122 



JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



You can marry whom you choose, and I hope you will be happy. It 

 is not for me to blame you for marrying to suit yourselves ; for you 

 all know that I myself, the son of a deaf mother, have married a deaf 

 wife. 



I think, however, that it is the duty of every good man and 

 every good woman to remember that children follow marriage, and I 

 am sure that there is no one among the deaf who desires to have his 

 affliction handed down to his children. You all know that I have 

 devoted considerable study and thought to the subject of the inheri- 

 tance of deafness, and if you will put away prejudice out of your 

 minds, and take up my researches relating to the deaf, you will find 

 something that may be of value to you all. 



We all know that some of the deaf have deaf children, — not ah 1 , 

 not even the majority, but some, — a comparatively small number. In 

 the vast majority of cases there are no deaf offspring, but in the 

 remaining cases the proportion of offspring born deaf is very large, — 

 so large as to cause alarm to thoughtful minds. Will it not be of 

 interest and importance to you to find out why these few have deaf 

 offspring. It may not be of much importance to you to inquire 

 whether by and by, in a hundred years or so, we may have a deaf 

 variety of the human race. That is a matter of great interest to 

 scientific men, but not of special value to you. What you want to 

 know, and what you are interested in, is this : are you yourself liable 

 to have deaf offspring ? Now, one value that you will find in my 

 researches is this : that you can gain information that may assure 

 you that you may increase your liability to have deaf offspring or 

 diminish it, according to the way in which you marry. 



The Rev. W. W. Turner of Hartford was the first, I think, who 

 showed that those who are born deaf have a greater liability to have 

 deaf offspring than those who are not. He showed, that where a 

 person born deaf marries another person born deaf, in this case about 

 one-third of the children are deaf. Mr. Job Williams, the present 

 principal of the Hartford Institution, has still more recently examined 

 the subject ; and, in a letter published in Science a short time ago, he 

 arrives at the same conclusion, — about one-third are born deaf. In 

 1888, Mr. Connor, the principal of the Georgia Institution, made an 

 examination of the results of the marriages of his pupils, and his 

 statistics are published in "Facts and Opinions relating to the Deaf." 

 He also comes to the same conclusion,- — about one-third are born 

 deaf. 



The following table will show you the exact figures : — ■ 



Table I. — Concerning the Offspring of Couples Both of Whom were 



bom Deaf. 



Authority. 



Total 

 Number of 

 Families. 



Total 

 Number of 

 Children. 



Number of 



Deaf 

 Children. 



Percentage 

 of Chil- 

 dren who 

 are deaf. 



Number of 

 Deaf Chil- 

 dren to 

 every 100 

 Families, 



Turner (1808) ... 

 Connor (18H8) ... 

 Williams (1891) 



24 

 16 

 52 



57 



59 



151 



17 

 19 



48 



29-8 

 32-4 

 31-8 



70'S - 

 118-7 

 92-3 



