Deafness practically illustrated / [James Yearsley].

  • James Yearsley
Date:
[1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    175/200 page 163
    the utmost advantage from sight in conversation, who are utterly unconscious how much they are indebted to it, and relate facts which appear to them to make their cases peculiar. or instance, many a patient has said, “It is strange that I can hear very well what you say to me, a yard or even two or three yards off, but if you speak into my ear it is all confusion.” Desire that patient to close his eyes, and he will no longer distinguish what is said. In testing such a patient’s hearing, the faculty of anticipation also should be baulked. For instance, such questions as, “Do you hear me now?” “How long have you been deaf ?” ** What was the cause of your deafness?” &c. &c., will be half anticipated. Rather wander from the subject. Ask him the day of the month? the distance to Liverpool? when the King of the French will visit our shores? &c. The extent of hearing he really pos- sesses will then be correctly ascertained, and the ad- vantage he derives from sight be made manifest. On the other hand, it is well known that persons entirely blind, but possessed of acute hearing, enjoy a wonderful power of obtaining information through the medium of the ear and other senses, which in ordinary cases reaches the mind entirely through the eye. The exercise of the faculty of attention is also of considerable importance to the incurably deaf. It is matter of experience that when a deaf person is listen- ing to a speech or conversation, he can perhaps at first scarcely distinguish a single word, but by attention, and by concentrating every faculty upon the subject, he gradually catches the words of the speaker. If he be listening to an oration upon a topic he understands, he is often ready to take up each sentence accurately,
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