413 



DEAF AND DUMB, VITAL STATISTICS OF. 



DEAF AND DUMB, EDUCATION OF THE. 



414 



that one-fourth of the children in the Yorkshire Institution (1858-9) 

 had lost one or both parents in early life, a sure indication of feebleness 

 of constitution, and that a certain number of those living were of 

 delicate frame. 



Scrofula in parents, transmitted to the oflspring, is generally ad- 

 mitted to be a cause of deafness ; it is well known to the medical 

 attendants of all institutions for the deaf and dumb, that strumous 

 affections are common among the pupils, and that they are by no means 

 confined to the congenitally deaf ; in some of the cases of children born 

 deaf, unhealthy parents have doubtless originated the disease, inde- 

 pendent of any hereditary deafness. Scrofula and consumption, and 

 scrofula changing into one of the protean forms of consumption, or 

 exhibiting itself in glandular swellings, can scarcely fail to be transmitted 

 from parent to child. At the same time there are many apparently 

 healthy parents, and also parents known to be free from any disease, 

 whose children are unhealthy, which can only be accounted for on 

 those obscure physiological conditions which constitute what is called 

 by breeders of animals, a bad cross. 



The influence of locality has often been assigned as one of the 

 predisposing causes of deafness. A spontaneous disease seems to arise 

 in such cases which may become hereditary, and an accidental circum- 

 stance of this nature may favour an acquired peculiarity which may be 

 transmitted to generations. Several cases are on record of the succes- 

 sive inhabitants of damp houses having deaf and dumb children, who 

 were previously free from any predisposition to deafness. Our own 

 experience has shown that a large number of the children of the 

 Yorkshire Institution were born on the eastern side of the mountainous 

 district, extending from Derbyshire, through Yorkshire, into Cumber- 

 land ; the institutions of Birmingham, Manchester, and London, have 

 received pupils from the other side of this chain of hills ; and thus to 

 a certain extent the theory of the Abbe" Daras, and the correctness of 

 the observations in the Insh census alluded to in the preceding article, 

 are confirmed. The goitrous neck in Derbyshire, in the Swiss Alps, 

 and in certain parts of Hindustan, is attributed to local influence, and 

 the oflspring of parents thus afflicted are subject to those hard tumours 

 about the neck, ears, and chin, while many of them are deaf and 

 dumb. 



The ill-health of, or accident to the mother during pregnancy, is 

 often mentioned as one of the causes of deafness in the oflspring. Mr. 

 Buxton, the principal of the Liverpool school for the deaf and dumb, 

 mentions some of these cases, which we give in nearly his own words. 

 " The Irish Census Returns record 127 instances in which the deafness 

 of the child was ascribed to fright, experienced by the mother before 

 its birth ; but though subsequent inquiry was made into a sufficient 

 number of these cases, in order to obtain some trustworthy information 

 as to the causes of fright, no result was arrived at which was worthy 

 of detailed publication. ... At Leipsic, in three cases of con- 

 genital deafness, the misfortune was ascribed to the fright of the 

 mother, and in three others to mechanical violence one before birth, 

 and two from difficult delivery. At Qroningen, the mothers of sixteen 

 affirmed that they had been frightened during pregnancy by the hoarse 

 "f a deaf-mute, or pretended deaf-mute. Two women of dis- 

 tinguished families, and of delicate constitution (!), ascribed the mis- 

 fortune of their children to the impression received by witnessing the 

 performance of the drama the ' Abbe" de 1'Epde.' Another French 

 lady of rank, assigned the deafness of her child to the lively emotion (!) 

 which she experienced from the circumstance of king Louis Philippe 

 having considerately offered her a chair, upon some public occasion, 

 when she wag evidently unfit to bear the fatigue of standing. M. 

 Herbert Valleroux, in his work on Deaf-Dumbness, mentions that 

 several examples of the effect of mental impression are known to him, 

 one instance being that of two children, whose mother ascribed their 

 privation to a paroxysm of anger, experienced during her pregnancy. 

 In America, instances are known in which a mother supposed the 

 deafness of her offspring to be owing to such causes as the following : 

 stopping the ears that she might not hear the screams of an elder 

 child undergoing a surgical operation, or the cries of a dying child ; 

 frights received from deaf-mutes or from persons pretending to be 

 such ; the sympathy or shock excited by seeing deaf-mute children for 

 the first time ; and the fear when one child has become deaf by disease 

 or accident, that the next comer might be born so. The latter reason 

 has been frequently assigned as one of the causes for the existence of 

 more than one deaf child in the same family ; as if excessive anxiety 

 and fear begot the very evil it dreaded, and thus ' ran to meet what it 

 would most avoid.' A woman living in one of the eastern counties, 

 who had three children born deaf, stated that before the birth of each, 

 she had been alarmed by a deaf and dumb beggar. After the birth of 

 the third, she never saw the man again, and all the children she had 

 afterwards possessed their hearing perfectly. Another woman who had 

 three or four deaf children out of six, stated that before the birth of 

 the first she was summoned to the help of a neighbour who had been 

 seized with a fit, which rendered her speechless, and shortly proved 

 fatal. The sight so affected the expectant mother, as to deprive her of 

 speech for several hours ; her eldest child, who was subsequently born, 

 proved deaf and dumb, as were also her third and fifth ; the sixth died 

 before the fact could be ascertained ; the second and fourth heard per- 

 fectly." Some of the above cases are cited in the Report of the New 

 York Institution, where it is very properly remarked, that " it may 



allay the anxieties of mothers on this subject to learn, that whether 

 we call such cases of deafness effects or mere coincidences, they are 

 comparatively infrequent, amounting at the most to one case in 

 twenty." 



