"Cure" for Color Blindness

Stocky Dr. Henry Cadan of Brooklyn said last week that in many cases he could do a lot about color blindness. The Air Forces and the Navy do not want colorblind men, weed them out with color cards composed of varicolored dot patterns. Those who flunk color tests and go to doctors get various kinds of handling: some doctors give no treatment at all ("color blindness is not curable"); others try everything but the kitchen sink. At the Optometric Extension Foundation, Duncan, Okla., 25% of the young colorblind men who took vitamin A and practiced looking at lights through red and green lenses got good enough to pass Air Corps tests in three weeks.

Physiotherapist Cadan belongs to the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink school of thought. In the current Medical Record he reports that he used electrical stimulation of eye muscles (two volts, one milliampere to each eye, 15 minutes three times a week), 75,000 units of vitamin A daily (to stimulate formation of visual purple--a pigment in the retina), daily injections of one-half cc. of vitamin B complex (for nerve vitality), five drops of iodine by mouth daily (to stimulate body metabolism), red & green glasses, training with colored cards.

Of 45 boys who could distinguish bright primary colors but proved red & green blind on Army or Navy tests, two showed some improvement, eight quit after one or two treatments, but Dr. Cadan had good luck with 35. He lays his success chiefly to the electric current, thinks it strengthens and stimulates eye muscles and nerves, that it effects lasting improvement--some boys have continued to see colors well after eight months. Reason Dr. Cadan does not discontinue the other treatments and concentrate on electricity: "The boys I get are only two days ahead of the draft anyway and can't wait for me to experiment on them."

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