Deaf and Dumb

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

MUTES, persons both deaf and dumb, the dumbness resulting from the deafness which has either existed from birth or from a very early period of life. Such persons are unable to speak because they have not the guidance of the sense of hearing to enable them to imitate sounds. Among the causes assigned for congenital deafness are consanguineous marriages, hereditary transmission, scrofula, certain local or climatic conditions, ill health of the mother during pregnancy, etc. Acquired or accidental deafness, which occurs at all ages, is frequently due to such diseases as smallpox, measles, typhus, paralysis, hydrocephalus and affections, but more parother cerebral bral ticularly to scarlet fever, which is somewhat apt to leave the patient deaf, owing to the inflammatory state of the throat extending to the internal ear, and thus causing suppuration and destruction of the extremely delicate parts of the auditory apparatus. In the greater proportion of deaf-mutes no defect is visible or can be detected by anatomical examination, and no applications yet discovered appear to be useful. In ancient times Aristotle and others, and also in the Christian ages, Augustinus and his contemporaries considered that deaf-mutes were incapable of education. In ancient days and also in the Middle Ages there were a few cases known in which spiritual culture was attained by the deaf and dumb. In ancient Rome two dumb painters attracted attention. The most famous of the more ancient instructors of deaf-mutes was the Spanish monk Pedro de Ponce at Sahagun, in Leon, who taught four deaf and dumb people to speak. In Germany about the same time the court preacher of Brandenburg, Joachim Pascha, succeeded in teaching his deaf and dumb daughter to speak. In 1648 John Bulwer published the earliest work in England on the instruction of the deaf and dumb. This was followed by Dalgarno's "Ars Signorum" (Art of Signs) in 1661 and Dr. W. D. 19-Vol. III-Cyc Holder's "Elements of Speech." Dr. John Wallis, Savilian Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, is generally supposed to have been the first Englishman to instruct deaf-mutes. In 1743 Pereira, a Spaniard, publicly demonstrated this new art before the French Academy of B A F M K L W V U 2 Sciences, which gave its testimony to the success of the method. About the same time the Abbé de l'Épée, introduced a system for the instruction of the deaf and dumb, which was taught with great success in the Royal Parisian Institution. In 1779, through the labors of Samuel Heinicke, the great upholder of the vocal or articulatory system, there was established at Leipzig, for the education of deaf-mutes, a public institution which is still retained at Vienna and throughout Germany. About 20 years previously Thomas Braidwood had established near Edinburgh, in 1760, a deaf and dumb school on the articulat- C D E H N 0 愈 T S Y & DEAF-MUTE ALPHABET ing system. This was visited by Dr. Johnson during his tour in Scotland. The first public institution in Great Britain for the gratuitous education of the deaf and dumb was founded at Bermondsey in 1792 by the Rev. Messrs. Townsend and Macon. In 1817, the first American asylum for the deaf-mute was founded at Hartford under the su- DEÁK perintendence of Mr. Gallaudet, who was the promotor of a system of teaching styled the "American System," which widely differs from those followed in European schools. From this sprung up, in 1818, the New York Asylum, now known as the New York Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, one of the largest in the world; in 1820, the Asylum of Philadelphia; and, since that time, many others in most of the States, which, throughout the country, make easily accessible to the deaf-mute the inestimable blessings of education. The two chief methods of conveying instruction to the deaf and dumb are by the means of the manual alphabet, and by training them to watch the lips of the teacher during articulation. There are two kinds of manual alphabet, the double-handed alphabet, where the letters are expressed by the disposition of the fingers of both hands; and the singlehanded, in which the letters are formed with the fingers of one hand. The method of teaching by articulation, the pupil learning to recognize words and in time to utter them, by closely watching the motions of the lips and tongue in speech, and by being instructed through diagrams as to the different positions of the vocal organs, has given excellent results. A new method of teaching articulation, was devised by Prof. Melville Bell called "visible speech." The characters of the alphabet on which this are intended to resystem is founded veal to the eye the position of the vocal organs in the formation of any sound which the human mouth can utter. The proportion of deaf-mutes in the populawith relation to economic social conditions. It varies from 1 to 760 in India, 1 to 1,200 in France, 1 to 1,970 in England, to 1 in 2,400 in the United States. DEÁK, FRANCIS (dā-ak'), a Hungarian politician; born in Kehida, in 1803. He practiced as an advocate, until elected to the national diet in 1832. Here he soon took his place as leader of the Liberal opposition, and effected reconciliations between Hungary and the Austrian emperor as her king-temporarily in 1840, and more permanently in 1867. After the revolution of March, 1848, he became Minister of Justice in the cabinet of Count Batthyányi, and made every effort to ward off the inevitable war. On Kossuth's coming into power (September, 1848), Deák resigned his portfolio, and after futile attempts at negotiation retired from public affairs. He refused to return to public life till 1860 when a constitution was granted to his country. Returned by Pest to the diet in 1861, he again became the leader of the Moderate party, while the Extreme party collected round Count Téléki. The death of the latter (May 8) destroyed the only influence which could counterbalance that of Deák; and the diet appointed him to draw up the address to the emperor demanding the constitution of 1848, a Hungarian ministry resident in Pest, the return, without restriction, of the exiles, and the restitution of their property. The emperor answered it by a hostile rescript, against which Deák protested strongly. Out of the humiliation of Austria in 1866 came the triumph of Deák's policy. His wise and statesmanlike moderation effected a satisfactory constitutional relation between Austria and Hungary in the dual system of monarchy. He died in Budapest, Jan. 29, 1876.