The same writer quotes Hartmann's table, compiled in 1880 from
continental statistics, as follows:--
Cerebral affections, inflammations,
convulsions 644
Cerebro-spinal meningitis 295
Typhus 260
Scarlatina 205
Measles 84
Ear disease, proper 77
Lesions of the head 70
Other diseases 354
----
1989
There appears to be no cure for deafness that is other than partial; but
with the advance of science preventive treatment is expected to be
efficacious in scarlet fever, measles, &c.
_Condition of the Deaf._
1. _In Childhood._--It is difficult to impress people with two facts in
connexion with teaching language to the average child who was born deaf,
or lost hearing in early infancy. One is the necessity of the
undertaking, and the other is that this necessity is not due to mental
deficiency in the pupil. To the born deaf-mute in an English-speaking
country English is a foreign language. His inability to speak is due to
his never having heard that tongue which his mother uses. The same
reason holds good for his entire ignorance of that language. The hearing
child does not know a word of English when he is born, and never would
learn it if taken away from where it is spoken. He learns English
unconsciously by imitating what he hears. The deaf child never hears
English, and so he never learns it till he goes to school. Here he has
to start learning English--or whatever is the language of his native
land--in the same way as a hearing boy learns a foreign language.
But another reason exists which renders his task much more difficult
than that of a normal English schoolboy learning, say, German. The
latter has two channels of information, the eye and the ear; the deaf
boy has only one, the eye. The hearing boy learns German by what he
hears of it in class as well as by reading it; the deaf boy can only
learn by what he sees. It is as if you tried to fill two cisterns of the
same capacity with two inlets to one and only one inlet to the other;
supposing the inlets to be the same size, the former will fill twice as
fast. So it is in the case of the hearing boy as compared with his deaf
brother. The cerebral capacity and quality are the same, but in one case
one of the avenues to the brain is closed, and consequently the
development is less rapid. Moreover, the thoughts are precisely those
which would be expected in people who form them only from what they see.
We were often asked by our deaf playmates in our childhood such
questions (in signs) as "What does the cat say?"--"The dog talks, does
he not?"--"Is the rainbow very hot on the roof of that house?" They have
often told us such things as that they used to think someone went to the
end of the earth and climbed up the sky to light the stars, and to pour
down rain through a sieve.
But there is yet a third disadvantage for the already handicapped deaf
boy. He has no other language to build upon, while the other has his
mother tongue with which to compare the foreign language he is learning.
The latter already has a general idea of sentences and clauses, of tense
and mood, of gender, number and case, of substantives, verbs and
prepositions; and he knows that one language must form some sort of
parallel to another. He is already prepared to find a subject, predicate
and object, in the sentence of a foreign language, even when he knows
not a word of any but his own mother tongue. If he is told that a
certain word in German is an adjective, he understands what its function
is, even when he has yet to learn the meaning of the word. All this goes
for nothing in the case of the deaf pupil. The very elementary fact that
certain words denote certain objects--that there is such a class of word
as substantives--comes as a revelation to most deaf children. They have
to begin at seven laboriously and artificially to learn what an ordinary
baby has unconsciously and naturally discovered at the age of two.
English, spoken, written, printed or finger-spelled, is no more natural,
comprehensible or easy of acquirement to the deaf than is Chinese. The
manual alphabet is simply one way of expressing the vernacular on the
fingers; it is no more the deaf-mute's "natural" language than speech or
writing, and if he cannot express himself by the latter modes of
communicating, he cannot by spelling on the fingers. The last is simply
a case of _vicaria linguae manus_. None of these are languages in
themselves; whether you use pen or type, hand or voice, you are but
adopting one or other method of expressing one and the same
tongue--English or whatever it may be, that of a "people of a strange
speech and of a hard language, whose words they cannot understand." The
deaf child's natural mode of communication--more natural to him than any
verbal language is to hearing people--is the world-wide, natural
language of signs.
