Lectures on diseases and injuries of the ear : delivered at St. George's Hospital / by W. B. Dalby.

  • Dalby, W B.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lectures on diseases and injuries of the ear : delivered at St. George's Hospital / by W. B. Dalby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

    213/248 (page 201)
    having been pursued, as a natural consequence tlie child is dumb. 3. The next example is where a child is born with i good hearing power, and loses the hearing either totally , or in a great measure before it is old enough to have : acquired speech. Scarlet fever and other of the exan- • themata are the most common causes of this. 4. A child may have learned to talk, and at the age of 3, 4, 5, 6, or even 7, may become totally or extremely I deaf; in the course of a few weeks in the instance of a I child of 3 or 4, in a few months if the child is older, it \ will be dumb. The most fruitful causes of deaf-mutism induced by a disease at this period of life are scarlet fever and iu- therited syphilis, but I have also known children to become nearly dumb when the Eustachian tubes have >been obstructed very extensively and for long periods; ithus you observe a moderate degree of deafness some- itimes quite suffices to act in the same way as complete liabsence of hearing power does at others. When chil- bdren are in process of becoming dumb, their articula- ition gets more and more indistinct, untU by-and-by it is nimpossible to make out what they say, so that whenever lyou see a child who is at all deaf beginning to speak Ithickly it is well to remember the danger which (threatens, and without delay to turn your attention to she condition of the ears; for it is surprising how quickly ifhe power of articulate speech becomes lost when it once begins to fail, and the reason of this is sufficiently Bbvious; the child not hearing what is said around J'ery soon forgets the knowledge that it has not