The "man born blind restored to light" was one of two foundational myths of the Enlightenment, according to Foucault. With ophthalmic surgery in its infancy, the fascination with blindness and what the blind 'see' once their vision is restored remained largely hypothetical. Was being blind, as Descartes once remarked, like 'seeing with the hands'? Did evidence from early ophthalmic surgery resolve debates about the relationship between vision and touch in the newly sighted? Has the standard representation of blind figures in literature been modified by recent autobiographical accounts of...