Deafness practically illustrated / [James Yearsley].

  • James Yearsley
Date:
[1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Deafness practically illustrated / [James Yearsley]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the whole current of his feelings and affections was entirely perverted. He looked with the utmost sus- picion and distrust on his most intimate friends and relatives, and indulged in the most misanthropic sen- timents towards the world in general. This state of morbid sensibility sometimes attained such a mastery as even to verge on insanity. For long periods together he would shut himself up in a state of complete seclu- sion from all mankind, suffering the while the most excruciating mental agony from his ear disease and its accompanying malady. The medical treatment in the case of Beethoven, it must be confessed, was of the worst possible kind. I am firmly of opinion that the whole routine to which he was subjected, as well as his peculiar mode of life, tended to aggravate rather than diminish his disorder. Medically and morally speaking, the case of this dis- tinguished man deserves to be known to all deaf persons. It furnishes a salutary warning to avoid cherishing their melancholy emotions, lest (as in his instance) they should acquire a tyrannical mastery over every other feeling; and also that they may be careful not to neglect their state of health, which, under the denomination of nervousness, is but too likely to be treated as a chimera by their friends. When those deaf persons who have reason to believe themselves incurable, or indeed even those whose cases may be curable, suffer from nervous disorders, they should immediately become the subjects of medical treatment; because, even though their hearing may be lost beyond all hope of recovery, it is of the utmost importance to preserve them from the mental and phy- sical depression which their malady tends to produce.
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