ABSTRACT
In 1834 at the age of six, George Augustus Sala went temporarily blind. His nurse had inadvertently left the doors and windows of the cottage in Edgware he was residing in wide open. Sala had just suffered from an attack of the measles and in his autobiography, written 62 years later, he states that he still believed it was the result of this sudden exposure to the elements that led to ‘a horrible attack of inflammation. I turned purple, I lost my hearing, and some time afterwards, I lost my sight.’ 1 In fact Sala had suffered from encephalomyelitis, an inflammatory condition of the brain resulting from a reaction to the measles virus. Encephalomyelitis can lead to blindness and deafness and, looking back on the event, Sala was obviously deeply physically scarred by the ordeal. Aside from all the unconventional treatments he was subjected to (having his eyes rubbed with ‘golden ointment’, his ears pierced and his head shaved), he also overheard his mother’s maid refer to him as ‘that miserable little object.’ 2 Sala recalls that ‘the contumelious expression of the lady’s maid cut into my heart as though with a sharp knife.’ 3 But it was the disorienting mental effect that loss of sight must have had on the young boy’s perception of the world around him that would be the most important product of this unfortunate incident.
