An artist who lost his complete vision seven years ago paints images of how his hallucinations look like, according to the Daily Mail.
Arthur Ellis, 66, paints the things he sees around him even though he is completely blind. He lost his eyesight after a near-fatal condition of meningitis which damaged his optic nerve. Instead of living in darkness, he maintains a vivid world of hallucinatory visions. He now has a condition called Charles Bonnet syndrome which makes it possible for him to clearly see bizarre visual hallucinations. Approximately two million people in Britain experience hallucinations, according to the Institute of Psychiatry. Oftentimes, these are caused by the syndrome which was named after an 18th century Swiss scientist and philosopher who identified the condition in his grandmother.
Such visual hallucinations are most commonly associated with medical conditions that affect the brain or vision, such as Parkinson's dementia and other more common types of eye disorders and muscular degeneration. However, very little is known about Charles Bonnet because minimal research has been done to study the disease. In 2006, Arthur was working the printing industry and during his spare time painted portraits and surreal art. However, one morning he suffered from a terrible headache.
"I put up with it for the whole weekend then struggled to work on Monday. My colleagues took one look at my awful state and sent me to my GP. I was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis and was put on a life-support machine." At that time, Arthur's family was advised that he may already be brain dead. After three weeks, he began to rouse. "I was in a terrible state. While I was in a neurological rehabilitation unit in the hospital, I kept seeing myself on the edge of a precipice like a big, craggy bay. There was the feeling you could just tip it off."
