The Law Was Blind

The tall, mustachioed surgeon, Professor Cesare Galeazzi, took the bandages off the boy's eyes and asked: "Can you see my hand?" "Yes," replied Angelo Colagrande, 12. "How many fingers am I holding up?" the doctor asked. "Three." Thus, in a Milan hospital last week, ended the second act in a medical drama that thrilled all Italy.

Dr. Galeazzi had given Angelo a corneal transplant--an operation illegal in Italy. The surgery appeared to be a success, though it would be another month before Dr. Galeazzi could be fairly certain that the boy, blinded by quicklime three years ago, had regained permanent sight. (Only about 60% of all corneal transplants are rated as lasting successes.)

The real hero of the Milan drama was a man who had died the week before. He was a lean, jut-jawed parish priest, Don Carlo Gnocchi, who had devoted the last seven of his 53 years to caring for Italy's maimed children. He started the Youth Foundation, which has spread from Milan to Rome and six other cities. In its hostels he housed 2,000 youngsters suffering from almost every handicap known. As he lay dying of cancer late last month, Don Carlo decided to leave two of his wards a last legacy: his sight. He willed his corneas for grafting.

Don Carlo's bequest ran headlong into an old Italian law forbidding "acts of profanation and mutilation" of corpses within 24 hours after death. It is best to remove corneas within five hours, so Italians had to rely on bootlegged corneas, hastily and furtively filched from the recently dead. But Don Carlo had made himself so beloved that no public official cared to flout his final will. The corneas were promptly removed, and Surgeon Galeazzi grafted one on Angelo's left eye under a glare of publicity as blinding as the operating lights over his head. The other cornea he used for a girl of 18 who also seems to be doing well.

Roman newspapers made front-page headlines of Angelo's words "I see! I see!" A bill to legalize corneal grafting was introduced posthaste in the Chamber of Deputies. It appeared that Don Carlo, with his dying bequest, had given a death blow to a legal anachronism.

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