The Deaf and Dumb; Or, a Collection of Articles Relating to the Condition of Deaf Mutes; Their Education, and the Principal Asylums Devoted to Their Instruction

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1836 edition. Excerpt: ... A VIEW OF THE CONDITION OF DEAF MUTES. [From the North American Be view.] Lamentable as the natural condition of the deaf and dumb evidently is, we have no satisfactory evidence, that, so lately as the commencement of the sixteenth century, the idea had ever occurred to any individual in any country, that this condition might be ameliorated by education. To impart instruction to a person affected by constitutional deafness, seemed an undertaking so palpably impossible, that its practicability was never even proposed as a problem, much less was it made a subject of examination and discussion. The speaking world had all acquired language through the medium of sound, and knowledge through the medium of language. The belief was therefore universally prevalent, that language could only be acquired through the ear, and was, consequently, in the nature of things beyond the reach of the deaf and dumb. This pernicious prejudice had its origin in the highest antiquity. It has the express sanction of Aristotle, who, at a stroke of the pen, condemns the deaf and dumb to total and irremediable ignorance. Prejudices still more severe than this, of a kind, too, to bring down upon the heads of their unfortunate objects, evils, which nature, unindulgent- as in their sad case she evidently is, would have spared them, have extensively prevailed at different times, and in different places; nor are we permitted to say, that they are even yet entirely dissipated. Among some nations of antiquity, the deaf and dumb were regarded as persons laboring under the curse of Heaven. By the Romans, they were considered, if not as affected by positive idiocy, as at least, deficient in intellect; and were, consequently, by the code of Justinian, abridged of their civil...