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.

    32/224 page 18
    SPEECH. It has often occurred to me that there is really more connection between the organs of hearing and of speech than is usually supposed. It is now the received belief that the deaf and dumb are naturally only deaf, and that they are dumb also because they have never had opportunity of learning to speak. It is undoubtedly true that for this reason they do not speak ; but I am persuaded there is also—apart from this, and physically connected with deafness—a sort of inability to utter articulate sounds. I have no physiological acquaintance with the subject; but the impression growing out of my own experience and obsei’vation is, that the same functional causes act upon both organs. The hearing, being the more delicate organ, is utterly extinguished by that which only suffices to impede or deaden, with- out utterly destroying, the vocal organs; leaving in them so much vitality as may, under a certain artificial training and stimulus, be awakened into imperfect action. The deaf can thus be taught to speak, as a bear can be taught to dauce, or a man without hands to fabricate baskets; but a natural indisposition to use this acquired art, with more or less difficulty or pain in the use of it, remains; and this I am disposed to attribute not to the education being left imperfect through deafness, but to a phy- sical difficulty in the formation of articulate sounds.
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