Volume 3

Natural history, general and particular / by the Count de Buffon, translated into English. Illustrated with above 300 copper-plates, and occasional notes and observations. By William Smellie.

  • Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de, 1707-1788.
Date:
1785
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural history, general and particular / by the Count de Buffon, translated into English. Illustrated with above 300 copper-plates, and occasional notes and observations. By William Smellie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    52/578 (page 36)
    founds are uniformly colle&ted and blended with thofe at a diftance, and produce in the ear no- thing but a confufed noife. The fenfe of hearing is of more importance to man than to any other animal. In the latter, it is only a paflive quality of receiving impref- fions from diftant objects; but, in man, it is not only a paflive quality, but becomes active by the ufe of fpeech. It is by this fenfe that we are enabled to carry on the bufinefs of fociety, and to form a mutual communication of our fenti- ments, The organs of the voice would be en- tirely ufelefs, if they were not excited to motion | by the fenfe of hearing. A man deaf from his birth is neceflarily dumb, and has no idea of abfira& and general knowledge. We muft not omit, in this place, a fingular account of a man who, for the firft time, fuddenly acquired the ufe of hearing, when he was at the age of 24 years. His ROSE of which the following is an a- bridgement, is recorded i in the Memoirs of the French Academy *. Ana young man, of the town of Chartres, | aged about 24, who had been deaf from his. $ it began, all at once, to fpeak, to the utter ‘ aftonifhment of all who knew him. He in- ‘formed his friends, that, for three or four ‘months before, he ha id heard the found of ‘bells ; and that he was extremely furprifed at this new-and unknown fenfation. Some time ,# | (after, # Année 1703, p. 18.