Some observations on the mental state of the blind, and deaf, and dumb : suggested by the case of Jane Sullivan, both blind, deaf, dumb, and uneducated / by R. Fowler.

  • Fowler, Richard, 1765-1863.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some observations on the mental state of the blind, and deaf, and dumb : suggested by the case of Jane Sullivan, both blind, deaf, dumb, and uneducated / by R. Fowler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    Most impartial and competent judges of the pro- ficiency of children under different plans of in- struction have assured me, that the blind, who acquire a knowledge of words by their fingers alone, learn quicker and are more retentive of what they have learned than those who learn by the eye ; and what I myself have been told and have seen in asylums for the blind, in Glasgow, Liverpool, and London, has satisfied me, that this estimate of difference has not been exaggerated. In the asylum for the blind at Glasgow there is a young woman, perfectly formed and intelligent, but both blind and deaf. She read with her fingers, and then wrote what she had read as quickly, correctly, and legibly as any person of her age and station would have done with the most perfect sight. She was in frequent corre- pondence with a distant friend, equally blind witli herself, and their thoughts were conveyed to each other, not by writing, which other persons might have read, but by knots made of twine; and these cumbrous and seemingly-intricate letters, I was find that they acquire much of that delicacy of touch which is usually peculiar to the hand.”—(From a paper hy Mr. Wedgwood, already quoted.)—Yet the born blind, who consequently never can have seen their hands, soon learn to judge of form and distance, and, as Laura Bridgman, to sub- stitute the hand for the other organs of sense, which are in her all defective.