Education of the deaf and dumb.

Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Education of the deaf and dumb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    1846.] Education of the Deaf an EDUCATION OF THE DEAF 497 The misfortune of those deprived of heaving and speech requires no reflection to awaken sympathy. There has even been, in times past, a tendency to exagge- rate the. depth and the hopelessness of their calamity. Within a comparatively recent period, and through the successful accom- plishment of their education, the preju- dice which long consigned them to neg- lect, has given place to a more genial sympathy, to an interest higher than mere compassion, and pleasing rather than painful. The condition of the deaf mute uneducated, needs not the aid of exaggeration to make it appear indeed deplorable. It is not, that he is cut off from the pleasures proper to the sense of hearing—that nature with her thou- sand voices is silent to him—that for him there is no voice of man or woman, no sound in childhood's mirth, none of those expressive tones which awaken responding vibrations upon the chords of emotion; that he knows nothing of the melody of song or the harmony of verse—nor even, that he is to such a degree, debarred the mere enjoyment of social intercourse. His calamity strikes deeper, as affecting his intellectual and moral being. Having capacities of soul, not inferior to those of other men, but deprived of the instrument of communi- cation which they employ, he is, as a consequence of this isolation, bound to a condition of perpetual infancy—with the germs of intellect and elevated feel- ing unquickened; with no share of the inheritance we receive in the history and the accumulated wisdom of the past, in the results of ages of mental progress, handed down in a language of words; without the assistance which a cultiva- ted language renders in aiding and de- veloping thought; with knowledge lim- ited to the range of his vision, and con- fined to the visible surface of what he sees; science and religion having for him no existence; the rites of worship and many customs and institutions of society to him a mystery; not merely the revelations of Christian truth, but the existence of God, of the soul, and of a future beyond the grave, absolutely un- known—a heathen in a Christian land, and in the bosom, it may be, of a Chris- tian family ! The education of deaf mutes is a sub- ject, of the first importance to at least one in every two thousand] of the'popu- lation of these United States; of deep concern to their friends, and to. every friend of humanity. It is also full of in- terest for the curious and the philosophic inquirer. It is highly important in its re- lations to the science of mind, the phi- losophy of language, and the subject of education in general. The means are not wanting for an ex- perimental basis of inquiry. Since the opening of the school at Paris by the Abbedel'Epee, in 1760, the foundation of the institution at Leipsic, under Heinicke, in 1778, and the commencement of in- struction, in Edinburgh, by Braidwood, in 1764, which led to the establishment of the London Institution in 1792, there have sprung from these beginnings, more than one hundred and sixty schools and institutions now existing in Europe, and ten in the United States. The earliest established in this country, was the American Asylum at Hartford, through the agency and under the direction of the Rev. Thomas H. Gallaudet, opened in 1817. During the two centuries pre- ceding this period, several pioneers in this work appeared, in different countries and at different times, who taught a few deaf mutes with success. The most no- ted are, Peter Ponce, a Spanish Benedic- tine monk who died in 1584, and who has the credit of being the earliest successful educator of deaf mutes ; John Paul Bonet, who flourished in Spain not many years later; Dr. John Wallis, of Oxford, in England; and John Conrad Amman, a * The Twenty-Ninth Report of the Directors of the American Asylum, at Hartford, for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb ; and Mr. Weld's Report, &C. Twenty-Sixth Annual Report and Documents of the New-York Institution tor the Instruc- tion of tile I Vut' and Dumb, Are. New York. 1S4>. 4 The census ot IS 10 makes the proportion 1 to 2,123. That the returns tall tar saort of the actual number is unquestionable, ^ee the Eighteenth and the Twenty-Thud Annual Reports of the New York Institution. In the latter the proportion is estimated at about 1 to 1,660.