496 
. 
Had the article referred to met our eye, before the 
acceptance of the ensuing had been announced, an 
extract from the Review, introduced under the 
head ‘* Spirit of Philosophical Discovery,” would 
have been more consonant with our plan.— Editor. 
HESELDEN’S operation, by which 
he gave sight to a young man who 
was born blind, is one of the most in- 
teresting facts in the history of man; not 
merely on account of the benefit conferred 
on the individual, and the prospect it af- 
forded of benefiting others ; nor from the 
admiration “it excited of the power of art 
to give the enjoyment of a sense which 
nature had denied ; but because it afforded 
him an opportunity, of which he ably availed 
himself, of recording the sensations occa- 
sioned by this new mode of existence ; of 
tracing the steps by which the sight came 
to perfection, and noting the various asso- 
ciations which connected it with the other 
faculties of the mind and body. Though 
before and after Cheselden, surgery was 
afforded the means of performing similar 
operations, the history of the cise stands 
almost alone; and hardly any additional 
light has been thrown on the subject, either 
because children’ are seldom® suffered to 
grow up with an infirmity which can be re- 
moyed, or, when they have been neglected 
to a later period, the effects of the opera- 
tion on the mind have been overlooked. 
In like manner, before the present mo- 
ment, cases are on record of persons born 
deaf and dumb, who, by means of an ope- 
ration, haye been enabled to hear and 
speak: but no satisfactory account has been 
given of the change produced in that intel- 
lectual and moral state. MM. Delean, a 
French surgeon, has recently laid before 
the Academy of Sciences the history of a 
ease of this description, in which he has 
neglected none of these particulars. From 
the important and interesting nature of the 
case, we have been incuced to give the 
following detailed account of it, without 
which no impression would be made upon 
the mind of the reader, nor.no useful pur- 
pose accomplished. —Claude Honoré Tre- 
zel, now ten years of age, is the child of a 
poor couple at Paris; from his birth he 
has been so completely deaf, as to be insen- 
sible to the loudest noise or the most vio- 
lent explosion. His head is well formed, 
and his forehead large; but before the ope- 
ration was performed on him his. counte- 
nance was devoid of expression, and he 
walked with an uncertain and staggering 
gait, as if dragging his feet with difficulty 
after him. He had received no species of 
instruction appropriate to his situation. 
His few wants he made known by a cer- 
tain number of signs. In the operation he 
underwent there was nothing new or pe- 
culiar, it consisting merely of aqueous in- 
jections into both ears. These injections 
were not followed by those acute pains 
which, in some cases, cause the patient to 
faint away, ‘nor by abscess or suppurations 
A Child born Deaf taught to Speak. 
in the interior cavity of the ear. ‘The first 
few days after his acquirement of the fa- 
culty of hearing were for Honoré a’ period 
of exquisite enjoyment; every species of 
noise gave him the ‘keenest7 pleasure, and 
while listening to the sounds ofa musi- 
cal Snuff-box, he° appeared to” be in a - 
state of perfect ecstacy. It required, how- 
ever, a certain time before he could per- 
ceive that words were a mean’ of com- 
munication, and even when made sensible 
of this, he directed his attention, not'te the 
words of the speaker, but’ tothe motion 
of his lips: and during several days, he 
thought that when a child of seven months, 
that was in the house with him, moved its 
lips, that it spoke like the grown up per- 
sons around him. He imagined, also, that 
animals understood each other by means of 
the same language; for one day he at- 
tempted a conversation with his dog, and 
took great pains to force him to pronounce 
the words papa and pain ; but, impatient at 
getting no answer, he pulled the dog’s ears, 
when the cries of the animal so frightehed 
him, that he*desisted from further experi- 
ment. Some days before this, hearing a 
Magpie pronounce some words, he sought, 
but in vain, to repeat them. He then gave 
those about him to understand that the 
bird was more learned than himself; which 
was in fact true, for the magpie could speak 
several phrases glibly enough, while Ho- 
noxé’s vocabulary was, at that time, confined 
to the words papa and pain. Though his 
mental faculties were at that period’ very 
circumscribed, yet he seemed to appreciate 
the advantage that would result to him 
from the sense of hearing; it was already 
so precious to him, that, finding himself 
confused and stunned after a journey of 
sixty leagues in a diligence, he became- 
silent and burst into tears, fearing that he 
had lost his newly-acquired faculty. 
The cries of animals attracted his atten- 
tion ; he took great pleasure in listening to 
the bleating of sheep, and could distinguish 
it from that of the lambs. At first, the 
barking of a dog annoyed him ; but he soon 
became accustomed to it; as well as to 
other and more noisy sounds, such as ‘the 
beating of a drum, and the rumbling: of 
carts. " 
A few days after the acquirement of the 
sense of hearing, a great change took place 
in the appearance and manners’ of Honoré. 
His walk became more firm and upright, 
and the sullen air, peculiar to the deaf and 
dumb, was changed into a gay and open 
expression ‘of countenance. As ‘soon’ as 
he was made to know that by uttering cer- 
tain sounds he could make himself under- 
stood, he was no longer content: with hear- 
ing, but endeavoured -to learn to speak. 
The first words which he pronounced were 
papa, du pain, tabac, du‘ bois, du feu, and 
the vowels a, 0, u. It was not till a long 
time «fterwards that he became enabled to 
pronounce words: of several syllables, and 
: that 
