DEAF AVD DUMB, VITAL STATISTICS OF. 



DKAF AND DUMB, VITAL STATISTICS OF. i 



htmdne** at birth are not very common ; while 10,103 prrw-iw, or 47 

 per cwit , are at the advanced age* than 80. These fact* lead to the 

 eoochnion that blindness in many case* may hare arUen as a natural 

 infirmity of old age, and also ihow the great longevity of th.- Mind, 

 notwithstanding the accident* to which they are liable. Of the 1 2,558 

 deaf mutei in Qreat Britiin, only 783, or 6J per cent., had reached 

 60 year* of ag, a fact showing the unfavourable position of this 

 dan an regard* length of life ; while those under 20 yean of age, 

 although the number* are unquestionably deficient, amounted to 47 

 percent 



The following table i taken fmm the thirty -fifth annual report of 

 the New York liutitution for the Deaf and Dumb, with some additions 

 and correction* of a later data than the original document ; the whole 

 would be more satisfactory if we could in all instance* quote from 

 information of more recent date* : 



AD Faoroanoxf or DSA AXD Dm* i* Krsors AMD Annie*. 



DEAF AND DUMB, VITAL STATISTICS OF. The subject of 

 deafness and its consequences has of late received a considerable 

 degree of attention, but assuredly not more than its importance 

 deserves. As one result, there is a somewhat general acquaintance 

 with the fact that deafness prevails widely, but comparatively few, 

 excepting those brought professionally or by relationship into daily 

 contact with individuals so conditioned, form anything like adequate 

 notions of the amount of deprivation under which a totally deaf 

 person labours. Till institutions for the instruction of the deaf 

 and dumb began to multiply, and thus to attract public notice and 

 sympathy towards this unfortunate class of persons, it was believed 

 that the deaf and dumb formed an inconceivably small proportion of 

 the population ; but the last census has dissipated this erroneous 

 belief, and shown the public that there are within the limits of these 

 ialand* 17,800 deaf and dumb persona. [DEAT AXD DCMB, CENSUS OF 

 THE.] Perhaps one cause of the general want of knowledge on this 

 object is the incapability of the deaf and dumb to give utterance to 

 their own deficiencies ; the very nature of their deprivation prevents 

 their making it known and obtaining relief: thus generations have 

 lived and died in wretchedness and obscurity. 



Deafoe** occur* in every degree, in some cases only amounting to an 

 insensibility to rery sharp note*. Many people cannot hear the squeak- 

 ing of the bat and the mouse. By holding the nose, inflating the ears, 

 and ceasing to breathe, the ear ia rendered more open to base notes, 

 and more deaf than it naturally i* to sharp notes. Dr. Wollaston con- 

 tructeH a imall organ, whose notes began where the sharp notes of 

 ordinary instrument* end; the nots of his organ increased in sharp- 

 net* till they became iiuu.liM.-. though he was certain that it continued 

 to ghre sound from feeling the vibration* equally with the lower notes. 

 He thus found that some people could hear seven or eight notes higher 

 than other*, and that children could generally hear two or three notes 

 liigber than grown-up people. In some persons the accuracy of the 

 ear i* merely impaired in distinguishing faint sound*, and sounds some- 

 what similar ; instance* of this kind are particularly evident in infant*, 

 whose Ant attempt* at speech are a very remote similarity to the 

 sound* they bear, and become more perfect a* their ear is educated 



erfect formation of those organs, from irregular respiration 

 hesitation, and in some instances proceeding from n. 

 e principle* which regulate utterance have been jpro< 

 I and acted upon by many professors who successfully practise 



and in some easel remain Imperfect through life, in consequence of 

 defect in the organ* of hearing. All imperfections of speech do not 

 arin from imperfect hearing : an indistinct articulation may resul- 

 rariou* other causes, from carelessness, from defective organs of speech 

 >r an imperfect formation of those organs, from irregular respiration 

 iroducing 



The . 



considered and acted upon by many profes 



:he cure of stammering. The discovery of these principle* is due to 

 Dr. Arnott, whose work, ' Elements of Physics,' should be consulted by 

 all those persons who wish to ascertain the causes, moral or physical, 

 which tend to produce defective speech. [BtAJOCBUM.] 



