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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    selves to their perception by a voluntary effort. Deaf persons should even practise listening to external sounds as an important adjunct to whatever degree of hearing they may still possess. I know of no better exercise for inattentive and partially deaf persons than attempt- ing to write down in a condensed form the conversation or reading of another person. Such a practice is better than merely listening to a person reading, because it requires a more than ordinary degree of attention to bring the hand in obedience to the ear. Next to this should be the habit of listening carefully for some time daily to a person while reading aloud. Remarks of this kind are of much value to the deaf; it is strange, therefore, that the subject should hitherto only have been noticed by writers on aural surgery in the most casual manner, if indeed it can be said to have been noticed at all. As a further inducement to urge the deaf to habits of attention, I may remark that nothing is more painful to them than the gradual but final loss, one by one, of many of the most familiar and agreeable sounds of nature. As the hearing decays, the pattering of the rain, the rustling of the wind among trees, the noise of birds and insects, gradually become indistinct or are altogether lost. To the deaf, the air is always heavy and silent, and the earth as monotonously dull as when their sounds are masked to healthy hearing by the fall- ing of snow. If the deafness be complicated with tin- nitus, as is often the case, the external silence is mocked by the continuous and distressing noises produced by the disease itself within the organ of hearing. Few but the deaf themselves can imagine the delight which they experience when, after an interval of years, some ¢
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