Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/736

 732 DEAF AND DUMB members of his family whom he had trained to assist him ; and lie would disclose his methods to no one else, except on very exorbitant terms, a policy which was adhered to by his family. From scattered notices it has been gleaned that articulation and lip-reading were his main ob- jects, and the manual alphabet was employed ; but no trace is found of his using signs. He was a diligent student of previous writers, and a remarkably skilful and devoted teacher. The fullest account of his school is Vox Oculis Subjecta (London, 1783), by Francis Green, of Boston, Mass., who had a son there. This work abounds in quotations from Amman, Holder, Wallis, and others. It was written to promote the establishment of a national insti- tution in London, whither Braidwood had just removed ; but the project failed. After Braid- wood's death, his school was continued by his widow and grandchildren till 1816, when the family were scattered. The Braidwoods re- ceived a few indigent pupils gratuitously, but their terms were generally high ; and the es- tablishment of the first free public school was due to an entirely different and independent agency. The benevolent and public-spirited Rev. John Townsend (also one of the founders of the London missionary society, and of the British and foreign Bible society), having his sympathies excited by some deaf children in the crowd coming to his door for charity, made inquiries which resulted in the discovery of so many similarly afflicted, that he set about the establishment of a school for them. To enlist aid, he travelled thousands of miles in England, and in 1792 opened a school in Bermondsey, Surrey, which in 1807 was removed to its present site on the Old Kent road, assuming the name of the London asylum. Its first head master was a nephew of Braidwood, Jo- seph Watson, who received the degree of LL. D. from the university of Glasgow in rec- ognition of the value of his treatise, "The Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb," and his illustrated " Vocabulary " (1809-'10). His son and grandson succeeded in turn to his posi- tion. The London asylum has always been open to pupils from all parts; but it soon proved inadequate. A grandson and name- sake of Braidwood was in 1810 invited to Ed- inburgh to start a school, but within a year it was placed in charge of Mr. Kinniburgh, who had been trained by the Braidwoods. At Birmingham an institution was established in 1812, through the efforts of Dr. De Lys; and one at Dublin in 1816, by Dr. C. H. Orpen. Others soon followed. In Germany, the first efforts made were by a contemporary of Ponce, Joachim Pasch of Brandenburg, who taught his own daughter by means of pictures and signs. Early in the 17th century Camerarius and Schott allude to deaf mutes having been educated, but they were mostly such as had become deaf late in life. Much attention, as in Italy, was early paid to the theory and mechanism of speech; translations of Fabri- cius, Bulwer, and Holder appeared, and were followed by many original philosophical and medical essays; but very few actually attempt- ed the education of the deaf, and each taught only a very limited number. In Holland, Peter Montanus published in 1635 a treatise on pho- netics, remarkable for accuracy and minute- ness; and in 1660 A. Deusing of Groningen issued an essay, De Surdis ab Ortu, entirely occupied with reasoning and theories, which ten years later was translated into English un- der the title, "The Deaf and Dumb Man's Discourse," by George Sibscota. In 1667 F. M. van Helmont, brother of the celebrated chem- ist, published AlpJiabeti Naturalis Delineatio, an attempt to prove that Hebrew was the nat- ural and divinely given language of mankind, by showing that the Hebrew characters bore an exact resemblance to the positions of the vocal organs in uttering the corresponding sounds. He maintained that in this language a deaf mute could not only read on the lips, but could even teach himself the exact pronuncia- tion, simply from study of the characters. The man usually considered the founder of the German system was Johann Konrad Amman, a Swiss physician at Haarlem. Meeting a girl deaf from birth, he taught her articulation, and published an account of the process, under the title Surdus Loquens (1692). Not until seven years after did he hear of Wallis' s efforts. An appreciative letter was addressed him by the Englishman, and was prefixed, with his reply, to the second edition of his work, which was enlarged and renamed Dissertatio de Loquela (1700). His writings were translated into English, German, and French, and long exert- ed a very powerful influence, though few if any now hold his mystical view of the divine efficacy and absolute essentialness of speech. Next wasKerger, a Silesian (1704), who, while disclaiming originality in his methods, was the first on the continent to make articulation sub- ordinate to signs. O. B. Lasius (1715), in teaching several deaf mutes, sought to reduce the art to the utmost simplicity, and to estab- lish a direct association of ideas with written words. He used neither articulation, signs, nor dactylology. G. Raphel of Ltineburg (1718) taught his three deaf daughters, following Am- man except in giving the highest place to wri- ting. Arnold! (1777) used freely such signs as his pupils devised, but did not invent any himself. Simultaneously with the opening of Braidwood's school commenced the labors of Samuel Heinicke (1729-'90), founder of the first public institution in Germany. While a private soldier at Dresden (1754), he became interested in a deaf and dumb boy, whom he attempted to instruct. After receiving his discharge, and studying at Jena, he went to Hamburg, where in 1758 he found another deaf child, whom he likewise began to teach, and gradually others came to him. About 20 years later the reports of his success induced the elector of Saxony to invite him to Leipsic, and install him as the