Deaf mutism : a clinical and pathological study / by James Kerr Love. With chapters on the education and training of deaf mutes by W. H. Addison.

  • Love, James Kerr, 1850-
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Deaf mutism : a clinical and pathological study / by James Kerr Love. With chapters on the education and training of deaf mutes by W. H. Addison. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Deafness may exist in any degree. In the very young a high degree of deafness makes the acquisition of speech impossible, and dumbness is the result. Hence the terms the deaf and dumb and deaf mutism. The dumbness is a result of the deafness, and is in no way due to any fault in the organs of speech. What degree of deafness necessarily results in this absence of speech is not definable in arithmetical terms, but it may be practically stated as deafness to the human voice used in the ordinary maimer. For teaching purposes this amount of deafness requires no separate name, for apart from its most important result—the dumbness—it needs little considera- tion from the teacher. But clinically it is often important to think of the deafness as a separate condition and to refer to it apart from the dumbness. Here, therefore, the term surdism will be used when this is necessary. Surdism may be defined as that degree of deafness which makes the acquisition of speech in the very young impos- sible by ordinary means, or which involves the loss of recently acquired speech. Before the beginning of the present century our knowledge of the physical conditions on which deaf-dumb- ness depends was limited to the fact that the dumbness depends on the deafness. When and by whom this discovery was made is a question which will be discussed in the educational section of this work. Attempts to educate the mute had been reduced to a science, but no precision existed in the diagnosis of the cause or in A