54 PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
“ And when one weeke of Lent was past, the next sounday he 
willed the poore man to come unto him; when he was come, he 
bydd him put out his tounge and show it unto him, and taking him 
by the chinne, made the signe of the holy crosse upon his tounge, 
and when he had so signed and blessed it, he commaunded him to 
plucke it in again, and speake saying, speake, me one word, say 
gea, gea, which in the english tounge is a worde of affirmation and 
consent in such signification as yea, yea.* Incontinent the stringes 
of his tounge were loosed, and he said that which was commanded 
him to say. The bishopp added certain letters by name, and bid 
him say A; he said A; say B, he said B, and when he had said 
and recited after the bishopp.the whole cross rewe he put upon him 
sillables and hole wordes to be pronounced. Unto which when he 
answered in all pointes orderly, he commaunded him to speake long 
sentences, and so he did; and ceased not all that day and night 
following, so longe as he could hold up his head from sleepe (as 
they make report that were present) to speake and declare his secret 
thoughtes and purposes, which before that day he could never utter 
to any man.”’} 
Now, stripped of the miraculous, this is simply a case of articula- 
tion teaching. In the other countries of Europe the first attempts at 
the education of the deaf were also made by teaching them to speak, 
and as the early teachers were monks of the Roman Catholic 
Church, it is probable that these schools resulted from the attempts 
to perform the miracle of healing the dumb. <A large proportion 
of the deaf and dumb who were thus brought together were success- 
fully taught to articulate. 
But now comes a marvel: It was found by the old monks that 
their pupils came to understand the utterances of others by watch- 
ing the mouth. Such a statement appears more marvelous to those 
who understand the mechanism of speech than to those who are 
ignorant of it; and there is a general tendency to consider this ac- 
complishment as among the fictitious embellishments of the old nar- 
ratives. But the experience of modern teachers confirms the fact. 
John Bulwer, who is said to have been the earliest English writer 
upon the subject of the instruction of the deaf and dumb, published 
* It will be remembered that the original of this was in Latin, and that “the 
english tounge’? here means what we now call the Anglo Saxon. 
+ American Annals of the Deaf and Dumb, vol. I, p. 33 (1848). 
