Here's a halloween tale for you straight from Hole's Anatomy and Physiology! I love this one because occasionally there will be something on the counter in our house that none of us knows where to put away. We shift it from counter to counter until it finds an unofficial home somewhere- and there it will be a year later. I can't help but think this story happened in much the same way.
John Dalton, a famous English Chemist, knew he saw things differently than most people. In a 1794 lecture, he described that sealing wax that appeared red to other people looked green to him. Pink wildflowers looked blue. Dalton knew he was colorblind but he didn't know why-at the time no one did.
He was so curious about the state of his vision that he made arrangements for his personal physician, Joseph Ransome, to dissect his eyes after he died. Ransome snipped open the eye and, looking through his freinds eyeball, deduced that the problem was not with the filter. Then Ransome stored the eyes in"dry air" - i.e left them out someplace- where they were relatively undamaged.
In 1994, London's institute of Opthalmology DNA tested Dalton's eyes and determined that the retina lacked one of three pigments. So, after 200 years of John Dalton's eyes being "stored" here or there - he finally has his answer about why he was color blind.
Here's looking at you!
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