourself that there is a shape moving.’
    ‘But you are treating me. And I am feeling pain.’
    ‘The pain is a sign of a beneficial response to the crisis. The pain shows that your optic nerve and retina, so long abandoned from use, are becoming active again.’
    ‘Other doctors have told me that the pain they were inflicting was necessary and beneficial. You are a doctor of philosophy as well?’
    ‘I am.’
    ‘Philosophers can explain anything away.’
    M— took no offence, indeed was pleased with such an attitude.
    Such was the girl’s new susceptibility to light that he had to bind her eyes with a triple bandage, which remained in place at all times when she was not being treated. He had begun by presenting to her, at a certain distance, objects of the same kind which were either white or black. She was able to perceive the black objects without distress, but flinched at the white objects, reporting that the pain they produced in her eyes was like that of a soft brush being drawn across the retina; they also provoked a sense of giddiness. M— therefore removed all the white objects.
    Next, he introduced her to the intermediate colours. Maria Theresia was able to distinguish between them, though unable to describe how they appeared to her – except for the colour black, which was, she said, the picture of her former blindness. When the colours were ascribed their names, she often failed to apply the correct name the next time a colour was shown. Nor was she able to calculate the distance objects were from her, imagining them all to be within reach; thus she extended her hands to pick up items twenty feet away. It was also the case, in these early days, that the impression an object left upon her retina lasted for up to a minute. She was obliged, therefore, to cover her eyes with her hands until the impression faded, else it would become confused with the next object presented to her view. Further, since themuscles of the eye had fallen into disuse, she had no practice at moving her gaze, searching for objects, focusing upon them and accounting for their position.
    Neither was it the case that the elation