lincoln in springfield

[LincolnToddFan]

(03-30-2015 03:56 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(03-29-2015 04:26 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  I remember reading it here, Roger:
http://www.lincolnportrait.com/emotional...lopia.html
"The earliest evidence of Lincoln's visual decoordination has been recorded by Shastid,{23} as told to him by his father, Dr. Shastid, an oculist who practiced in Pittsfield, Ill. The elder Dr. Shastid, when a boy, lived in New Salem and knew Abe Lincoln, then in his mid-twenties, as the storekeeper and postmaster of the town...Shastid noticed that Lincoln's left eye looked queer at times and would suddenly get crossed and turn upward.
Some 20 years later, when a physician and oculist, Shastid saw Lincoln in several debates with Douglas and in several trials in court as a lawyer. He then recognized the ocular condition as hyperphoria from a certain weakness of the muscles of the left eye, which continuously caused the eyeball to turn upward. Upon excitement this condition would suddenly increase and produce a severe cross-eyed effect. Dr. Shastid suggested that the hyperphoria caused intense eyestrain and uneasiness and was at least partly the cause of Lincoln's moodiness or 'chronic inexpressible blues.' He thought that Lincoln possibly was also color-blind, for Lincoln once said to his (Shastid’s) mother, when she showed him her flower garden, that flowers and sunsets had no beauty for him, as they did for other people."

Eva, thank you for posting that! I am sure the book I read long ago said the same. Today I will check Dr. John Sotos' The Physical Lincoln and see what he has to say about Lincoln's eyesight/possible color blindness. I know the condition is more common in men than women.

Roger I remember reading-I think it was Katherine Helm's biography? Where AL complimented his wife on the color of her dress because it looked like the blue of her eyes, and Mary joked that her efforts to teach her husband the difference in colors was finally bearing fruit. I believe her younger sister Emilie Helm was staying with them in Springfield at the time. Do you recall the incident in your reading?

Anyway if AL did indeed have some form of color-blindness, Mary's comment makes sense.

Also, Robert Todd Lincoln was afflicted with strabismus(cross eyes) in childhood, so he must have inherited the condition from his father.