On the late efforts in France, fyc. . 301 



Art. VII. — On the late efforts in France and other parts of Eu- 

 rope to restore the Deaf and Dumb to hearing ; by George E. 

 Day, late Instructor in the New York Institution for the Deaf 

 and Dumb. 







The common opinion that in the deaf and dumb, the vocal organs 

 and the nerves of hearing are simultaneously affected, is by no 

 means of recent origin or confined exclusively to the unreflecting 

 and ignorant. It is related by Itard that at a public exhibition of 

 the Paris Institution, a distinguished prelate opened the mouth of 

 one of the pupils and took hold of his tongue, with the view of dis- 

 covering the cause of his dumbness. Previous to the sixteenth 

 century, it seemed to have been the general, if not the universal 

 opinion of both medical and philosophical observers, that dumbness 

 was in all cases the result of organic defect in the organs of speech. 

 The fact, however, that deaf mutes have the power of uttering vo- 

 cal sounds, and that in many of the European institutions they are 

 taught to enunciate words and to speak, demonstrates beyond the 

 possibility of doubt the incorrectness of this conclusion. It is now 

 universally admitted, among the w r ell informed on the subject, that 

 deaf mutes are dumb, simply because they are deaf 



Without examining fully the long and dismal train of evils which 

 the want of hearing, whether congenital or contracted in infancy > 

 produces, it is at present sufficient to remark, that the deaf and 

 dumb, though not by nature inferior to their more fortunate fellow 

 men, are yet in fact immensely below them. 



Before instruction, they know nothing of the past or future : noth- 

 ing of the history of other times, or the experience of other men : 

 nothing of those great truths of man's immortality, of his spiritual 

 being, and his relations to God. Even the existence of God is 

 to them unknown and unsuspected. In the midst of a Christian 

 community, they are heathens: living in a civilized nation, they are 

 barbarians : surrounded by men of cultivated intellect, they yet re- 

 main in mental infancy. 



If, now, hearing could be given to these children of misfortune, a 

 change would instantly take place in their mental character. Once 

 in the possession of the power of hearing, language would shortly 

 he acquired, and with it that multitude of ideas of which its terms 

 are the signs. The deaf mute would then possess the means of 



