According to the Gospels, Jesus healed the two blind men of Galilee, the blind man of Bethsaida, the blind man of Jericho and the man who was born blind. The parable of the blind men and an elephant has crossed between many religious traditions and is part of Jain, Buddhist, Sufi and Hindu lore. In various versions of the tale, a group of blind men (or men in the dark) touch an elephant to learn what it is like. Each one feels a different part, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then compare notes and learn that they are in complete disagreement. "Three Blind Mice" is a medieval English nursery rhyme about three blind mice whose tails are cut off after chasing the farmers wife. The work is explicitly incongruous, ending with the comment Did you ever see such a sight in your life, As three blind mice? Modern times
Poet John Milton, who went blind in mid-life, composed "On His Blindness", a sonnet about coping with blindness. The work posits that [those] who best Bear [God]s mild yoke, they serve him best. The Dutch painter and engraver Rembrandt often depicted scenes from the apocryphal Book of Tobit, which tells the story of a blind patriarch who is healed by his son, Tobias, with the help of the archangel Raphael.Slaver-turned-abolitionist John Newton composed the hymn "Amazing Grace" about a wretch who "once was lost, but now am found, Was blind, but now I see."
Blinding has been used as an act of vengeance and torture in some instances, to deprive a person of a major sense by which they can navigate or interact within the world, act fully independently, and be aware of events surrounding them. An example from the classical realm is Oedipus, who gouges out his own eyes after realizing that he fulfilled the awful prophecy spoken of him. Having crushed the Bulgarians, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II blinded as many as 15,000 prisoners taken in the battle, before releasing them. Contemporary examples include the addition of methods such as acid throwing as a form of disfigurement. Genetic defects
People with albinism often have vision loss to the extent that many are legally blind, though few of them actually cannot see. Leber congenital amaurosis can cause total blindness or severe sight loss from birth or early childhood. Retinitis pigmentosa is characterized by decreased peripheral vision and trouble seeing at night. Advances in mapping of the human genome have identified other genetic causes of low vision or blindness. Two such examples are Bardet–Biedl syndrome . Poisoning
Rarely, blindness is caused by the intake of certain chemicals. A well-known example is methanol, which is only mildly toxic and minimally intoxicating, and breaks down into the substances formaldehyde and formic acid which in turn can cause blindness, an array of other health complications, and death. When competing with ethanol for metabolism, ethanol is metabolized first, and the onset of toxicity is delayed.