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HANDBOOK - History of The Deaf
HANDBOOK - History of The Deaf
A Handbook
The reconstructions are made to help understand the present by studying the past.
The past is (re)drawn to account for the present.
Ideas are grounded on events and personalities and shape political, economic, social,
religious, medical, literary, educational and cultural behavior and institutions within a
defined human territory across a delineated period of time.
The history of ideas of deafness and about deaf people in political, economic, social,
religious, medical, literary, educational and cultural contexts.
What are the different conceptions and treatments of deafness proffered in history?
Does deaf community and sign language exist at a particular time and space?
How are historical events and periods be characterized within the time and spatial frame?
Historiography
Deep analysis and structuring of discrete events and personalities into a narration.
Primary or secondary
Direct or indirect.
The types of evidence used in constructing history are different for different eras in
human history.
Types of evidence for a history of the D/deaf
Stone etchings
Works of art
Since the invention of the Gutenburg printing presses in the 14th century:
The evidence is garnered from those sources that contain references to terms such as:
D/deaf
Language
Gesture
Speech
Hearing
Communication
Mute
Dumb
Word
Sound
Vision
The evidence also comes from medical, social, and cultural institutions.
Social, spatial and temporal dimensions of history
Social dimension:
Temporal dimension:
Spatial dimension:
Scale:
Micro-history vs. macro-history.
Local (periphery) vs. regional vs. center.
Substantial spatial variation in how the same people or unit operate in different
spaces as well as in different times.
Historical Issues in the Study of the Deaf Body
The condition of deafness occurred in all societies; not restricted to any social group or type of
social structure. Early civilizations were beset with diseases, pestilence, plaques, wars, poverty,
inbreeding, migration, inherited defects, and other natural and human causes. These were the
leading causes of deafness.
Problem with evidence: the term “deaf’ and “mute: They were either one term or many terms in
ancient languages. They also do not always refer to hearing impairment or deaf people or sign
language, but refer to silence, quietness, non-action, in a figurative sense.
Incidence and conditions of deafness is a matter of conjecture for early, prehistoric, ancient,
classical, and medieval societies. Most information is found in empires, such as those in Europe.
Ancient Classifications
Assyria:
Greek:
Latin:
mutus = deaf-mute.
Code of Hammurabi was prepared during the period of Assurbanipal (ca 668-626 BCE)—library
of tablets, some dated back to Third Millennium BCE. Code inscribed on a basalt stone stele
(clay). The code states nothing on deafness; it refers to medical practice and malpractice.
The gods inflicted disability as a punishment upon those who incurred their anger.
If the gods were not to blame, a malignant being who disliked humanity was seen
as responsible for evil and unhappiness.
“That the strong might not injure the weak, in order to protect the widows and
orphans…” (In Introduction)
Section 282: “If a slave say to his master: ‘You are not my master’ if they convict
him his master shall cut off his ear.”
One of the treatments of hearing loss: “If a man’s ears are dull of hearing thou shalt
sprinkle one shekel of pomegranite water and one shekel of opopanax water on wool, put
it into his ear(s): thou shalt do this for three days, on the fourth day thou shalt cleanse his
ears, bray alum and blow it into his ears.”
Attitudes:
“The risk was foreseen that some rogue might use a mad, deaf, blind or otherwise
disabled person as an unwitting agent to commit a sacrilegious act so that the
resultant cause should be diverted from the instigator.” (in KAR 202)
Ancient Egypt
Ebers Papyrus (1553 BC).
Major concerns: customs and medicine. Concerned with general medical conditions.
Medical works:
cover many human ailments, from abortion to tumors
supernatural etiologies
alchemist treatments
ancient recipes
sober advices
magic
Deafness cannot be cured medically. Tried with lotions and ointments.
A proposed vascular cause of deafness and the impact of deafness on
speech: “As to that through which the ears become deaf: there are
two vassels that affect it, namely the ones leading to the root of the
eye; another location, to the whole eye. When he is deaf, his mouth
cannot be opened (i.e., he cannot speak).”
A proposed treatment for poor hearing: “The beginning of remedies for an
Ear whose hearing is poor: red ochre, juice of tamarix, are ground
fine with fresh balanites oil and applied to the ear.”
“Legal” works:
Forbade infanticide for handicapped and disabled.
Respected them due to its ideologies of conscience, civilization, truth,
justice, righteousness, one god.
Social observations:
There were activities that aimed to help bypass hearing loss.
Trained blind people to become poets and musicians.
Koller Papyrus, Warnings to the Idle Scribe (1200 BC).
“They tell me that thou forsakest writing, and departest and dost flee; that thou forsakest
writing and usest thy legs like horses of the riding-school(??).
“Thy heart is fluttered; thou art like an axj-bird. Thy ear is deaf(?); thou art like an ass in
taking beatings. Thou art like an antilope in fleeing.
“Thou art not a hunter of the desert, nor a Mazoi of the West! Thou art one who is deaf
and does not hear, to whom men make (signs) with the hand.
