Wheeling register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1878-1935, 1885-03-31
TEACHING TIE DUMB TO SPEAK.

Teaching the dumb to speak is accounted
q physical imPossibilitY but under a new
German system such progress has been
made in it that communicating ideas by
signs are dispensed with and talking sub
stituted. This description from the New
York Sun viii De read with interest Is well
as being a hint to the authorities of our
own D. d. and B. asylum as to what is
being done in the outside world.
A very interesting exhibition of the prof
cheney OF deaf mUtes in srticulate speech
was given on Tuesday night at Plymouth
Church in Brooklyn. They were pupils of q
Connecticut school at which they had
learned 10 communicate by spoken words
instead of the signs which are ordinarily
used BY our deaf and dumb.
A boy of twelve years repented the Lords
Prayer with such infinite psthos' that
people wiped tears from their eyes,. He also
repeated words uttered by those who were
fifty feet from him, and made himself I'M
derstood throughout the large hall. Another
little fellow pronounced even hard words
after people in the audience before the
tones OF their voices had died away, and
named articles to which they silently
pointed. A man of sixty years, who has
been deaf from his birth, read q chapter
from the Bible, and made a speech OF much
interest.
The method Of this school seems to be in
some respects at least peculiar, but it was
long ago elsewhere demonstrated that deaf
Dutes, as we term them, can be taught ar
~ticulate speech, and to understand language,
by educating their sight so that it shall dis
tinguish between the movements OF the lips.
The system Of lip reading and articulation
was introduced into Gesmany by Director
Hirseh, and has been pursued with results
which are really astonishing. At Brussels,
Client, Antwerp, ard other places in Europe
this German n e,hod has been adopted With
the most gratifying success. The pupils at
such schools are gayer than at those where
the sign language is taught, according to
DR.. Hirsch, and iftheir progress at the be-
ginning is slower, after the hrSt early steps
are mastered they move on far more rapid
ly and satisfactorily.
The subject is one of much Importance,
as DR.. Francis Gallon has pointed out in q
recent article to which we have already re-
ferred. At our deaf and dumb asylums as
at present generally conducted, the people
are educated so as to become q class apart
from the ordinary human race, and hence
are disposed to inteImarry among them
selves and perpetuate their in6rmities. To
gether they feel at home, for all use the
same method of communication, but among
those who hear and speak they are i'll at
ease and out Of harmony.
We have IN the United States about forty
thousand deaf mutes, aud under our present
system their Numbers are increasing with
dangerous rapidity. Of the papils OF the
ssylums from which statistics SIS to the sub
iect are obtainable, about one,halt marry
and of these as many as eighty per cent.
marry together; and this State OF things
has been going on increasingly for two or
more generations, until, as DR.. Gallon says,
a deaf variety of the human race may De
said TO be established in the Uuite1 States.
Congenital deafness, which appears spora-
Ideally in other countries, has been artificial
ly preserved here.
The exhibition Of Tuesday was therefore
important, as calling attention to a method
of instructing the deaf and dumb which
should be required BY public opinion, if not
made obligatory by law. The substitution
of the oral system for that of gesture lsu-
gusge is demanded by the interests Of so
Cietv.