The disorders of speech.

  • Wyllie, John, 1914-
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The disorders of speech. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    of mouth, and the practice of Oral Articulation and Lip-Reading, which, when successfully acquired, enables the deaf-mute to express himself by word of mouth like an ordinary person, though his tones are apt to be more or less harsh and unmusical. The latter practice involves a difficult process of education, and the exercise by the patient of the closest attention and observation. But, when successfully mastered, it has the great advantage of enabling the patient to understand what is said to him by any- one, and make himself understood by anyone he may speak to. It thus enables him to mix in ordinary society, and to converse with people who cannot use the Manual Alphabet. This Oral Method, which was first systematically taught in a school, in the last century, by Samuel Heinicke, a Saxon schoolmaster,1 has always, since his day, been much cultivated in Germany; and, at the present time, is beginning to find much favour everywhere, throughout Europe and in America. How successful it is some- times, is illustrated by an anecdote told by Kussmaul regarding a conversation with one of his hospital patients. He had for some time been freely conversing with this patient; and, having observed nothing unusual in his manner of expressing himself, was afterwards much surprised to learn that he had been conversing with a deaf 1 It is hardly just to call Heinicke the founder of the German method. He only gave a more logical application to the principles taught by Bonet, Wall is, and Amman, but he clearly perceived that there coidd be no compromise between speech and signs as fundamental in teaching language. Arnold's Education of Deaf Mutes, p. 85.—Heinicke began teaching in Dresden in 1754. In 1760, Thomas Braidwood founded a school in Edinburgh, and taught lip- reading very successfully. He was visited by Dr Johnson, and is referred to in laudatory terms in the latter's famous account of his tour to the Hebrides. Braidwood afterwards, in 1783, removed to London, where he was soon the first head-master of the first public institution established in England for the education of deaf-mutes. The school founded by him in Edinburgh has been kept up ever since, and now occupies excellent premises in Henderson Bow. Edinburgh also has, in Donaldson's Hospital, a splendid Institution which is partly devoted to the education of Deaf-Mutes. A century before the time of Heinicke and Braidwood, Lip-Beading was successfully taught in Spain by Pedro Ponce de Leon, a Spaniard of illustrious birth, and his successor Juan Pablo Bonet, a capable man of business, employed in official services. It was in Spain, also, that the one-handed alphabet was invented. The two-handed alphabet, used generally in this country, was invented, at a later date, in France,