Leningrad Papyrus:
1116B: “No one can live when clouds cover over (the sun). Then everyone
is deaf for the lack of it.” (Possible association between hearing and speech
disorders?)
Winzer (1993):
Infanticide of deformed newborns by age of 3 versus deafened later in life after age 3.
Unequivocal treatment by the rulers, elders, families, parents.
One early Egyptian wrote that there is no use wasting words upon the dumb.
Mass people were largely illiterate.
Education was reserved for bureaucrats and for bureaucratic purposes.
Ancient Hebrews
Religion
Old Testament
Exodus (4:10-17):
Moses complained he does not speak well. Lord says he made that way:
“And the Lord said unto him (Moses), ‘Who hath made man’s mouth? Or
who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing or the blind? Have not I the
Lord?”
Deaf should not be cursed nor put into a stumbling block before the blind:
“Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind,
but shalt fear thy God; I am the Lord.”
Mishnah:
Debates, rulings, and sayings of the Tannaim—5 generations of rabbis from 50 BC to 200
AD, and rabbis of Amoraim and Savoraim, from 200-700 AD).
Looked at the legal status of the deaf based on cognitive and communicative competence.
Mishnah Volume I, Chapter 4: “If one exposes his cattle to the sun, or he places them in
the custody of a deaf-mute, a fool, or a minor, and they break away and do
damage, he is liable.”
Minimal non-oral communication needs to be diagnosed before the deaf can enter
into property ownership, marriage, divorce, etc., but not real estate.
Hearing people who are also mute function like hearing people.
They are placed under no restrictions.
Deaf mutes may transact business by signs and be communicated with by signs,
as well as by lip movements.
Deaf can intermarry if contracted by signs. Babylonian Talmud: Yevamot, Chp. 14, Folio
113A.
Rabbi Malchio in the fourth century AD:
married deaf people, gave financial help, and ensure its success
There might be education for deaf mutes since the first century AD?
The Classical Era, 1000/500 B.C.-400 A.D.
Classical Greece
Laws
Pages 253-257:
Children were the property not of their parents but of the commonwealth.
Newborn babies were brought before the elders to be examined for their fitness
for citizenship before acknowledged by a family, to see if they are physically
capable of developing into warriors.
“Let it be a law that nothing imperfect should be brought up” (Aristotle, Politics)
Homer: Iliad.
A tale about an anonymous deaf son of Croesus, a King of Lydia and the world’s richest
man of the time, who were deemed as worthless and incapacitated, and who later
regained voice to save the father from the pyre.
Book 1, para 34: “He had two ones; one with a physical disability, being deaf and dumb.”
Para 39: “You are my only son, for I do not count that wretched cripple, your brother.”
Para 86: “A Persian soldier was about to cut Croesus down…but the dumb son, seeing
the danger, was so terrified by the fearful thing that was about to happen, that he
broke into speech, and cried ‘Do not kill Croesus, fellow!’. Those were the first
words that he uttered—and he retained the power of speech for the rest of his
life.”
Plutarch: Alcibades
Bragg:
In many Greek literary works, people with hard of hearing are not worthless.
An important measure of one’s worth was his participation in the army or the navy.
All male citizens were included in the military.
As much as 30 percent of old men were hearing impaired.
Medicine
Asclepius
Founded one of the greatest medical schools on the island of Cos, and a son of an
Aclepius priest.
Constructed the humoral theory of medicine, modeled after Empedocles (5th century
BCE)
Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, section 3: “South winds relax the body, make the tissues moist,
reduce acuity of hearing and produce headaches and vertigo.”
Hippocrates differentiated between manifestations of ear diseases by age:
In para 24: “…new-born infants suffer from…and discharging ears…”
Para 31: “In the old…dizziness…and deafness.”
A follower of Hippocratic medicine, and wrote of specific medical treatments for hearing
impairment.
“Suppose that we had no voice or tongue, and wanted to communicate with one
another. Should we not, like the deaf and dumb, make signs with the hands
and head and the rest of the body?”
Observed and wanted to use deaf’s signing with each other if one have no
voice or tongue.
“Anyone can show what he thinks about anything, unless he is speechless or deaf from
birth” (in Plato’s Theaetetus, 160e, 161a)
Protagoras.
Recognizes differences between deaf and mute.
Aristotle (384-322 BC):
Problems (395 BC): Book IX, Problems connected with the Voice.
Problems Book XI, No. 1: “Why is it that of all the senses the hearing is most
liable to be defective from birth? Is it because hearing and the voice may
arise from the main source? Now language, which is a kind of voice, seems to
be very easily destroyed and to be very difficult to perfect: this is indicated
by the fact that we are dumb for a long term after our birth, for at first we do not
talk at all and then at length begin only to lisp. And because language is easily
destroyed, and language (being a kind of voice) and hearing both have the
same source, hearing is, as it were, per accidens, though not per se, the most
easily destroyed of the senses. Further evidence of the fact that the source
of language is eminently easy to destroy may be taken from the other
animals; for no animal other than man talks, and even he begins to do so
late, as has already been remarked.”
