The Blindness of James Thurber

Rare diseases are just that---rare and rarely encountered! Medical school textbooks are the first and last place some of these diseases are encountered by many practitioners. They are easily forgotten. Yet that does not mean they should fail to merit our attention. Rarities are what make medicine really interesting.

In a previous essay, the impact of “Sympathetic Ophthalmia” on the life and career of John Muir was described. James Thurber, longtime editor of the New Yorker Magazine and famous American humorist suffered from the same catastrophic eye disease.

“Sympathetic Ophthalmia” is the mysterious, poorly understood, inflammation of the normal eye that follows a penetrating injury to the fellow eye. It frequently, but not always, leads to total blindness in both eyes.

James Thurber was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1894. He married twice and had one daughter by his first wife. He died in New York City in 1961. He wrote numerous books and short stories, served as editor of the New Yorker Magazine for many years, and wrote for the New York Evening Post and the Chicago Tribune. His line drawn cartoons remain popular to this day. Critics rank him alongside Mark Twain as one of America’s greatest humorists.

At age 7, James Thurber was accidentally struck in the right eye by an errant arrow while playing “cowboys and indians” with his brother. The eye was lost. Shortly thereafter, signs of inflammation appeared in the remaining, uninjured left eye. Doctors prepared the lad and his family for total blindness. As in the case of John Muir the vision gradually returned, and Thurber enjoyed useful vision in his left eye for the next 40 years. But the experience included loss of a school year and was a serious psychological blow to an already frail, introverted child. Thurber turned inward and created his own fantasy world. In his adult years these fantasies became his satirical trademark—the downtrodden, neurotic man befuddled by the complicated world in which he lives while struggling against dominating, aggressive women and warlike children.

In the early 1940’s the inflammation in Thurber’s left eye recurred. New York’s finest eye physicians were astonished at so late an onset. There was no satisfactory response to intensive treatment and for the remaining 14 years of his life James Thurber was blind. Amazingly, some of his best work was done during those 14 years.

Some of my favorite “Thurberisms:”

• The jaded dowager: “Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?”
• The self proclaimed wine expert: “It’s a naive, domestic burgundy, without any breeding, but I think you will be amused by its presumption!”
• Himself, after losing his sight: “Why should I have to pay the full price for a glass of champagne when I can’t see the the floor show?”
• Himself confronted by an aggressive woman at a cocktail party claiming that she wanted to have his baby: “Surely you can’t mean by UN-artificial insemination!”
• And Himself again: "With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs!”
• And finally, women in general: “A woman’s place is in the wrong!”

Perhaps his best known creation was the mild mannered daydreaming hero in “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty!” Danny Kaye, in his most memorable movie role goes from milquetoast to fighter pilot, to physician, to ship’s captain in an hilarious spoof that in many ways is a self portrait of Thurber himself.

I love James Thurber for the man he was, for his unflagging, wonderful humor in the face of one of the most deadly, blinding eye diseases know to man, and for the gratitude and affection he maintained throughout his life for the ophthalmologists who cared for him.