Deafness practically illustrated / [James Yearsley].

  • James Yearsley
Date:
[1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    180/200 page 168
    temporary improvement appears for a few hours, and brings back thousands of old familiar sounds which were in course of being utterly forgotten. To a sensi- tive mind this deprivation is a source of extreme melan- » choly. The play of expression in the faces of friends may compensate in some degree for the loss of the tones of friendship and affection, and the smiles of Nature appear then more delightful to the eye, because her music is shut out from the ear; but nothing can compensate or make up for the relative insensibility to the external world. Besides, the mental misfortune of this kind, the loss of natural sounds is injurious in another manner; it takes away the standard of sound by which we insen- sibly tune our own voices; so that, as a consequence, the speech of the deaf is too often harsh and dissonant —either too loud or not loud enough. These are there- fore additional reasons why the deaf should attentively treasure up every natural sound; for no sound exists which is not in some measure the interpreter of others. Miss Martineau, herself a sufferer from incurable deaf- ness, details, in the most feeling terms, the care and anxiety with which she hoarded up the sounds of nature, and the intense pleasure it afforded her to hear any common sound anew which she had lost and feared she might never hear again. From all that has been advanced in the preceding pages, it may naturally be deduced that the faculty of attention and a well trained use of the sense of sight, will greatly ameliorate many severe forms of deafness. I now proceed to the consideration of certain points in which caution may prove serviceable to the deaf; and shall show that, in certain states of the system, a greater *
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