Volume 1

The lost senses / By John Kitto.

  • John Kitto
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The lost senses / By John Kitto. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    111/224 page 97
    COMMUNICATIONS. There is perhaps no fact which more strongly illustrates the unprofitable nature and limited extent of my early intercourse with the external world than this—that I was six years deaf before I knew that there existed any mode of communication with the fingers. A gentleman then happening to accost me on the fingers, and finding that I was unac- quainted with this mode of intercourse, taught it to me on the spot. This manual talk was much less known at that time than it has since become; and I did not for a good while find much use in it. Veiy few of the persons whom I for some years knew, employed it in expressing themselves to me ; and I never used it myself, having always, as the reader lias been informed, written whatever I had to say, till the use of the vocal organs was recovered : the case is much altered in this respect now. All my own household, anil all those with whom I am in habits of personal intercourse, make use of their fingers. Indeed, even my little ones, in their suc- cessive infancies, have early taken to imitating this mode of communication. They begin while yet in arms, falling to finger-talking whenever they see me—from mere imitation : and at a somewhat later stage, when they have begun to talk, it is truly affecting to see that, after having tried to make me understand their wishes in the ordinary way, they will stand before me, plying their fingers and
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