Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-07-06
FRENCH SCIENTIST
SAYS NONE DEAF
Patients Demonstrate Hear
ing After Treatment at
Milwaukee Meeting.
special Dispatch to The Star.

special DlSpatcn TO Inc star.
MILWAUKEE,, July 5 (NA.N.A0.-
DR.. Marcel Vignedion of New York Uni
versity does not believe there is any
body who is totally deaf.
II have not found such case in the
80 years in which have studied more
than 1000 cases of Deafness" he said
while here to demonstrate how he opens
ears to the Association to Promote the
Teaching of Speech to the Deaf, now
In convention.
Prof. Vigneron asked for subjects who
were rated as absolutely without ability
TO hear sound or voice. Local deaf
schools produced the subjects. The
French scientist. formerly of the Sor-
bonnie, Paris, then showed a highly
skeptical audience how he could make
every one of the deaf persons hear pure
tones from tuning forks and, after
few minutes of tone maSSaging, as he
called 1t, make them hear the vowels
a, and u spoken by the human voice.
He had never seen the subjects before.
DR.. Vlgneron made no claim to being
able to magically restore hearing. He
did assert, however, his belief that all
persons dubbed totally deaf could de-
velop some degree of hearing of either
voice or music by continued stimula-
ton of the auditory muscles through
sound massage.
Ears Need Exercise.
Sound is to the ear what exercise
IS to the muscles" he said. when
deafness begins from any cause people
stop using their ears They should use
them more"
DR.. Vigneron said that no costly APP
paratus was necessary, but that patients
could devise simple methods, such as
he used in the laboratory, to stimulate
the long unused or neglected parts of
the ear to revive circulation of the
blood and restore some degree of
hearing.
The children with whom DR.. Vigneron
demonstrated here belonged to all
classes of deafness. Some had become
deaf from spinal meningitis, scarlet
fever, falls, and some were congenitally
deaf' In no case was the professor un-
able to get sound through to the brain.
Usually 1t took but two or three min
utes for the first pure tones.
There was tense scene at the first
demonstration, with hundreds of skep-
TICS watching. Calmly the professor
struck his tuning forks, held behind
the subjects heads. They had been
instructed to raise their hands if they
heard sound. Soon hands began to
pop up and broad smile covered the
face OF Little Peggy, hearing her first
sound Her green hair ribbon bobbed
violently as she nodded yes.
DR.. Vigneron then struck forks of
different tones until he increased the
range from IS vibrations per second to
912 Then he introduced overtones
from sounding boxes and tapped on
hollow forms. He explained that it
sometimes took just one specific tone.
RI he 6iSanyarol kax,a
ment to convey the first stimulation
to the long dead ear. Quickly the
other tones penetrated.
Stimulation Brought Results.
The professor told of cases in which
he had been able to make a subject UNI
derstand and repeat Is words after sew
eral hours of stimulation. A deaf
teacher. in Milwaukee had her ears
opened by Prof Vigneron one day and
awoke the next day able to hear a
typewriter for the first time in many
years.
The professor has devoted most of
his life to sound study, except for four
years in the World War in which he was
wounded five times and won the Croix
de Guerre. His demonstrations here
caused storm of phone calls from deaf
persons asking that he treat them.
He saw many. The State Teachers
College gave him their gymnasium one
morning in which to demonstrate. Crit
cism and cries of fraud were also raised
from some doctors and the deaf laiety
who read about his experiments in the
newspapers.
But as H. M. McNIanaway, Staunton,
Va, national president of the AsSocia-
ton to Promote the Teaching Of Speech
TO the Deaf, said:
I'VE have seen what he did. We can
not deny that. We are open minded.
We want especially to see what can be
accomplished in permanent way after
prolonged treatment"