Deafness practically illustrated / [James Yearsley].

  • James Yearsley
Date:
[1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    188/200 page 176
    the judge’s case, it admits of being ingeniously adapted to the wig, so as to be scarcely observable. Itard made many experiments in ear trumpets, in the hope of overcoming the difficulty which obtains in transmitting sounds in their original distinctness to the ear, and with this view he constructed a trumpet with a piece of goldbeater’s skin, like an artificial membrana tympani, interposed across two places in the cylinder of the instrument. It succeeded, as might naturally have been expected, in diminishing the intensity of the SoMa but it failed in adding to the distinctness. There is another contrivance, termed an Otaphone, which suggested itself to the inventor, Mr. Webster, from his having observed a common practice among deaf people of applying the hollow of the hand to the back of the ear to increase the sound, and he was induced to consider whether the assistance this practice afforded might not be obtained by means less trouble- some and unsightly. With this view the Otaphones were first constructed. ‘They are formed from a cor- rect model of the back of the ear, and by fitting all the irregularities of that very uneven and elastic surface, gently press forward the parts so as to produce a more perfect orbit and fuller recipient of sound, and being self-supported, occasion no inconvenience to the wearer, nor any alteration in the appearance.” Mr. Webster claims other advantages for this instrument, which I have not space to discuss. My desire would be to speak only of those instru- ments which, founded on correct. principles, fairly pro- mise assistance to the deaf; but I should not be doing my duty to my readers, if I did not caution them against the trash grandiloquently named “the Invisible
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image