122 



DISCONI.HV 



ments, the adhesion has been stretched. Now, the 

 recognition of these adliesions is sometimes difficult, 

 but the importance of their diagnosis is beginning 

 to be reahsed ; for by complete rupture of adhesions, 

 relief is obtained ; by incomplete rupture, the condition 

 is only aggravated through the injury inflicted. Hence, 

 to borrow a formula of the old bone-setter, Hutton, in 

 speaking of deranged knee-joints, " pulling is of little 

 use ; it is the twist as does it." The long history of 

 that ancient British practice " bone-setting," with 

 which was associated in former days the practice of 

 the " professional rubbers," teems with examples 

 both of success and disaster following the same methods 

 of treatment. The method of treatment was, in fact, 

 regarded as a personal or family secret, so that we can 

 appreciate what it meant to Hutton when he imparted 

 to Dr. Peter Hood (who gratuitously attended him in 

 an illness) all the secrets of his art. After Hutton's 

 death in 1871, Dr. Wharton Hood, the son of Dr. 

 Peter Hood, following the usual practice of the medical 

 profession, made public all he knew of the art, as 

 exemplified in Hutton's methods, and he showed how 

 Hutton profited by the failure of so many of the 

 medical profession of his day to gain a real under- 

 standing of joint troubles. 



{To be continued.) 



BOOKS OF REFERENCE OR FOR FURTHER READING 



(i) Treatment of Joint and Muscle Itijuries. By W. Rowley 

 Bristow. (Oxford University Press, 1917, 6s.) 



(2) Menders of the Maimed. By A. Keith, M.D., F.R.C.S., 



F.R.S. (0.^ord University Press, 1919, ids.) 



(3) The After-Treatment of Wounds and Injuries. By R. C. 



Elraslie, M.S., F.R.C.S. (J. & A. Churchill, 1919.) 



The Optophone^ 



By Edward Cahen, A.R.G.Sc, F.I.C. 



Blindness, and all that it means, has always provoked 

 more sympathy than any other deprivation to which 

 man is subject, and of all the tragedies of war, perhaps 

 the greatest is the sudden veil of darkness which has 

 descended on so many of our soldiers and sailors. 

 Marguerite Radcliffc-Hall ^ has endeavoured to 

 express the consolation of inward vision supposed to 

 be possessed by the blind in a song which has been 

 set to music by Robert Coningsby Clarke : 



' The Editor wishes to thank Messrs. Barr & Stroud, of 

 Glasgow, for their kindness in furnishing him with the illus- 

 trations in this article and for their courtesy, 



' Songs of Three Counties and Other Poems. (Chapman & 

 Hall, 191 3) 



" Set my hands upon the plough. 



My foct upon the sod : 

 Turn my face towards the east. 



And praise be to God ! 

 Ev'ry year the rains do fall. 



The seeds they stir and spring ; 

 Ev'ry year the spreading trees 



Shelter birds that sing. 

 From the shelter of your heart. 



Brother, drive out sin ; 

 Let the little birds of faith 



Come and nest therein. 

 God has made His sun to shine 



On both you and me ; 

 God who took away my eyes. 



That my soul might see." 



Exquisite as is the sentiment expressed in these few 

 beautiful lines, they offer but little practical help to 

 the sightless, who, no longer being able to read, are 

 deprived of one of the greatest consolations in suffering 

 and trouble it is possible to imagine. 



Up to the present time, the only way in which the 

 blind might read was by feeling the letters in specially 

 embossed books. These books, printed in the Braille 

 system, were a great boon to blind readers, but this 

 method of printing books was not only cumbersome, 

 but also very costly, and reading was a very slow 

 process. The optophone, which was invented by 

 Dr. E. E. Fournier d'Albe, of London, in 1912, and has 

 been since modified and developed by Messrs. Barr & 

 Stroud, of Glasgow, has successfully overcome these 

 disadvantages. The optophone enables a reader to 

 read ordinary printed matter, such as books or news- 

 papers, by listening to the letters in a telephone. As 

 the instrument traverses a hne of print, each letter 

 produces in the telephone receiver a series of musical 

 notes forming tunes or musical motifs. As the 

 majority of blind people have a good sense of hearing, 

 it is not long before each letter in the alphabet is 

 identified with its musical motif in the receiver, and 

 in this w-ay the words and sentences formed from the 

 letters can be read. When the sound-alphabet has 

 been learned, the more e.xtended motifs for syllables 

 and even words becomes familiar to the reader's car. 

 Just as a telephone operator can interpret easily a 

 succession of clicks on the Morse code, so the optophone 

 reader recognises words in his instrument. Already 

 it has been found with the latest type of optophone 

 that a blind reader after some practice has attained 

 a reading speed of twenty-five words a minute. This 

 is, of course, a slow speed compared with the rate at 

 which we read, but it is an extremely hopeful one. 

 The ideal optophone would be an instrument which 

 sounded the very letters of the word read, or the 

 words themselves, but this instrument has still to 

 come. Meanwhile, the blind man may read by means 

 of the musical motifs. 



