Eye Affliction and Treatment in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Poet involved
What happened
From April to November 1864, and again from April to October 1865, Emily Dickinson traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to receive treatment from ophthalmologist Dr. Henry Willard Williams for a painful eye condition that threatened her eyesight and severely limited her ability to write.
Literary impact
This health crisis, occurring at the height of her creative powers, temporarily halted Dickinson's extraordinary poetic output and forced her to confront the fragility of her artistic instrument. The experience of threatened blindness intensified her awareness of vision as both a physical and metaphysical faculty, a theme that would recur throughout her poetry in images of sight, light, and perception.
Source: Wikipedia
