teaching the pupil the sounds in order of simplicity, though he
held that he must learn to write first. Afterwards the pupil
must associate the letters with a manual alphabet. Holder
notices that dumbness is due to the want of hearing, and therefore
speech can be acquired through watching the lips, though he
admits the task is a laborious one. He also urges the teacher to
be patient and to make the work as interesting to the pupil as
possible. Command of language, he maintains, will enable the
deaf person to read a sentence from the lips if he gets most of the
words; for he will be able to supply those he did not see, from
his knowledge of English.
Johan Baptist van Helmont treated of the work of the vocal organs. Amman says that Van Helmont had discovered a manual alphabet and used it to instruct the deaf, but had not attained very good results.
George Sibscota published a work in 1670 called the Deaf and Dumb Man’s Discourse, in which he contradicts Aristotle’s opinion that people are dumb because of defects in the vocal organs; for they are, he believed, dumb because never taught to speak. They can gain knowledge by sight, he maintained; can write, converse by signs, speak and lip-read. Ramirez de Carrion also taught the deaf to speak and write, as did P. Lana Terzi.
About George Dalgarno more is known. He wrote, in 1680, his Didascalocophus, or Deaf-Mute’s Preceptor, in which he makes the mistake of saying that the deaf have the advantage over the blind in opportunities for learning language. The deaf can, in his opinion, be taught to speak, and also to read the lips if the letters are very distinct. They ought to read, write and spell on the fingers constantly, but use no signs. Substantives are to be taught by associating them with the things they represent; then adjectives should be joined to them. Verbs should be taught by suiting the action to the words, and associating the pronouns with them. Other parts of speech should be given as opportunities of explaining them present themselves. Dalgarno invented an alphabet, the letters being on the joints of the fingers and palm of the left hand.
John Conrad Amman published his Dissertatio de Loquela in 1700. In the first chapter he treats, among other things, of the nature of the breath and voice and the organs of speech. In the second chapter he classifies sounds into vowels, semi-vowels and consonants, and a detailed description of each sound is given. The third chapter is devoted to showing how to produce and control the voice, to utter each sound from writing or from the lips, and to combine them into syllables and words. It was only after the pupil had attained to considerable success in articulation and lip-reading that Amman taught the meaning of words and language; but the name of this teacher will long stand as that of one of the most successful the world has known.
Passing over Camerarius, Schott, Kerger (who began teaching language sooner than Amman did, and depended more on writing and signs), Raphel (who instructed three deaf daughters), Lasius, Arnoldi, Lucas, Vanin, de Fay (himself deaf) and many others, we come to Giacobbo Rodriguez Pereira, the pioneer of deaf-mute education in France, if we except de Fay. Beginning his experience by instructing his deaf sister, he soon attained to considerable success with two other pupils; his chief aim being, as he said, to make them comprehend the meaning of, and express their thoughts in, language. A commission of the French Academy of Sciences, before whom he appeared, testified to the genuineness of his achievements, noticing that he wrote and signed to his pupils, and stating that he hoped to proceed to the instruction of lip-reading. Pereira soon after came under the notice of the duc de Chaulnes, whose deaf godson, Saboureaux de Fontenay, became his pupil; and in five years this boy was well able to speak and read the lips. Pereira had several other pupils. Probably kindness and affection were two of the secrets of his success, for the love his scholars showed for him was unbounded. His method is only partly known, but he used a manual alphabet which indicated the pronunciation of the letters and some combinations. He used reading and writing; but signs were only called to his aid when absolutely necessary. Language he taught by founding it on action where possible, abstract ideas being gradually developed in later stages of the education.
We now come to the abbé de l’Epée (q.v.). The all-important features in this teacher’s character and method were his intense devotion to his scholars and their class, and the fact that he lived among them and talked to them as one of themselves. Meeting with two girls who were deaf, he started upon the task of instructing them, and soon had a school of sixty pupils, supported entirely by himself. He spared himself no expense and no trouble in doing his utmost to benefit the deaf, learning Spanish for the sole purpose of reading Bonet’s work, and making this book and Amman’s Dissertatio de Loquela his guiding lights. But de l’Epée was the first to attach great importance to signs; and he used them, along with writing, until the pupil had some knowledge of language before he passed on to articulation and lip-reading. To the latter method, however, he never paid as much attention as he did to instructing by signs and writing, and finally he abandoned it altogether through lack of time and means. He laboured long on a dictionary of signs, but never completed it. He was attacked by Pereira, who condemned his method as being detrimental, and this was the beginning of the disputes as to the merits of the different methods which have lasted to the present day; but whatever opinions we may hold as to the best means of instructing the deaf we cannot but admire the devoted teacher who spent his life and his all in benefiting this class of the community.
Samuel Heinicke first began his work in 1754 at Dresden, but in 1778 he removed to Leipzig and started on the instruction of nine pupils. His methods he kept secret; but we know that he taught orally, using signs only when he considered them helpful, and spelling only to combine ideas. He wrote two books and several articles on the subject of educating the deaf, but it is from Walther and Fornari that we learn most about his system. At first Heinicke laid stress on written language, starting with the concrete and going on to the abstract; and he only passed to oral instruction when the pupils could express themselves in fairly correct language. Subsequently, however, he expressed the opinion that speech should be the sole method of instruction, and, strange to say, that by speech alone could thoughts be fully expressed.
Henry Baker became tutor to a deaf girl in 1720, and his success led to the establishment of a private school in London. He also kept his system a secret, but recently his work on lessons for the deaf was discovered, from which we gather that he adopted writing, drawing, speech and lip-reading as his course of instruction. The point to notice is that after the primary stages Baker turned events of every-day life to use in his teaching. His pupils went about with him, and he taught by conversation upon what they saw in the streets,—an excellent method; but it is a pity that such a good teacher had not the philanthropy to make his methods known and to give the poorer deaf the benefit of them, as de l’Epée did.
A school was established in Edinburgh in 1760 by Thomas Braidwood, who taught by the oral method. He taught the sounds first, then syllables, and finally words, teaching their meaning. In 1783 Braidwood came to Hackney, whence he moved to Old Kent Road, and in 1809 there were seventy pupils in what was lately the Old Kent Road Institution. Braidwood’s method was practically a development of Wallis’s. We must regard him as the founder of the first public school for the deaf in England.
It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that a brighter day dawned on the deaf as a class. With the sole exception of de l’Epée no teacher had yet undertaken the instruction of a deaf child who could not pay for it. Now things began to be different. Institutions were founded, and their doors were opened to nearly all.
Dr Watson, the first principal of the Old Kent Road “Asylum,” taught by articulation and lip-reading, reading and writing, explaining by signs to some extent, but using pictures much more, according to Addison, and composing a book of these for the use of his pupils. From Addison (Deaf Mutism, pp. 248 ff.) we learn what developments followed. In Vienna, Prague and Berlin, schools had been founded in rapid succession before
