The Country of the Blind
H G Wells
Synopsis:
In a remote Andean valley, cut off from the outside world by a massive landslip, live a race of people who are sightless.
Fifteen generations ago 'A strange disease had come upon them and had made all the children born to them there - and, indeed, several older children also - blind.
.....amidst the little population of that now isolated and forgotten valley the disease ran its course. The old became groping, the young saw but dimly, and the children that were born to them never saw at all.
The seeing had become purblind so gradually that they scarcely noticed their loss.
Generation followed generation. They forgot many things; they devised many things. Their tradition of the greater world they came from became mythical in colour and uncertain. In all things save sight they were strong and able....'
Their organs of sight atrophied; their eyelids became melded into a permanently closed flap.
They came to believe that nothing existed beyond the valley.
Nunez, a mountaineer, becomes lost in the mountains following a fall, and finds himself in the fabled Country of the Blind.
'All the old stories of the lost valley and the Country of the Blind had come back to his mind, and through his thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain: -
"In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King."'
However Nunez soon discovers that this assumption could not be more wrong, for the people of the valley, with no conception of sight quickly come to the conclusion that Nunez, with his talk of the outside world and of what he can see is either insane, wicked or an idiot.
'And blind philosophers came and talked to him of the wicked levity of his mind....'
Until, in a spirit of kindliness '.....one of the elders, who thought deeply, had an idea. He was a great doctor among these people, their medicine-man, and he had a very philosophical and inventive mind, and the idea of curing Nunez of his peculiarities appealed to him.
"I have examined Nunez," he said, "and the case is clearer to me. I think very probably he might be cured."
"His brain is affected," said the blind doctor.
The elders murmured assent.
"Now, WHAT affects it?"
"This," said the doctor, answering his own question. "Those queer things that are called the eyes, and which exist to make an agreeable depression in the face, are diseased, in the case of Nunez, in such a way as to affect his brain. They are greatly distended, he has eyelashes, and his eyelids move, and consequently his brain is in a state of constant irritation and distraction."
"And I think I may say with reasonable certainty that, in order to cure him completely, all that we need to do is a simple and easy surgical operation - namely, to remove these irritant bodies."
"And then he will be sane?"
"Then he will be perfectly sane, and a quite admirable citizen."'
When he hears of this Nunez, the mountaineer, scales with difficulty the high walls of the valley - grateful to escape the Country of the Blind.
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