Book XI, No. 2: “Why is it the deaf always speak through their nostrils? Is it be
cause they are near to being dumb? Now the dumb make sounds through
their nostrils; for the breath escapes by that way because their mouth is closed,
and it is closed because they make no use of their tongue for vocal purposes.”
Book XI, No. 4: “Why do the deaf always speak through their nostrils> Is it be
cause the deaf breathe more violently? For they are near to being dumb;
the
passage therefore of the nostrils is distended by the breath, and those who are in
this condition speak through the nostrils.”
The soul resides in the windpipe and the areas of the body that create speech, and
that “voice is sound with a meaning.”
History of Animals (Book 4, part. 9, 536b.4).
“Men that are born deaf are in all cases also dumb; that is, they can make vocal
sounds, but they cannot speak.”
Hard of hearing are those who knew how to speak but cannot regulate their
voices.
Poetics
An interpretation:
Thought = intelligence = articulating words.
Can hear = can have thought = have intelligence.
No hearing = no thought = no intelligence.
The deaf has no thought and no intelligence.
Deafness = muteness.
For the Greeks, the degree of one’s hearing loss never appears to be an important issue; what
mattered was one’s ability to speak. Aristotle recognized the hard of hearing as those who knew
how to speak but cannot regulate their voices. Their speech was only ridiculed, and in literature,
they lisped, stuttered, stammered, and mumbled. Examples are in Plutarch’s Alcibades.
Edwards (1997) wrote that the Greeks perceived deafness an as intellectual impairment because
of verbal communication problems. Speech and intelligence go hand in hand. No speaking
ability indicated stupidity. The deaf is also dumb, “deaf and dumb.” There was a diversity of
definitions of the term “deaf” Muteness indicated diminished worth. The situation is different for
the hard of hearing because they can speak. Language, especially speech, was the hallmark of
human achievement. Deaf and dumb means separation from the political and intellectual arena.
Deafness was perceived not as a physical handicap but as an impairment of reasoning and basic
intelligence.
The themes are: philosophy, medicine (anatomy, which reflects physiology). There were two
types of deaf people: deaf mutes, who were classed with the idiots, and deaf who speaks, who
were classed with the hard of hearing. The ear was, certainly, the most obvious channel of
hearing, listening, and understanding (Edwards, 1997). This is an elite’s view of the deaf, they
valued eloquence that they thought the deaf lacked. No views from the mass populace.
No evidence to prove or disprove sign language and deaf community (Edwards, 1997). A Greek
would not differentiate or cared about the difference between gestured communication and true
sign language.
There is a possibility that some deaf children of the elites learned reading and writing, and they
communicated in those means with their families and other elites. But the number is small.
Because it is an abstract characteristic, deafness is not easily depicted, and, like headaches, is
difficult to interpret in representation (Edwards, 1997).
Classical Rome
Histories
Dionysius
Roman Antiquities
Romulus
One of the legendary founders of Rome
Those who are a liability to the State were born with gross deformities or
physical imperfections were murdered by turning to pieces by
hungry dogs at age of 3. (also in and Critical Essays)
Deaf included?
The Romans aimed for physical perfection, which they inherited from the Greeks.
It is ridiculous to teach the deaf speech since speech is linked with hearing
“There are no persons born deaf who are not also dumb.”
Book 10, 136: “Only man has ears that do not move, and this is the origin of the
nickname ‘flap-eared’ (flaccus).”
Book 28, 48: “In cases, however, where the deafness is very considerable, gall
warmed in a pomegranate rind with myrrh and rue, is injected into the ears;
sometimes, also, fat bacon is used for this purposes, or fresh asses’ dung, mixed
with oil of roses: in all cases, however, the ingredients should be warmed.”
Laws
Sole concern was to ascertain the fact of unsoundness of mind or body and its
consequences for the performance of acts judged before the law.
Cicero
The Laws
The Roman attitude toward handicapped infants were derived from the Greeks.
Deaf legally identified with the insane and profligate and were stripped of their
rights.
The Romans looked to the family, rather than the State, as the basic unit of socialization. The
paterfamilias has power over the life and death of family members, so fathers, who were male
citizens, can kill newborn babies they deemed as deformed and other wise worthless. Later on,
they were restricted from that right. Around the time of the Empire, from about 30 BC, the power
of the paterfamilias was reduced. There were reports of wet nurses tending to abandoned deaf
babies at the base of the Columna Lactaria. Some deaf children survived possibly because of
parental solicitude, undetected congenital conditions, or postnatal handicaps, were tolerated as if
they were of economic or social value.
The Romans aimed for physical perfection, which they inherited from the Greeks. They thought
it is ridiculous to teach the deaf speech since speech is linked with hearing, just what the Greeks
thought. Deafness is equated with mutism. The deaf are seen as incapable of being educated.
