SUCCESS!!!
(i wish i could give this emotocon a white stick)
patient zero
I dropped the elves from a cliff through a skylight above a 3/7 pond across my entrance corridor. I noticed that if elves survived they would become infected by their own blood.(my next bout of modding evolved elf blood causing extreme pain in the area that it contacts a body part, I also modded elves to excrete elf blood from every part of their bodies which can be used for some pretty nifty disease based fortress defence traps)
This one started annoying me with it's blind meanderings and consent whining so I made him into soap to help treat my potential siege engineers.
I forgot to embark with a surgeon so I drafted the next best thing...a clumsy woodcutter with a questionable spatial sense...who performs eye surgery with a copper battle axe...
Ironically the last thing that patient zero did before his surgery was this rather prophetic statue which now decorates the field hospital.
(he also did a statue of a dwarf embracing some alpacas but I couldn't work out the symbolism)
The surgery was going quite well, his eyes were being hacked out quite efficiently
but sadly he and all the other infected dwarfs died of dehydration when all the water on my map froze. I'm going to start a proper fort and do some science on blindness and bio-weapons soon. Thanks to all of you who contributed advice and support !