Floaters, Tinnitus, and other sensory phenomena

[The Squire of Gothos]

If you look into a blue sky, you can see the shadows cast by blood cells in the retinal circulation

Related to this, hold a strong torch perpendicular to your line of sight, just so that it casts its beam infront of your fact and you can make out the blood vessels in your retina.*

*(Note: This was taken from the text of a 1950s science book** that both my parents had a copy of. As such, neither the boards nor I may be held liable for any damage, permanent or temporary, to your eyesight.)

**(As an aside, it was the only experiment from the book that I could carry out without a tin of turpentine and/or ants nest. Dad burned all our ants and Mum wouldn't have turpentine in the kitchen.)

 

[Jadzia]

I don't recommend anybody does this. I'm just describing here something that I did...

If I hold a small curved shiny metal object, like my ring, delicately close to my eye, and focus on the shiny point on the metal, and manually alter my focus, to enlarge this shine, and generally adjust things to bring it into artificial focus, I can see a reflection of what I believe to be my retina, actually very clearly. It's slightly straining on the eye muscle.

Whatever it is I see, it is always much the same image whenever I do it. I've always been curious about what the pattern is. It generally looks gray with the odd dark blob and strand line structure, and there is some overall movement of some kind, like slight static on poor analogue television, which could just be from imperfections in the metal, or the relatively small amount of light reflecting off the ring. I also seem to remember the floaters being superimposed on this image. Also if I move the ring to the side it pans around the image to an extent. It's a reflection of something.