The only other branch of inquiry coming within the scope and 

 space assigned to this article, is that of the marriage and intermarriage 

 of the deaf and dumb. How truly does the experience of all our 

 institutions prove the correctness of the observation 'in the Census 

 Report for Ireland " the defect is seldom transmitted direct from 

 deaf and dumb parents to children." How few of the pupils in our 

 schools are the offspring of deaf and dumb parents ; there are exceptions, 

 but these only prove the position. The Principal of the Hartford 

 Asylum (Connecticut) says " In only a few instances have we known 

 it transmitted from parents to their children." The Principal of the 

 New York Institution says " We can show that it is much the most 

 common for the children of deaf-mute parents to possess the faculties 

 of which their parents were deprived." Among the 53-1 pupils of the 

 Yorkshire Institution there have only been two cases in which one of 

 the parents was deaf and dumb, and two instances in which both 

 parents laboured under this infirmity ; in one of the former class there 

 were three of the children deaf and dumb, in one of the latter all the 

 oflspring, four in number, are deaf and dumb. 



Thirty-four of the former pupils of the Yorkshire Institution arc 

 known to have entered into the marriage state ; there are probably 

 many others ; of this number twenty-four have married deaf and dumb 

 partners, one of these instances is that just recorded of all the off- 

 spring being deaf and dumb, but no others are known ; the other 

 ten are married to hearing and speaking persons, and we have heard 

 of no case of a child among them labouring under the defect of the 

 deaf and dumb parents. Most of the parents are still young, and 

 they may yet have children inheriting the parental defect. 



We conclude then that there are no sufficient reasons why the deaf 

 and dumb should not marry, unless we lived under laws which were 

 designed to exterminate deafness, or to prevent every possible mode of 

 its transmission. Discretion must guide mankind, understanding must 

 keep them in this point as in many other social and physical relations 

 with which laws cannot interfere. We have seen that deaf and dumb 

 offspring are neither the inevitable nor the ordinary result of marriages 

 in which one of the parties is deaf and dumb, but in the case of inter- 

 marriage the liability is greatly increased and strengthened. The 

 physical weakness which produced the deafness under which the 

 parents labour has nothing to overcome it, as in the case of only one 

 of the parents being deaf and dumb ; and if either the husband or the 

 wife is a member of a family which contains other deaf-mutes in its 

 direct or collateral branches, the probability of deaf and dumb children 

 being produced is thereby greatly augmented. The cases of trans- 

 mission for two or three generations, known to the writer of this 

 article, are all of this class all among families which have the peculiar 

 hereditary predisposition to this defect. It is well known, and daily 

 observed, even by non-professional observcrs,_that forms of the body, 

 features, deformities, and physical habits are transmitted from parent 

 to child ; that intellectual characteristics are frequently transmitted, 

 that moral qualities and tendencies to vice are inherited from parents, 

 and re-appear in their sons and daughters. 



Twenty-five years ago there were few statistical documents to assist 

 us in our inquiries as to the physical condition of the deaf and dumb. 

 Since that time most of the institutions in the kingdom have collected 

 data, and some of them have published the results of their researches. 

 The article written for the ' Penny Cyclopicdia,' in 1837, suggested a 

 series of heads as a foundation for such investigations. We are thankful 

 to acknowledge how thoroughly the subject has been taken up in the 

 New York Institution, and the aid we have derived from its thirty- 

 fifth report, so frequently referred to. Mr. Buxton, of the Liverpool 

 Institution, has been a successful labourer in a similar direction ; and 

 the reports of the Belfast, Glasgow, and Exeter Institutions have also 

 supplied valuable matter, of which we have availed ourselves in the 

 course of this article. 



DEAF AND DUMB, EDUCATION OF THE. Before the prac- 

 ticability of instructing the deaf and dumb was admitted, it was 

 generally supposed that instruction by means of the conventional 

 signs and sounds denominated language was limited to those who 

 could hear. The idea never entered the mind of man, or if it did 

 it was as instantly rejected, that the deaf-mute was not, on account 

 of his deafness, bereft of his reasoning faculties, nor excluded from 

 the means of connecting thought with symbols. It was not till 

 the 16th century that the possibility of carrying forward the process 

 of education in the absence of all hearing, received any serious con- 

 sideration. Even at the present day there are many persons who 

 are at a loss to conceive not only how abstract notions, but even how 

 the names of palpable objects are made known to the deaf, and at a 

 still greater losn to imagine how they can be brought to use language 

 to express their ideas. Having themselves obtained knowledge through 

 the ear, having been accustomed to impart their thoughts by oral 

 communications, they seem to forget that the mind has intelligence in 

 all the senses connecting it with the external world, and conveying 

 knowledge to those higher faculties which compare, discriminate, and 

 judge. In an intelligent though uneducated deaf person, an observer 

 would find these processes going forward, though confined indeed to a 



