The causes and prevention of deafness. : Four lectures delivered under the auspices of the National bureau for promoting the general welfare of the deaf / by J. Kerr Love.

  • Love, James Kerr, 1858-1942.
Date:
[1913]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The causes and prevention of deafness. : Four lectures delivered under the auspices of the National bureau for promoting the general welfare of the deaf / by J. Kerr Love. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    cannot be trusted as proof of the heredity of the deaf-mutism. The truth is that the deafness which causes deaf-mutism is due to internal ear defect or disease, occurs before or shortly after birth, and is generally a finished and complete condition before we are asked to deal with it, whilst the deafness which amounts only to hardness of hearing, comes on generally long after birth (most commonly in adult life) is a progressive condition, and is generally an affection of the middle ear. There could hardly be two conditions affecting one organ more completely dissociated. Above I have contrasted the hardness of hearing of the adult with the almost total deafness of the deaf-born child. The presence of the one in a family has been commonly accepted as proof of the heredity of the other. It is possible that future research may succeed m associating these two conditions. This has never been done, and until it is done, the proof cannot be admitted. When a relative of a deaf-mute is born partially deaf—a rare condition—an explanation may be offered, and the partial deafness taken as proof of heredity. This I shall notice when discussing Mendelism. For over a hundred years a method of segregation of the deaf has been going on amongst us, which renders the intermarriage of the deaf very easy, and makes it very common. The education of the deaf m any form tends to their intermarriage, for it takes the individual deaf-mute out of his isolation, and brings him m contact with other deaf-mutes, but the education of the deaf in institutions and their association afterwards in missions is so perfect an arrangement for promoting their intermarriage, that I doubt it anything more effective could be produced, were the intermarriage of the deaf the object one had in view. So far as I am aware no such complete arrangements exist among any other section oi human beings, for the attainment of intermarriage of the members of an abnormal class, as those which exist among the deaf And yet these arrangements were made with very different and far higher motives than those hinted at here. Marriages of the Deaf. For the reasons already stated, the records of the Institutions for the Education of the Deaf make these the most valuable material for the study of hereditary deafness. Twenty years af I began this study at the Glasgow Institution and with the help and by the courtesy of the Superintendents of the Institutions of the United Kingdom, was able to show in what direction heredity operated amongst the deaf of the United K^^g^om Nearly ten years before that. Dr. Alexander Graham Bel published his classical memoir on the Formation of a Deat Variety of the Human Eace. And shortly after my book was