How was he done this?
If you've ever wondered how blind people managed before there were talking computers or Braille notetakers or offices for students with disabilities, Dr. Bolotin's story will require that you stretch your imagination much, much further than, say, my own memories of schlepping a portable typewriter across campus to take an exam. Jacob Bolotin, who would become the first congenitally blind person to attend medical school and be a licensed physician in this country, was born in 1888. That means, in other words, that he was learning to read in the nineteenth century. It means that he lived in a time before we had programs to teach blind people cane travel, before we had tape recorders or Perkins Braillers or talking books. What he did have was a strong and loving family, a superb intellect, and a cache of perseverance rarely witnessed.