The Roman jurists were not concerned with the nature and cause of disabilities; their sole
concern was to ascertain the fact of unsoundness of mind or body and its consequences for the
performance of acts judged before the law. This focus led them to create a legal framework
characterized by institutions such as guardianships that provided a pattern for later legal
developments affecting exceptional persons.
Medicine
Physician
There is a common origin in the brain for both speech and hearing;
injury to these areas created both deafness and dumbness. Believed that
impaired hearing or deafness is caused by a lesion of the organ of
hearing or of the cochlear nerve or be a lesion at the origin of this nerve to
the brain.
The Greeks and Romans viewed the deaf as economic and social hazards.
Religion
Early Christianity
Matthew (9:5, 13; 11:5) and Mark (7: 31-37, 9: 14-29) (70 CE)
Europe 400-1500
Sources of information:
Literature
Theological stories of saints’ lives (who have met the deaf)
Medical treatises (on ear, etc.)
Legal (laws on disabled)
Iconography (pictures and images).
Some doctors see deafness for more than two years are incurable, otherwise use treatments.
The early legal code of almost all nations in Europe imposed on the deaf more severe civil and
religious disabilities than the Justinian Code, such as:
deprivation of rights of inheritance
restriction from the celebration of Mass
denial of the right to marry without the express dispensation of the Pope.
Medieval Era
Judicial
In late 300 A.D the Roman Empire breakup into eastern and western parts. Eastern Roman
Empire center at the Greek city of Byzantum (later Constantinople, present-day
Istanbul, Turkey): kept Greek classical learning, Orthodox Christianity, and
Roman legal tradition.
In AD 476, Western Roman Empire fell to Germanic barbarians from northern Europe, which
began the Middle Ages.
After 1,000 years, Eastern Roman Empire at Constantinople was burnt down by invading
Ottoman Turks in 1453.
Emperor Constantine legitimized Christianity and offered financial help to families of
disabled babies instead of infanticide.
Emperor Justinian (reigned AD 527-565)
The Digest of Roman Law (AD 533)
50-volume rendering of judicial interpretations
Corpus Juris Civilis, which contained the Digest.
Institutes, a four-volume handbook of civil law
Justinian Code contained in the Institutes.
Integrated a thousand years of Roman law and, combined with the codes of the
Germanic invaders, provided the basis for most legal systems in modern Europe,
that has not changed until the mid- 18th century.
Justinian did not make many changes but combined past interpretations. Only two
manuscripts of the Corpus survived.
Five (5) Conditions of Deafness:
If a person cannot speak and hear by birth, then the person should not make a will
or bequest (transmission of property), or to be granted freedom by
manumission (freedom from slavery or bondage). Holds for both sexes.
If person cannot speak and hear by calamity, the person should get education and
be allowed to make wills and bequests, and to be granted freedom.
If a person is born deaf but can speak, they need auditory training, and he can
have all the freedoms mentioned in (2), above.
Persons deafened by disease can do everything without hindrance.
Persons hearing but unable to speak, and is well-educated, can do anything
mentioned in (3), above.
Recognizes that deafness is not dumbness or muteness.
There were different types of deafness.
They gave full rights to individuals who were
deaf and mute, but literate
deaf but articulate
mute but hearing
adventitiuosly deaf
Rights are denied to those who are deaf and mute from birth and also illiterate--
mostly all those who were born deaf, since those born deaf could never be literate.
The Justinian Code No. 1 suggested those who were born deaf could never be literate.
Images of the Deaf in Medieval Western Europe (de Loup, 1993). 5th-15th
century:
Variety of reactions towards deafness and muteness.
Ignorance and understanding and wanting to meet the deaf.
Thesis of de Saint-Loup: Diverse reactions against the deaf: acceptance (=integration)
rejection, due to weak, non-omnipresent influence of the Church, and lack of centralized
state; largely localized and regionalized.
After the fall of the Rome, Constantine, the first of the Holy Roman Emperors, legitimatized
Christianity and declared it to be an official religion of the Roman Empire in AD 312.
De quantitute animae liber unus (The Magnitude of the Soul), Chapter 18:
Addresses the question of whether the soul has physical size and can grow.
Deafness = deaf people can learn and able to receive faith and salvation.
Recognize sign language and deaf capable of transmitting human thought and belief. Sign
language = spoken language in the ability to reach the soul.
Deaf children of hearing parents documented in the dialogue.
Proposed a thought experiment in which a hearing child is raised in isolation by “deaf-
mute” parents. The child will communicate with its parents by learning the signs the
parents use, and that such signs are a “learned art.”
Had observed a Milanese man who is deaf mute and communicate through signs. Also a
farmer and his wife who have four sons and daughters who are all deaf and dumb and
communicate thorough signs.
Whereas Plato has Socrates use the differences between spoken words and signs, Augustine used
the similarity of spoken and signed language. Both are thought experiments, and nothing to
do with deafness or sign languages.
