Deaf-mute

(def-mut',) DEAF-DUMB, DEAF AND DUMB, a compound word which designates a double affliction, the one of which is only the consequence or effect of the other. A person who is born deaf, or who has lost his hearing at a very early age, is dumb also. But the organs of speech are not wanting, as is the organ of hearing; they merely lack the means of exercise. The ear is the guide and the directre of the tongue; and when she is doomed to perpetual silence, the tongue is included in the ban; though, if we could by any means give to the ear the faculty of hearing, the tongue would soon learn for itself to fulfil its proper office. A child ordinarily hears sounds, and then learns to imitate them; but if he is born deaf, he hears nothing, has consequently nothing to imitate, and remains dumb. No noticeable attempt at educating the deaf was made until the 16th cent., when Jerome Cardan, a native of Pavia, discovered the theoretical principle upon which the instruction of the deaf-mute is founded; and it was only in 1755 that the first school for them was opened in Paris by the Abbé de L'Epée. Five years later, 1760, Thomas Braid wood of Edinburgh advertised that at his academy in that city, he taught the dumb to B C D A G H E F al K L M N P R S T W X Y Z & Fig. 250.- SINGLE-HANDED ALPHABET. speak, and also cured impediments in the speech. In 1817, the first American asylum for the deaf-mute was founded at Hartford, under the superintendence of Mr. Gallaudet, who is the promoter of a system of teaching styled the " American system," which widely differs from those followed in European schools. From this sprung up, in 1818, the New York Asylum, one of the largest in the world; in 1820, the Asylum of Philadelphia; and, since that time, many others in most of the States, which, throughout the country, make easily acce ible to the deaf-mute the inestimable ble ings of education. A cla thus cut off from all communication through the ear, can only be addre ed through the cye; and the means employed in the instruction of the deaf and dumb are: 1, the visible language of pictures, and of signs and gestures; 2, the finger-alphabet (or Dactylology), and writing, which make them acquainted with our own written language; and, in some cases, 3, Articulation, and reading on the lips, which introduce them to the use of spoken language. There are two kinds of finger-alphabets: the single-handed alphabet (Fig. 250), now in general use in this country and France; and the two-handed alphabet, in common use in the English schools. The census of 1870 shows an aggregate of 16,205 in the U. States, or 1 to 2,996 of the entire population. See DEAFNESS. [s. 268]