Margaret married George Stephen Reil, son of John Joseph Reil and Margaret Miller, on 25 Oct 1925 in Holy Rosary RC Church, (Rochester, NY?). (George Stephen Reil was born on 21 Dec 1888 in Buffalo, NY, christened on 31 Dec 1888 in St Boniface RC Church, Buffalo, NY and died in Sep 1961 in Rochester, NY.)

Rosa Kuleshova

In pre-revolutionary scientific literature there was a women described, who was able, with her eyes covered with a bandage, identify colours and read through sealed envelopes touching them with the tips of her fingers. But still, you can not help being greatly impressed when you meet Rosa Kuleshova. How can we explain her amazing ability to determine inscriptions, made in different types, drawings on post cards, colour of paper, fabrics, threads Just touching them? The experiments, made by senior lecturers S.Dobronravov and Y. Fishelev (Sverdlovsk-city) and further research, made in the laboratory of Psychology of the Nizhny Tagil Teachers' Training Institute by Dr. I.Goldberg, senior lecturer M.Kojevnikov and the auther of this article, made it possible to conclude that Rosa has the type of sensitivity that can be called dermo-optical perception.

Rosa feels the colour of the light, penetrating through light filters and falling onto her fingers. Rosa says: " This ray is red, that ray is green; that one is orange, and the other one is blue". Moreover, she is able to identify not only a bright ray of light, but a weak one as well. She can even better identify coloured rays, let through the lens filled with water and then reflected on her hand with a mirror.

It was noticed, that sometimes while reading, her fingers are below the line, but Rosa is still able to read what is written there. To understand this phenomenon, an experiment was set up. Grey-colored triangles, placed against a bright-colored background: first red, then green, and then the yellow one were shown to Rosa. Those grey triangles, due to the contrast effect, visually acquire, especially on the edges, the shade complementary to the color of the background - against the red background gray triangles turn green, against the green background they seem pinkish, on the yellow - blue. Rosa's finger was put in the middle of the grey triangle so that it would not touch the surrounding coloured background. Every time she identified the surface not as grey but as a coloured one, the color being complementary to the background: green, pink, blue. It means that her fingers perceived the light, reflected from the neighbouring coloured parts. The ability of sensing colour differences allowed Rosa to read with her hand texts and numbers through glass and cellophane, define shape and colour of the curve on the oscillograph screen, and level, and sometimes even colour of liquids in a test-tube.

SIMILARITY OF USUAL AND UNUSUAL VISUAL PERCEPTION

Rosa's dermo-optical perception is subject to the same laws of colour merging as our visual perception. When Rosa touched a blue square placed into red light, she saw it as violet, as did the experimenter who was watching it at the same time. When instead of red light it was illuminated with white, then both Rosa with her fingers and the experimenter with his eyes identified the square as blue.

Paper, for example, is perceived by us as white no matter if it is in bright sunlight, twilight or electric light. If the same paper in placed into bright coloured light, for example, red, it takes he color of the light and looks red. Strange as it may seem, but Rosa Kuleshova, with her ability for skin-optical perception, perceives the paper as white, even if it is placed into the direct rays of red.

Rosa Kuleshova is also experiencing more vivid optical illusions than all of us, who do not possess the ability for cutaneous-optical perception.