Disabled people drew small regard and little compassion from the people.
The church questioned their capacity for spiritual achievement and social responsibility.
There is no evidence of public support for disabled people; under the aegis of the church
hospices they cared for exceptional persons.
St. John of Beverly (AD 685), an Anglo-Saxon, who claimed he taught a dumb man
how to speak in a short time, like a week, from letters, syllables, words, and then to
sentences).
St. Sevenerius (A.D. 504). St. Sevenerius made similar attempts as St. John of
Beverly. He healed a person who had for some time been deaf and dumb.
Later writers said it was deaf and dumb man, so St. John is the first teacher of the deaf. All these
are disputable because it was only dumb man and speech cannot be taught in a short time and the
man was probably taught before.
It was reported that Saint Basil, bishop of Caesarea, in AD 370 gathered all types of disabled
people into the monastic institutions that he controlled.
The later Christians, after the fall of Rome, established monasteries and cloisters in the fourth
century AD for those who strove for moral perfection through asceticism, and by the 6th
century AD were carriers of Western Civilization.
Cloisterization of the deaf, which is a poorly studied area of research.
Gestures mark the daily routine in secular as well as religious ceremonies (illustrated in homages
in paintings).
Illustrations showed gestures that were used to confirm contractual transactional agreements.
Other illustrations showed that there were various uses of the hand and gesture in the Middle
Ages--the hand is a mnemonic device used to learn the alphabet or the numbers
(including calculations), or the dates for unfixed religious holidays.
Traveling preachers used symbols written on their hands to outline the different parts of their
speech, adding gestures to their sermons in order to be more persuasive; also musical
hands.
The hand not only conveys meaning but also performs an action: it protects. (“Natural history
of gestures”).
Gestures are not equivalent to speech and vice versa, just as the picture works differently
than the written word.
But gestures and pictures can associate with spoken and written words, give strength to them
and complete the message.
Monasteries: silent gestural communication. Welcomed deaf by hearing oblates or lay brothers.
Religious orders took up education of deaf children and adults.
Bragg: Visual-Kinetic Communication in Europe Before 1600:
A survey of sign lexicons and finger alphabets prior to the rise of deaf education, up to the
Renaissance.
There is no genuine sign languages or deaf communities (groups consisting of at least several
households and persisting over generations) seems to have existed in those times.
Scholars confused the natural sign languages used by modern deaf communities with
artificial sign lexicons such as have been used in Benedictine monasteries from the 10th
century to the present, with “home sign” lexicons such as must have arisen in households
with deaf members, and even with fingerspelling.
Gestures are sublinguistic and not fully decontextualized (here and now) and not yet
language.
(Gestures as extension of spoken language).
There were no vows of silence by medieval monks; none stated in the Rule of St.
Benedict. Only daily hours of silence. Signing was not mentioned in 4th century Rule
of St. Benedict, of Benedict himself who was a contemporary of Cassiodorous.
The history of finger alphabets and the history of signs do not merge until after the
Renaissance when both come into use for the instruction of deaf children.
Sign Lexicons.
No convincing evidence proves that a visual-kinetic language ever existed in Europe until
the rise of deaf communities in the modern era.
Lexicons are prescriptive (not descriptive) sign lists (which suggests that the lists did not
reflect actual signing) and that they include directions for articulation and,
occassionally, rationales or etymologies, but no grammar.
The earliest records of actual sign lexicons are the sign lists of cloistered monks, and
these date from the 10th century, none before the date.
Venerable Bede
De temporum rationae, preface entitled “De computo vel loquela digitorum”
(“Of counting or speaking with the fingers”).
It is the standard text on chronology during the Middle Ages.
Romano Computatio
Finger numbers to stand for letters
Gematria
The substitution of letters for numbers, and vice versa, were well known in the Classical
world.
Forms of gestures:
that are informative (animal sign language)
continue the movements of others (social coordination)
person be changed by movements of others (regulated by social dominance).
Medieval Christianity
Plaques and social disruptions and urbanization created a pervasive pessimism; the medieval
church was wracked with dissension, hatred, and violence, and abuses. In 1095 Pope
Urban II called for the Crusades. In 1150, the church embraced the doctrine of the original
sin whereby everyone is born with sin or inherently evil, so needed to lead a good life.
Black Death, or the pestilence of the Great Mortality, that spread from Asia to Europe around
1348. Lost one-third of the European population from 1347 to 1351 (25 million people).
Mental derangement and dancing maniacs proliferated as a consequence. Witchcrafts and
witchhunters. Trials and laws. Heresy seen by the church as witchcraft. In 1484, Pope
Innocent VIII declared war on witches after writing the Malleus Maleficarum. (The
hammer of witches.) They included the disabled.
Up until the 18th century Enlightenment, European civilization was haunted by the idea of
witches, which led to deaths of hundred of thousands of people. One treatise on exorcism
included the deaf as possessed of the devil. Deafness is unamenable by medieval medical
treatment. The witchcraft lies at the intersection of the biological, existential and social
worlds of the inform (Sawyer 1989). Not everyone followed the Malleus.
