Progress in the amelioration of certain forms of deafness and impaired hearing / by J.C. Gordon.

  • Gordon, Joseph Claybaugh, 1842-1903.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Progress in the amelioration of certain forms of deafness and impaired hearing / by J.C. Gordon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    these: Among the beginners in the first year the most dis- couraging was that of a man born deaf, 21 years of age, with- out a vestige of hearing. An observer wrote of him as follows: After three weeks of instruction, Z is a problem. He has very little power of imitation, and still less of memory, and, to make matters worse, he is very slow to understand what you mean. His lack of memory of positions, probably, has the most effed, for even when he gets an element right, he cannot remember the position in order to repeat it. His improvement is almost imperceptible. Three weeks later the observer says: Z has made considerable progress. The sentence I gave to him was given back to me, and repeated very well. A week later: Z has improved considerably, but it is slowly, step by step. At the June examinations at the close of his first year, this unpromising student read from his teach- er's lips 69s words with 9 failures, and spoke 688 words with 46 failures. Now 1 know as little about what he has read from the lips as you do. 1 see here he has the names of all the faculty. That was February ist. These are the daily lessons, you under- stand. March 12, he records: ''It is a beautiful day. 1 met a pretty girl. Did you go to the market ? Prof. Porter went to see it. Did you see Miss Taylor ? She returned to Philadelphia yesterday. She will go to Portland, Maine, next week. Prof Porter is much better. He will come down. April 16: When did you hear from home.'^ What day of the month is this ? What month is this ? May 7: How did you enjoy the ball .^^ Please tell me about it. 1 came home at 12 o'clock. This is lip-reading from this unpromising student; he is not a good lip-reader, and would not be pronounced a promising case, but he has accomplished a good deal under the circum- stances. 1 will turn to Miss Kershner's case. It is an interesting one. She has a number of deaf-mute relatives, and was born deaf She entered the Philadelphia school, and attended it nine years. She entered the College in 1892 and began then to learn to speak and to read the lips. [Reading records from January 19 to May 2S.] [Dr. Bell: How are these records made.?]