Evening star., 1928-12-16
BY DIR. WENDELL C. PHILLIPS,

ny Dk. WENDELL u. Fh111LAFSS
Founder American Federation of Organiza-
tons for the Hard of Hearing. Former
President American Medical Association.
Superstition. it seems, will never
die out as long as men find it SO easy
to believe what they want to believe.
Credulity flourishes today as of yore,
the only difference being that whereas
formerly it based its claims on super
natural forces, today its absurdities are
explained in pseudo-scientific terms.
Many people who laugh at witchcraft
and demonology nevertheless will en-
brace almost any ridiculous idea If 1t Is
handed to them in the name of science.
They know enough about science 10
realize that it has performed miracles
but not enough to grasp its present
limitations.
According to the newspapers, last
August 10-year-old boy who was deaf
and dumb was taken by his mother to
flying field. In spite of his agonized
protests he was forced into the cockpit
of an airplane and securely strapped
there. The pilot then took up the plane
and put it through q series of stunts.
loops and sudden drops in an effort to
frighten the terror-Stricken child into
speaking. Since this was not success
full, the mother announced that she
would, by forceful means if necessary,
make the boy go up again, to see II an
other treatment" would restore his
speech. But such storm of protest
arose from various individuals and from
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children that the youngster was
spared this second ordeal.
Tragedy Follows "Cure."
7 Meanwhile the word had gone round
that here was a new "cure" for deafness
and its resultant mutism-one that had
plenty of thrills, plus gratifying pub
licity. Announcements of stunt flights
for the deafened broke out like rash
in newspapers all over the country.
Even deafened dogs were not neglected,
for Bob White, grandson of President
Coolidge's Rob Roy, was taken up.
The climax Of this tragedy of errors
was reached when the parents of Luke
Briotta, a deaf and dumb boy l3 years
Of age, sent him up, accompanied by
an adventurous friend, for flight above
Agawam, Mass. The father declined
an invitation to accompany them. When
the pilot threw his plane into loop
in an effort to frighten the boy into
speaking. his father and sister watch
ing from the ground, saw 1t burst into
flames, the wings fly off and the body
of the ship shoot down with terrific
speed into swamp, carrying its three
passengers to instant death.
The belief that deafness or mutism
can be cured by dangerous airplane
stunts is Intellectually on a par with
the old faith in the curative qualities
Of the left hind foot of rabbit shot in
a graveyard on the dark of the moon
by the seventh son of a seventh son: or
the belief held by certain ignorant
people today that the best cure for a
headache is to stick your head in a
chicken coop: or the idea that the way
to heal an open cut is to battle 1t in
greasy dishwater. So far from airplane
rides curing deafness, they often actual
ly produce a certain degree of it. In
the case Of people already deafened the
condition is likely to be made worse by
the fright produced by stunting
There are many varieties of deafness,
just as there are many kinds of skin
diseases they spring from radically
different causes, and hardly any two
should be treated in the same way.
No Cure for COngenitaI Deafness.
For congenital deafness or mutiSm-
that dating from birth-Science has yet
discovered no cure, since it is almost al
ways due to some anatomical or other
physical defect. Even If you terrified a
congenitally deaf and dumb person to
the point OF depriving him of reason, he
could not hear you nor speak, any more
than Stringless violin could produce
music. The only possible result Of
frightening him would be. perhaps, to
create such a fear psychosis in his
mind that his character and reaction
to life would be dangerously warped, and
he might even develop any number of
other physical ills as result. Fear
does not leave visible physical scar,
as does fire or mutilation, but it may
have far more devastating effects on
the personality The history of pSy-
chiatry is replete with the cases of
children who have developed many
kinds of bodily ailments and bad
habits as the result of being frightened
when they were very young.
Other ideas back of this airplane
mania seem to be that certain forms of
acquired deafness can be cured by TAX
ing the patient into high attitudes, or
by Subjecting him to sudden drop
from a high altitude to lower. When
we were up 1000 felt my eustachian
tubes OPEN" said one imaginative old
man who tried the cure" recently.
Now, the principal physical effects of
going from high altitude to low one
result from the swift change in air
pressure. This same condition is felt
by all men who work in caissons, where
the air is much more condensed and
the pressure greater than on the street
| Yet it Is a well known fact that men
who work in caissonS often become
deafened. This shows that sudden
changes of pressure instead OF curing
deafness may actually produce 1t be-
cause of the harmful effect that they
have on the ear drum.
Both the excessive noise Of the air.