DEAF - MUTISM. 257 



but the following account, condensed from a lecture recently delivered at one of the 

 London hospitals, will serve to convey some idea of the means by which this object 

 is accomplished : 



The so-called German system of education of mutes may be briefly described as 

 one where deaf and dumb children are taught to understand and employ language by 

 observation and imitation of the articulation of others ; the finger alphabet and all 

 artificial signs being rigidly excluded. For this as for any other system, it is of 

 course necessary that the child's intellectual faculties be not deficient, and obviously 

 where any malformation of the organs of speech exist it is not applicable. The 

 education is usually commenced at about the age of seven, and it extends over a 

 period of eight years. Let us begin, then, with the first lesson of a deaf and dumb 

 cliild who has previously received no instruction of any kind. He is brought into a 

 room where a hearing person is spoken to by the teacher. The child soon notices 

 that as the teacher's lips move, the listener turns round and looks at him, and he 

 thus learns to direct his attention to the lips of the instructor. Without entering at 

 any length into the subject of sounds and letters as taught to mutes, it will, with a 

 little consideration, be seen that though it is a difficult matter to elicit proper sounds 

 by placing the lips and tongue into the necessary positions, it is not an insurmount- 

 able one, and that a very complete alphabet of sounds may be formed, so that as the 

 pupil progresses with this alphabet, he is taught in a short time by joining together 

 two sounds to articulate a word. As soon as this step has been accomplished,^ the 

 attention of the child is directed to some object or picture which represents the word 

 pronounced, and this object soon becomes associated in his mind with the sound he has 

 made to correspond to it. Let us take an example : The mouth of the child being 

 opened, he is made to effect an expiration. This is done, firstly, by his imitating the 

 teacher, and secondly, by the latter exerting at the same time a little pressure on the 

 pit of the child's stomach. Thus, the sound which corresponds in the phonetic 

 alphabet to the letter h is evoked, and it is to be further noticed that this is un- 

 attended by any vibration of the larynx. By opening the mouth widely and making 

 a slight noise, without the expiratory movement, the sound " ah " for the letter a is 

 evoked ; this being attended by a vibratory movement of the larynx which can be 

 felt to be communicated to the fingers pressed upon the front of the throat externally. 

 At first, the loud inharmonious noises that are made in attempts at speech require to 

 be modulated. This is effected in two or three ways. The teacher himself, speaking 

 in a low tone, calls the attention of the child to the quiet, subdued motions of the 

 chest, and of the muscles around his mouth. He tightly holds the child's hand in 

 his own, and by depressing it the child learns to connect this movement with a 

 lowering of the voice. By placing the hand of the child on his (the teacher's) throat, 

 and by placing his (the teacher's) hand on the child's throat, he draws its attention 

 to the slighter vibration of the larynx when the voice is lowered. By enforced 

 attention of this kind the child, as his education advances, soon learns that his pro- 

 gress depends on his attentively cultivating his powers of imitation, and by copying 

 these movements, produces in this way a fall in his voice. 



Suppose the child to have produced the sound for a. By filling out the cheeks 

 and making a puff, the sound corresponding to the letter p is elicited. Let these two- 

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