The music of nature; or an attempt to prove that what is passionate and pleasing in the art of singing, speaking, and performing upon musical instruments, is derived from the sounds of the animated world : With curious and interesting illustrations / [William Gardiner].

  • Gardiner, William, 1770-1853
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The music of nature; or an attempt to prove that what is passionate and pleasing in the art of singing, speaking, and performing upon musical instruments, is derived from the sounds of the animated world : With curious and interesting illustrations / [William Gardiner]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    simply a guard to prevent extraneous bodies enter- ing the labyrinth of the ear. This certainly may be one of its uses—but that it vibrates and emits a sound, called a singing in the ears, cannot be doubted; and as a proof that it partakes of the action of a drum, it is not fitted to receive two loud sounds in immediate succession—but a weak one, either before or after a strong one, it will receive and transmit. The effect of sound upon the ear is somewhat similar to that of light upon the eye ;—- the knowledge we obtain of surrounding bodies depends upon the practice and use we make of these organs, and it may be justly said that we learn both to see and hear. Infants, apparently, have no knowledge of ex- ternal objects, except those which emit or reflect the strongest lights; as the window, the candle, or the moon—all of which they apprehend to be within their reach, and spread out their hands to touch. It is, then, only by slow degrees that we learn to see and hear, although our faculties are as perfect at first as in after-life. It has been remarked of those persons born blind and brought to sight, that all have shown a total ignorance of space or distance. Cheseldine the anatomist * tells us, that the boy on whom he operated, on viewing the pro- spect, put out his hands to touch the church-steeples which he saw with delight in the distant horizon. * Born at Borough-Hill, Leicestershire.