By quick stages the conversation ran into another channel with new
wonders possible in the future. Professor Bell has conceived of a
method of making the deaf hear, which is certainly startling. He
proposes to do away with ears entirely, and produce the sensations of
hearing by direct communication with the brain, through the bones of
the head. As a matter of fact, the brains of deaf people are usually
in a perfectly healthy condition, and the only thing which prevents
them from hearing is some defect in communication with the vibrating
air. If their brains could be excited artificially in the same way
that the brains of ordinary persons are excited by vibrations
communicated through the various chambers and passages of the ear,
then the deaf would hear in the same way that other persons do.
It is, of course, a fact, that hearing in every instance is merely an
illusion of the senses, a sort of tickling of the brain. This tickling
of the brain is ordinarily accomplished by the nerve force passing
from the third chamber of the ear to the brain itself. If this nerve
force is nothing more or less than ordinary electricity, and if
science can train electricity to tickle the brain artificially in the
same way and at the same points that the nerves from the ear usually
do, then the ordinary sensations of hearing must result, whether the
person has ears or not. The problem here is to discover the proper way
of tickling the brain. The gentlemen who seat themselves in
electrocution chairs have their brains tickled in a way which would
not be generally satisfactory.