Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/735

 DEAF AND DUMB 731 such words as were not the names of visible objects, and made much use of a manual alpha- bet, engraved in his book, almost precisely the single-hand alphabet now in use. His views on teaching language are sound and philosophi- cal. Another Spaniard, E. R. de Carrion, hi the early part of the -17th century, taught among others Emanuel Philibert, prince of Oarignan, to write and speak four languages. The honor of the first three practical teach- ers of the deaf thus belongs to Spain. About 1604 St. Francis de Sales took into his house a deaf-mute youth, and taught him the doc- trines of the church ; he died of grief shortly after his benefactor's decease. In Italy great attention was paid to the anatomy of the ear, the physiology of speech, and phonology, es- pecially by Eustachius (1563) and Fabricius of Padua, the latter of whom is said, in addi- tion to preparing various scientific treatises (1600-' 13), to have practised the instruction of the deaf. Treatises on the language of ges- ture also appeared, but without particular ref- erence to the deaf. The padre Lana Terzi, in his Arte maestro, (1670), maintained the possibility of educating both the blind and the deaf, " since the privation of one sense gives to the others a keenness entirely new and extraordinary," and sketched a gradu- ated course for teaching -the latter first ar- ticulation and then the meaning of words. In England, Sir Kenelm Digby gave an account of Bonet's pupil in his " Treatise on the Nature of Bodies" (1646), which was copied in Dr. John Bulwer's PMlocopJius (1648). Bulwer maintained that "a man born deaf and dumb may be taught to hear the sound of words with his eye, and thence learn to speak with his tongue." He had in his " Chir&nomia, or the Natural Language of the Hand" (1644), men- tioned a gentleman in Essex who, becoming deaf by sickness, devised an " arthrologie, or alphabet contrived on the joints of his fingers ;" but he did not perceive its applicability in edu- cation, nor does he appear ever to have reduced speculation to practice. The first man in Eng- land who did this was John Wallis, D. D., pro- fessor of geometry at Oxford, and a correspon- dent of Digby. He began in January, 1661, to teach a youth named Whaley, who became deaf at about five years of age, " to speak and to understand a language." The boy was ex- hibited before the royal society in May, 1662, and was found able to express himself, " though not elegantly, yet so as to be understood." Wallis afterward took other pupils, one of whom, Popham, having previously received some instruction from the Rev. "W. Holder, as related in his " Elements of Speech " (1669), oc- casioned a controversy, in 1678, as to the cred- it due to each. Wallis's' system is detailed in two letters in the " Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society," one to Boyle, dated March, 1662, published July, 1670, and the other to Beverly, dated Sept. 30, published in October, 1698; and in one to Amman, 1699. It is also mentioned in the preface to the Trac- tatus de Loquela prefixed to his Grammatica LingucB Anglicance, beginning with the 4th edition (1674). He considered articulation and understanding language as very different parts of the task, and the former as really the less difficult and wonderful, and useless without the latter. With his later pupils he did not at- tempt articulation. As to lip-reading, he agreed with Bonet, and declared that " there is nothing in the nature of the thing itself why letters and characters might not as properly be applied to represent immediately, as by inter- vention of sounds, what our conceptions are." The letter to Beverly gives his classification and order of teaching a vocabulary. Among Wallis's literary friends was George Dalgarno of Aberdeen, master of a grammar school at Oxford, who published in 1661 Ars Signo- rum, an essay on a universal language, con- taining the germs of Wilkins's "Real Charac- ter;" and in 1680 " Didascalocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor." Both lay in undeserved neglect till 1834, when the enco- miums of Dugald Stewart led to their reprint by the Maitland club of Edinburgh. Stewart and Sir William Hamilton thought Wallis was indebted to Dalgarno for much in his later statements of his system ; but the main features are detailed in the earlier with sufficient preci- sion to leave the question of originality at least doubtful. There can be no doubt as to the merits of Dalgarno's work. It displays a just appreciation of the condition of the deaf, and great sagacity in dealing with it. The manual alphabet devised by Dalgarno is the basis of the present two-hand British alphabet. Wal- lis, however, was alone the guide of the subse- quent British laborers. His method was first popularly made known in Defoe's "Life of Duncan Campbell" (1720), a Scotch adven- turer, who represented himself as having be- come deaf at an early age, and having been educated by an acquaintance of Wallis; and whose pretensions to the gift of second sight are mentioned in the " Tatler " and " Specta- tor." Defoe's son-in-law, Henry Baker, the microscopist, taught a considerable number of deaf mutes, belonging to the highest families, to speak and read on the lips, but he never published his method. Dr. Johnson alludes to Baker in a notice of a visit to the establishment of Thomas Braidwood, at Dumbiedikes, near Edinburgh. This was the first regular school for deaf mutes in Great Britain. From it are descended in unbroken succession the existing British public institutions, the oldest and lar- gest of which, that at London, has from the first taken its principal from Braidwood's family. Braidwood, who had an establishment for the cure of stammering, in 1760 undertook to carry into effect with a deaf youth the plan given by Wallis in the "Philosophical Transactions." His success attracted other pupils, but he never had a larger number than could receive con- stant individual attention from himself or the