Practical Aids for the Deaf

1916

Almost any pains are worth taking if by their means the senses of sight and hearing may be preserved; but sometimes, in spite of all that can be done, deafness goes on to the chronic form. In that case no treatment has been discovered that will cure it, especially if it is the kind that is associated with atrophy of the internal parts of the ear. It is of course true that atrophy, or wasting, of any part of the body means loss of function. If you had an atrophied hand or foot, you could see for yourself that it was useless. But the internal ear is hidden from us, and so some of us go on hoping against hope that a miracle will he worked in our own case and that some doctor somewhere will be able to raise the dead.

In that way a great deal of time is lost and a great deal of suffering caused. Chronic and incurable deafness is a cross that must be embraced if we would not be crushed beneath it. The first thing to do is to accept the inevitable with all the cheerfulness we can command; the next thing is to put away every bit of foolish, self-consciousness and false shame about the affection, and the third thing is to get as quickly as possible one of the many excellent contrivances that have been invented to help deaf people. In all our large cities, at the shops of the best opticians, you can find cases filled with these contrivances. The rules about permitting people to take them out on trial are usually very fair. Ten days' use of any one of these will show you whether it will help you or not.

A very useful form of appliance is the electrical apparatus in connection with its own battery. It is a bother, no doubt, to carry it about and manipulate it, but not hearing at all is a greater bother. That is undoubtedly the strongest crutch for the deaf; and its makers assert that it helps to train the ear back to the recognition of human speech. For partial deafness there are smaller and simpler devices, and for those who have accepted deafness as a fact beyond any curative measures, and who still have their own teeth for bone conduction of sound, the audiphone (sometimes called the dentiphone), a black gutta-percha fan held between the front teeth, is often the greatest help. It also possesses the advantage of costing only a few dollars.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 26, 1916, p. 4.