The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-06-08
MAN WHO HEARS 1Y HIS TEETH
Music the One Pleasure of a San
 Francisco Deaf Man.

San Francisco Call.
 An old man south of Market Street, who is almost stone deaf, has peculiar way of enjoying himself His one pleasure in life Is to go into certain saloon ana clinch his teeth on a music box there By this means he hears the music. Here he will sit for hours dropping n,ckel after nickel into the machine. The men about
 the saloon often treat him to tune. They say that after he has spent an af- ternoon in this way he Is amiable for a week. When the world again gets out of
 gear he betakes himself to the. music
 box and gets his soul soft-pedaled and
 returned again to the music of the
 spheres.
 The bartender will tell you that this man listens to music through his teeth. But Dr. c. Morse explains the matter
 more scientifically.
 Tt Is through bone vibration that the
 man hears. This method of hearing is often employed when the auditory nerve is unaffected. although the person may be deaf to sound waves coming through the ear.
 It Is fearfully and wonderfully made the least understood of all the organs of sense. It has a most marvellous mechan- ism-it contains the greatest number of tools in the smallest compass. l refer, I of course. to the inner ear where. within an inch of space, we ind the three small est bones of the body and a rolled up Keyboard on which Is played the great | mind registers.
 Sound comes to the person with un- | impaired hearing through sound waves, which strike upon the ear drum and set | in motion d fluid, and the vibration pass es through these three tiny homes before | 1t is considered by mother nature sub | dued enough. to touch the sensitive audi l tory nerve, which in turn transmits the impression to the brain, and then the | mind is conscious of the sensation of sound.
 Tn cases of deafness when the audi | tory nerve is not affected the vibrations l can be transmitted through the bone to | the auditory nerve and telegraphed to l the brain. If the sound vibration can reach the auditory nerve the rest of the | process is the same as 1t Is with those | whose hearing Is unimpaired. T "A friend of mine who was so deaf that I 1 fairly had to shout to him, could hear | me talk through the telephone in my | natural voice, so I used to send him in
 an adjoining office and ring him up when | I had anything to tell him. He would | put the receiver close to his ear and the | sound waves would go direct, carried by 1 the bone vibration.
 If you take tuning fork and while | it Is still vibrating touch the head with 1 1t you can hear it. The sound is trans
 mitted to the auditory nerve by the means
 of bone vibration. If you listen to 1t ir
 the natural way you will perceive that
 the sound is much louder The. sound | transmitted through bone vibration is much more indistinct, owing to the diff ference in the medium through which
 the sound vibrations must pass
 ''Thc natural method employs the most delicate contrivances for transmitting the
 sound, but 1t is wonderful how well the
 bones can do work in this line with prac- ticA.
 Practice, practice. what can we not dc
 by practice!
 | Science is making rapid strides in
 helping the deaf to hear, the blind to see | and the lame and halt to walk