It not until the late 17th century that the light of reason prevailed over witchcrafting.
Physicians’ Views
Karl F. Paullini
Flagellum salutis
suggested voluntary beatings on the head to restore deafness and hardness of hearing and
dumbness.
Medieval medicine continued to draw from the notions of Hippocrates, Celsus, and Galen.
Sometimes rational, sometimes unreasoned.
Bizarre notions of religion and demonology to account for deafness for its etiology and
treatment of diseases.
There were various remedies for hearing problems in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They
are screaming aloud, juices and other food in the ear, blows, white-hot iron.
Medieval medicine continued to draw from the notions of Hippocrates, Celsus, and Galen.
Sometimes rational, sometimes unreasoned.
Bizarre notions of religion and demonology to account for deafness for its etiology and
treatment of diseases.
Bartole
Digesta Nova
(No English translation.)
Wrote of deaf man by the name of Nellus Gabrielis, who can lipread.
Literature
Tissier
Le chaudronnier
Deafness silence dumbness = refusal?
all of this generate confusion and anxiety among the hearing, since they might have
created images of animality or monstrosity.
Done at the symbolic level.
Hard of hearing means misunderstandings.
Chretien de Troyes
Le chevalier au lion
villian cannot speak and therefore he cannot reason.
heros=hearing vs. villian=deaf.
Cardinal Nicolas of Cues
Le tableau ou la vision de Dieu
wrote of deaf woman practice lipreading with her daughter.
A post-humorous picture of English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, painted ca. 1410 in London, shows
him displaying his initials, GC, in a finger alphabet.
Henry III of England had a daughter, Catherine, who is deaf and dumb. (Matthew Paris, a
contemporary historian, wrote of her). She is fit for nothing, though possessed of great
beauty.
Communication
Institutionalization
Until the renaissance encouraged pedagogical and medical experimentation on deaf people,
premodern societies seem generally to have ignored deaf members and left them to get along
in their families and isolated rural communities as best as they could. Although there may be
isolated instances in the past, only since the Renaissance have deaf people be systematically
exploited by self-described professionals seeking fame and fortune as miracle working
teachers and doctors.
The general population density never reached the critical threshold for the formation of deaf
communities until the eighteenth century. Communication among the deaf and between the
deaf and the hearing would have been, of necessity, sublinguistic or protolinguistic,
consisting, that is, of gesture, mime, and context-dependent protolanguage.
The Spread of Islam, 600-1400
Rhazes (850-920)
The Book of Simple Medicine, and the Al-Hawi (The Virtuous Life, Continens Liber)
(No English translation.)
Deafness was defined in three categories
impairment (biological; deaf)
curtailment (accidents/social; deafened, hard of hearing)
complete loss (profoundly deaf, born deaf).
believed that congenital hearing loss is curable if treatment begins within the first two
years of its occurrence/onset.
Canon of Medicine
(No English translation.)
Treated causes of diseases based on theory of Galen (ancient Greek physician).
Rycant (1668)
The Present State of the Ottoman Empire
reported some deaf people in harems in the Ottoman Empire.
The Renaissance, 1400-1500
Gutenberg
Invented the movable print type 1450s
led to the wider dissemination of knowledge and a surge in the spread of literacy.
Thus books proliferated down from the elites to the common people.
The shift in language of literati from Latin to the vernacular language.
The Birth of the Gutenberg’s Universe and the Modern Times.
Many deaf were artists, seeing and painting art with forms or expressions of communication.
Bernandino d’Betto Biagi (1454-1513) was a deaf artist.
Studied with Raphael (1483-1520).
painted frescos in the hermitage of Notre Dame in Prado, Spain
Hercule Sarti of Italy (circa 1598)
Hendrick van Campen (1585-1634).
Jaime Lopez of Spain (16th century)
Other Literature
Montaigne (1537-1592).
Essays
Wrote about gestural communication and of deaf mutes signing arguments,
debates, stories.
Described head and hand movements, eyebrows and shoulders, finger alphabets,
gestural grammars.
Rebelais
Le Tiers Livre
Gargantua
Pantagruel
wrote of comic ambiguities of the form of communication.
Characters: Nazdecabre and Panurge (through Pantagruel who served as learned guide)
used gestures developed in religious orders and conversation laced with buffoonery.
Boccaccio
The Decameron mentioned the same observations as Rebalias.
Medicine
Girolamo Aquapendente
wrote two treatises in 1600 and 1603.
He wrote that pantomime was practiced in Italy since ancient Rome are not the same as the
deaf's signs.
One need training in signs to be able to communicate with the deaf
Deafness is not the same as mutism.
There is no cure for congenital and postnatal deafness.
The deaf should receive an education.
Finger Alphabets
Cosmas Rosselius
Thesaurus artificiosae memoriae (A Treasury of Artificial Memory Techniques)
(1579)
Finger alphabets used to aid in memory, as a mnemonic tool.
