Abstract
WITH reference to the article on colour-blindness in NATURE of January 27, I should like to point out that advocates of the Holmgren test assume that a person who fails with the wools will fail with coloured lights, and that a person who appears normal when examined with the wools is normal when examined with coloured lights. This was the first point which I proposed to settle when I took up the subject of colour-blindness. I found many varieties of colour-blindness, unimportant from a practical point of view, that failed, and many dangerous varieties of colour-blindness that passed this test. Many absolutely normal-sighted persons are also rejected by the Holmgren test; Germany has officially discarded it for this reason. Within the last fortnight I have examined two dangerous varieties of colour-blindness that passed the Holmgren test with the greatest ease; in fact, the most punctilious examiner would not have suspected that there was anything wrong with their colour sense, but both made the grossest errors with my lantern. The first case could not tell between the white, green, and red lights on trams at a distance of about one hundred yards.
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EDRIDGE-GREEN, F. Tests for Colour-blindness. Nature 82, 429 (1910). https://doi.org/10.1038/082429b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/082429b0
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