By total deafness is meant that state in which the organs of hearing 

 are as insensible to sound as any other part of the body. To persons 

 n this condition sound is a mere vibration, which can be felt, b\r 

 mperfectly distinguished. Yet persons who are generally considered 

 as totally deaf, are not all equally so. There are cases where the 

 iring of a gun i* unheard though immediately near the deaf person, 

 and others where a gun fired at a quarter of a mile distant is heard, 

 and distinguished from the falling of a heavy weight upon a boarded 

 loor. In some instances, the human voice in a great variety of ita 

 ouder single intonations can be recognised, though the loudest reading 

 or the highest pitch of a speaker would make no impre-sion. The late 

 Dr. It.-ird, of the Imperial Institution for the Deaf and Dumb at Paris, 

 onsidered that more than half of the pupils received into that 

 ;ution are of that Class who hear the least ; about the same proportion 

 would be found in the English institutions. The other half comprise 

 cases more or less of imperfect deafness, an expression which must by 

 no means be confounded with imperfect hearing. Mr. Toynbee, the 

 aural surgeon to the Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb, in Kent Road, 

 London, gives as the result of an examination of 411 children in that 

 asylum, that 245, or three-fifths, were quite deaf, while 166, or two- 

 fifths, heard certain sounds. In oil these conditions of deafness, the 

 person is consequently mute, or dumb. Hence the expression deaf-mute, 

 is used in the Continental languages, and deaf and dumb, as used in 

 England and America, to designate a pereou so deaf as to be inacces- 

 sible by the ordinary means of lingual communication, and unable to 

 make known his thoughts, wishes, and feelings, in our conventional 

 tongues. As natural articulation can only be acquired by those who 

 hear, it follows that, according to the condition of the power of hearing 

 will be, extent paribia, the distinctness of articulated sounds. Hence, 

 in the instruction of deaf-mutes in artificial articulation, it is generally 

 found that those pupils who can in some degree distinguish the different 

 tones of the human voice become the best speakers. There are certainly 

 cases where the articulation of a totally deaf person is pleasantcr to hear, 

 softer, and less monotonous, than in some instances of imperfect deaf- 

 ness i but these depend upon other causes, as the natural tone of the 

 voice, the attention of the pupil, or the care of the instructor. 



When the term deafness is used in this article, it i.i intended ' 

 vey the idea of an absence of hearing power so total as to exclude the 

 reception of sounds producing ordinary vibrations. Persons in this 

 Btate are shut out from the usual means of converse and communi- 

 cation with the world ; they fed concussions, and also vibration*, which 

 are in direct contact with some portion of their body ; hut they are 

 deaf to the loudest conversations and to all the ordinary means of 

 direct intercourse by the living voice, as well as to the thousand charm* 

 which delight the sense of hearing : there arc several degrees of this 

 kind of deafness. Difficulty of hearing is another thing, and may be 

 partial or temporary. It is often a concomitant of age, of local disease, 

 or of general functional derangement. In this case the sense is only 

 impaired ; in the other it either has not existed or has been destroyed. 

 There is a wide difference between a diminished sense of hearing and 

 a total want of the power. Should the case be one of deafness from 

 birth, it is called congenital ; should the power of hearing have been 

 lost from the supervention of some disease in the infancy of life, it may 

 yet be as total as if from birth, but it is then a cose of . 

 ness. In either case it is accompanied with dumbness ; for those who 

 have never heard sounds cannot imitate them, and those who become 

 deaf before they have heard spoken words are in the same condition, 

 dumb. Such children are prevented from exercising that instinctive 

 faculty of imitating sounds and speech, which constitutes one of the 

 main pleasures and one of the most improving exercises of childhood. 

 Again, deafness may come on at a much later period, and utterance 

 thenceforward begins to be thick, guttural, and indistinct, so as to be 

 frequently misunderstood ; the deaf person then takes less pleasure in 

 exercising a faculty which he finds so comparatively useless, .. 

 becomes dumb more from choice than from necessity. Thin, however. 

 U not the invariable result, but depends to some ev nipera- 



meiit. Thus it was with f)r. Kitto, who gives this account of himself 

 in his little volume 'The Lost SenseH : ' " Before my full my enun- 



was remarkably clear and distinct ; but after that 

 found that I had not only become ' !;< with pain .ind ditii- 



riilt.y, iind iii a voice so greatly altered as in \>c not easily understood. 

 I have no present recollection of having ever experienced ponitive pain 

 in the act of speaking ; but I was informed by one who was present, 

 and deeply interested in all which took place at that time, that I 

 complained of pain in speaking ; and I am farther told, that my voice 

 had become very timilar to that of one born deaf and dumb, but vho has 