2. _Natural Language of the Deaf._--We have just called signs a natural
language. While a purist might properly object to this adjective being
applied to all signs, yet it is not an unfair term to use as regards
this method of conversing as a whole, even in the United States, where
signs, being to a great extent the French signs invented by de l'Epee,
are more artificial than in England. The old story, by the way, of the
pupil of de l'Epee failing to write more than "hand, breast," as
describing what an incredulous investigator did when he laid his hand on
his breast, proves nothing. In all probability he had no idea that he
was expected to describe an action, and thought that he was being asked
the names of certain parts of the body. The hand was held out to him and
he wrote "hand." Then the breast was indicated by placing the hand on
it, and he wrote "breast." Moreover, the artificial element is much less
pronounced than is supposed by most of those who are loudest in their
condemnation of signs, there being almost invariably an obvious
connexion between the sign and idea. These critics are generally people
whose acquaintance with the subject is rather limited, and the
thermometer of whose zeal in waging war against gestures generally falls
in proportion as the photometer of their knowledge about them shows an
increasing light. We may go still further and point out that to object
to any sign on the ground of artificiality _per se_, is to strain at the
gnat and to swallow the camel, for English itself is one of the most
artificial languages in existence, and certainly is more open to such an
objection than signs. If we apply the same test to English that is
applied to signs by those who would rule out any which they suppose
cannot come under the head of natural gesture or pantomime, what
fraction of our so-called natural language should we have left? For a
spoken word to be "natural" in this sense it must be onomatopoetic, and
what infinitesimal percentage of English words are such? A foreigner,
unacquainted with the language, could not glean the drift of a
conversation in English, except perhaps a trifle from the tone of the
voices and more from the natural signs used--the smiles and frowns, the
expressions of the faces, the play of eyes, lips, hands and whole body.
The only words he could possibly understand without such aids are some
such onomatopoetic words as the cries of animals--"mew," "chirrup," &c.,
and a few more like "bang" or "swish."
The reason why we insist emphatically upon the importance of teaching
English in schools for the deaf in English-speaking countries, is,
firstly, because that is the language which the pupil will be called
upon to use in his intercourse with his fellow-men after he leaves
school, and secondly, because, if his grasp of that tongue only be
sufficient and his interest in books be properly aroused, he can go on
educating himself in after-life by means of reading. Time tables are
overcrowded with kindergarten, clay modelling, wood-carving, carpentry,
and other things which are excellent in themselves. But there is not
time for everything, and these are not as important in the case of the
deaf pupil as language. Putting aside the question of religion and moral
training, we consider the flooding of their minds with general
knowledge, and the teaching of English to enable them to express their
thoughts to their neighbours, to be of paramount importance, so
paramount that all other branches of education in their turn pale into
insignificance by comparison with these, while the question of methods
of instruction should be subservient to these main ends. Too many make
speech in itself an end. This is a mistake. Speech is not in itself
English; it is only one way of expressing that language. And we are
little concerned to inquire by what means the deaf pupil expresses
himself in English so long as he does so express himself, whether by
speech or writing, or as he does so express himself, whether by speech
or writing or finger-spelling--for if he can finger-spell he can write.
It is not the mere fact that he can make certain sounds or write certain
letters or form the alphabet on his hands that should signify. It is the
actual language that he uses, whatever be the means, and the thoughts
that are enshrined in the language, that should be our criterion when
judging of his education.
The importance of English is insisted upon because to place the deaf
child in touch with his English-speaking fellow-men we must teach him
their language, and also because he can thereby educate himself by means
of books if, and when, he has a sufficient command of that language. The
reason is not because the vernacular is actually superior to signs as a
means of conversation. The sign language is quite equal to the
vernacular as a means of expression. The former is as much our mother
tongue, if we may say so, as the latter; we used one language as soon as
the other, in our earliest infancy; and, after a lifelong experience of
both, we affirm that signs are a more beautiful language than English,
and provide possibilities of a wealth of expression which English does
not possess, and which probably no other language possesses.
That others whose knowledge of signs is lifelong hold similar opinions
is shown by the following extract from _The Deaf and their
Possibilities_, by Dr Gallaudet:--
"Thinking that the question may arise in the minds of some, 'Does the
sign language give the deaf, when used in public addresses, all that
speech affords to the hearing?' I will say that my experience and
observation lead me to answer with a decided affirmative. On occasions
almost without number it has been my privilege to interpret, through
signs to the deaf, addresses given in speech; I have addressed
hundreds of assemblages of deaf persons in the college, in schools I
have visited, and elsewhere, using signs for the original expression
of thought; I have seen many more lectures and public debates given
originally in signs; I have seen conventions of deaf-mutes in which no
word was spoken, and yet all the forms of parliamentary proceedings
were observed, and the most earnest, and even excited, discussions
were carried on. I have seen the ordinances of religion administered,
and the full service of the Church rendered in signs; and all this
with the assurance growing out of my complete understanding of the
language--a knowledge which dates from my earliest childhood--that for
all the purposes enumerated gestural expression is in no respect
inferior, and is in many respects superior, to oral, verbal utterance
as a means of communicating ideas."
The following is an analysis of the sign language given by Mr Payne of
the Swansea Institution, together with his explanatory notes:--
"_Analysis of the Sign Language._