The Beginnings of Education of the Deaf, 1500-1800
National leadership in education of the deaf related to political, economic, cultural, and military
factors.
One nation which is dominant spread educational ideas for the deaf throughout other nations.
There are overlaps among nations, though.
Progression:
1500s-1600s: Spain
1600s: The Netherlands
1600s-1800s: Great Britain: British method.
1700s-1800s: France: French Method.
1700s-1800s: Germany: German method.
1800s-1900s: The United States.
Spain: 1500s-1600s
St. Benedict
a Cisterian brotherhood near Naples, started in 529 AD.
Benedictine signs originated in the Mediterrian area among hearing people in Naples
the center of gestural and sign communication in Europe.
The Cisterian monks’ fingerspelling system was picked up by the deaf who interacted
with the monks who spread out to other deaf people in France, and then to the U.S.
Melchor de Yebra.
Yebra did not invent the signs, but made them on paper.
1592: Libro Llamado Refugium Infirmorum (The book entitled the Refuge of the
sick). (No English translation.)
An Alphabet of St. Bonaventure is included.
Abecedarium (ABC book). (no English translation.)
Used for communication with the sick and the dying.
Suggestions for use with the very hard of hearing (not the deaf and dumb because
they cannot read).
Mentioned its usefulness for the deaf via a dying deaf person and suggests their use
by the deaf.
Observed that there were deaf people signing to each other in 16th century Spain.
De Velasco
Education of the deaf, in recorded history, began with the de Velasco family.
There were deaf members of the de Velasco family
Each were taught by respective teachers from the Cisterian monastery of the
Order of St. Benedict in the San Salvador of Ona area.
Juan’s son Indigo, who was hearing, begat deaf brothers Pedro and Francisco and
a sister.
Francisco begat deaf Luis.
Ponce taught Juan and the two sons Pedro and Francisco.
Bonet and Carrion taught Luis.
• Cervates (1546-1616) wrote a story about Luis de Velasco in 1613.
Pedro Ponce de Leon (1520-1584)
Established a school at the monastery in Valladolid
Tutored deaf children of Spanish nobility, esp. Juan Hernandez, Francisco, and Pedro de
Velasco.
Pedro studied history, reading, writing, speech, Spanish, Latin, and received Papal
dispensation to be ordained as a priest.
Method: writing is coupled with reading to aid in speech training.
His teaching went from showing fingers to refer to objects, and then teach speech.
Used signs and writing and speech in religion, Greek, Latin, Italian, math,
physics, and astronomy subjects.
Other reports, by Covarrubias, a physician to King Philip IV, in his writings, tells that
Ponce began with reading and writing, and then move to speech, using manual
alphabet. Used paintings and gestures at first.
Ponce used conventional signs used by his monastery brothers monks to teaching deaf
boys.
Ponce left materials on teaching, possibly read by Bonet.
Ponce also taught two of three de Velasco sisters in 12 other deaf people, mostly from
Spanish aristocracy.
Bonet (1579?-1633)
Reduccion de las letras y arte para ensenar a ablar los mudos (The
Simplification of the Letters of the Alphabet and Method of Teaching
Deaf-Mutes to Speak, also known as Method of Teaching Deaf Mutes to
Speak) (1620).
Adopted Yebra’s fingerspelling system and reproduced in his book which is the earliest
volume about deaf education pedagogical methods.
The book did not discuss sign language.
Lipreading needs no teaching.
Not teach sign language, but the object is to teach oral language, using fingerspelling as a
means of teaching a deaf child to speak, read, and write Spanish and be integrated
into Spanish society.
Hearing people interacting with deaf should learn fingerspelling, but the deaf ought to
learn how to speak with hearing people, and be integrated into hearing.society.
Teach from writing, fingerspelling, and speech from letters (sounds), to simple words,
and then speech letters and words, with gestures, and then to phrases, then, if
possible, move on to complex ideas.
Used for communication with the deaf
Used with speech therapy for deaf youths.
Suggested hearing people speak to deaf with mouths wide open. Should not and can not
teach how to lipread, since it is too inexact to be teachable. People move lips
differently for same sound to produce same effect auditorally. Deaf people develop
own techniques to lipread.
Families with deaf youths must fingerspell with the deaf.
Rejected artificial amplification systems and methods.
Stressed early articulatory training (begin at early age), on one to one basis since it is the
most effective, but after signs such as fingerspelling are learnt.
Training moved from alphabets to letter pairs to words (from concrete nouns to abstract
nouns) to phrases to sentences
Focus on pronounciation, not meaning, and de-emphasized speechreading since it cannot
be taught.
Reported that when two deaf strangers meet, they signed using “some signs,” which
might suggest the existence of deaf society. Bonet reported interninglings between the
deaf people via signs.
Ramirez de Carrion.
A teacher of Luis.
Adopted Bonet’s method.
Carrion was secretive of his methods, even though they were revealed by Luis.
