Medicine: To See & Be Seen

Eleven-year-old Linda Brown of Whittier, Calif, made TV screens across the U.S. for a few minutes last week, and for a good, heart-warming reason. Virtually blind from infancy, because of ulcer scars on her eyeballs (probably the result of overstrong silver nitrate being dropped in her eyes), Linda is making a remarkable recovery.

Linda's parents had taken her to more than a score of doctors and spent thousands of hard-earned dollars (her father works in a rubber factory) after they learned that her right eye could only distinguish between light & dark, and her left could make out only elephantine objects. In July of last year, Mrs. Brown read about Dr. Archie Edward Cruthirds of Phoenix, who had got good results in eye burns with Hydrosulphosol (TIME, Oct. 14, 1946). Two days later, Mrs. Brown and Linda were in Phoenix.

Dr. Cruthirds (rhymes with two-thirds) looked into Linda's hazel eyes and saw severe scarring of the corneas. But he thought there was hope, at least for the left eye, and he gave her eyedrops and capsules of calsulfhydryl (new name for Hydrosulphosol now that calcium has been added). The treatment is slow, and the Browns took no chances: they got Linda into a school for the blind at Berkeley, where she began to learn Braille.

A checkup by Dr. Cruthirds after six months showed that Linda's corneal scars were beginning to clear. A few weeks ago, he found that vision in her left eye had improved from 5/200 to 20/100—good enough for her to learn to read. Linda is forgetting about Braille.

Dr. Cruthirds hopes that Linda's regained sight may encourage ophthalmologists to try calsulfhydryl in similar cases. Many have hesitated to do so, because of the medical tradition that the process of scarring is irreversible. Dr. Cruthirds' answer: corneal tissue is different from other body tissues, and corneal scars must be different from other scars.