The sign language of the deaf and dumb / by J. Birkbeck Nevins.

  • Nevins, J. Birkbeck (John Birkbeck), 1818-1903.
Date:
[between 1890 and 1899?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The sign language of the deaf and dumb / by J. Birkbeck Nevins. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    3/18 (page 259)
    : ill viol \d !: this popular impression seemed to attach to these unfor- tunates ; for, in the absence of the natural human faculties, they seemed scarcely to be human beings. Their inability to make tlieir wants or thoughts known, and to communicate with their fellows, made them apparently mere brute beasts, and they were so often treated as such (being buffeted and pelted from place to place) that their hands became habitually against every man, and every man’s hand was against them; most violent conduct being often the result, until their condition was miserable in the extreme. The earliest recorded attempt to teach the deaf and dumb was made in 1750 by a Spanish monk, of Sahagum, named Pedro de Ponce, who instructed four deaf and dumb pupils in speech—what would now be called the “oral system.”* His example was followed by de Carrion, also in Spain; by Wm. Holder in England, and by Wallis, Professor of Mathematics in Oxford, before the end of the century. By Dr. Amman, also, in Holland, whose system was pursued by Kruse of Leignitz, in Germany, and was perfected by Heinicke, who died in 1790 and is considered as the real founder of the German or “ oral system” as at present known. (Rep. Deaf and Dumb Com., 1889, pp. li, lii.) These attempts were, however, isolated, and were limited in their application to a very small number of pupils, to as few as four only, in the first case mentioned r* m / * “ So long ago, however, as a.d. 700, an Englishman, John de Beverley, then Archbishop of York, discovered the possibility of teaching a deaf mute to speak and to understand spoken language by watching the lips of the speaker, and he succeeded in instructing one deaf mute at any rate, in some- thing of the Christian religion” (National Cyclopce.clia, art. “Deaf and Dumb,” p. 439). But neither teacher nor pupil left a successor, and it was not until after the lapse of above a thousand years that the attempt was success- fully revived by the Spanish monk in the case of the four pupils above mentioned.