Carrion wrote a book, Natural Wonders (1629). (No English translation.)
Described his attempts, but not revealed his methods, with Luis and de Priego.
Carrion also worked with other students, such as Prince Emmanuel of Savoy, the Marquiz de
Piego, and Luis de Velasco, who was a favorite of King Henry LV who appointed him as
the first Marquiz de Frenzo.
Carrion tried “alchemist” medical cures for deafness with oils, ointments, saltpeter, brandy,
naphtha., etc. --so to “help” deaf get voice and speak.
Spain’s Impact.
Spaniards successful in tutoring deaf children of noble families. This news spread
everywhere in Europe.
The Age of Enlightenment: Leading Philosophers and Their Influences on
Deaf Education.
England.
John Locke (1632-1704)
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
There is no natural connection between the spoken word and the idea to which it
refers.
But sound is for him the naturalistic, involuntary, and easiest means.
Focused on “human understanding.”
Ideas precede signs.
He influenced British and German oralism.
France.
J.J. Rousseau (1712-1778)
Emile
Argued that man is noble savage; he needed education and sense training.
Substitutibility of one sense (ex. touch) for another (ex. hearing).
On the Origin of Language
Sign language is equal to speech in terms of the abilities to establish societies,
institute laws, to establish commerce, invent arts, etc.
Sounds convey enough thoughts and emotions or feelings
Gestures can do better job of such thoughts and feelings.
Gestures stand between physical language and the language of the passions,
between gesture and speech, and between nature and culture.
On the Origin of Inequality (pages 47-72, 79).
He discussed about the various abilities and weakenesses within the human
population that set them towards certain aspects of work and participation in
society.
He influenced Pereire.
D. Diderot (1713-1784)
Encyclopedia of Natural Sciences and Art and Lettre sur les sourd-
muets.
Argued that sensations is the means of building ideas, and from ideas to knowledge.
Speech itself is just a representation of the state of the soul, and the sign language can
be language.
Condillac
On Sensations and Essay on Human Knowledge
Argued that knowledge comes from experience; ideas are built from sensation.
Deaf people can have abstract ideas. Thought is to mind as action is to body.
Rene Descartes
Wrote about deafness and deaf people in his books
Discourse on Methods (Volume 1, page 140, 151)
Treatise on Passions
All French philosophers influenced French school of manualism.
Germany
Leibniz (1646-1716)
Philosophical Essays (page 8)
Coined the idea of an universal language, like mathematics.
John Bulwer
Philocophus, or the Deafe and Dumbe Man’s Friend (1648)
Studied and used signs, and advocated its use as natural language of the deaf.
Believed in using one sense for another, to hear with own eyes via lipreading, “lip
grammar.”
Admired the deaf's ability to do so.
Attempted to connect between speech and hearing.
Chirologia; or the Naturalle Language of the Hand (1654).
A treatise on the natural language of the hand.
Manual gestures were a universal character of reason, comprehensible to all
peoples without teaching, since it is the only speech that is natural to man.
Gestures as universal language and as the vice regent of the tongue.
Wrote of ways to have deaf people overcome this disability, rejected the
Hippocratic dictum that speech and hearing share a common brain site, and
emphasized the value of lipreading and hear the words through own eyes.
Defoe
The Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan (1720).
Spoke of deaf person who can read and write and the pedagogy of John Wallis.
The “Oxford School”. 17th century, between 1650s-1660s.
Sir William Holder (1616-1698)
Elements of Speech. (1669)
Taught speech to Alexander Popham
Began with meanings of a word, words, and sounds with lipreading and speech,
and also taught speechreading.
Taught deaf students through the use of finger alphabet and stylized signs.
Recognized that deafened were better speech producers than congenital deaf and,
like Spaniards, taught writing then speech, using two-handed manualism.
An anonymous author
Digiti Lingua (1698)
Added other iconic handshapes to Delgarno’s system to assist in distinguishing
letters.
Encouraged mothers and nurses to communicate via signs and speech to deaf
infants.
Henry Baker (1698-1774).
Established the first school for the deaf in Great Britain
Very selective; private, small school.
Took on pupils in 1720.
Taught reading, writing, speech, and language.
Never divulged methods.
School died with him.
Jane Forester was Baker’s first pupil.
He became a visiting teacher and lived with his pupils, having no school of his own.
Very secretive methods and extracted securities from pupils not to reveal.
Theatre
Antoine Coypel
Interaction of gesture, painting, and theatre.
Le sourd as character in short comedies in 16th century Rouen, France.
Deafness as metaphor
Gestures were used to capture the public’s attention.
Jean de Bigot Palaprat (1650-1721) and David-Augustin de Bruey
produced a play called Le muet.
Lana Terzi
A Jusuit priest
The Prodrome of the Master Art (1670).
Speech teaching with positions on vocal apparatus shown to deaf to emit sounds that
correspond with the letters of the alphabet, then teach how to speak words
corresponding to objects.
Never taught the deaf.