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.

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    done tliis cannot fail to have formed a strong opinion concerning the vast masses of ill-compacted matter which has been cut up to form the aggregate of the insipid and characterless faces which crowd our streets. Faces really beautiful or ugly, really engaging or repulsive, really striking or eccentric, are rare ; but to find one such is sufficient re- compense for much dreary travel over the wilder- ness of a thousand unmeaning countenances. It must be obvious from what has been stated, that being in darkness must be peculiarly irksome to the deaf, as this nearly throws out of exercise all the perceptive faculties, and, for the time, reduces the patient as nearly as possible to the deplorable state of one who is both deaf and blind. Most people like to sit in the twilight, and are sel- dom in a hurry to ring for candles. But this is far from being the case with the deaf, if I may form a judgment from my own experience. I dislike not twilight, or even darkness, so that it be not “ pitch dark,” when in the open air ; but indoors, there can- not be a sorer grievance to me. So soon as it be- comes too dark to read, I am impatient and restless until the lights are introduced. The reason is plain : the eye ceases to be a means of any enjoyment or information. No book can be read, no communi- cation can be carried on. As the darkness deepens, any conversation in which I may have been engaged comes to a dead pause ; and, on my side, not a word is uttered until light is obtained. This is because that unless the face of the person addressed is visible to me, I cannot know that anything said to him has been heard or understood, nor perceive any gesture of assent or dissent; and on the other hand, no communication can be made to me when
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