The mental affections of children : idiocy, imbecility and insanity / by William W. Ireland.

Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The mental affections of children : idiocy, imbecility and insanity / by William W. Ireland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    ^lygge, Hartman, Buxton, Turner, and others, though made in different places and varying in details, all go to show that the marriage of one person born deaf with another who can hear, brings into the world deaf children much oftener than when both parents are normal. When both parents are so affected, the proportion of deaf children is about three times greater than when only one parent is deaf In the United States it has been observed that the bringing together of deaf pupils of both sexes in schools for the deaf is apt to result in intermarriages, which, if carried on for generations, might result in the breeding of a class of deaf-mutes. It often occurs that there are more than one deaf child in a family. ‘ I know,’ Saegert * tells us, ‘ of a family in which there were seven children, four boys and three girls. The boys were all deaf-mutes, the girls sound. I know also a family in which exactly the reverse occurred. There are other families in which all the children, without exception, boys as well as girls, following one another, were deaf In one family five children were deaf, and the sixth was born and grew up without any trace of disease of the organ of hearing.’ In the census of Ireland for 1891, there were returned ii deaf-mutes in one family, 8 in two families, and 6 in four families. Mygge says that not less than 90 out of 226 congenital deaf-mutes— that is, about 40 per cent.—had deaf and dumb brothers. In fact, the occurrence of several deaf children in one family is of more common occurrence than that of several idiots. Some- times in families with deaf children there are twins, when both may be deaf, or only one, the other child being normal. It has been several times observed by different inquirers, that marriages producing congenital deaf-mutes were unusu- ally fertile, about 6 per cent, on an average. It frequently * See das Taubstmnmen-Bildungswesen in Preusscn, von C. ^V. Saegert, Creneral-Inspektor des Taubstummenwesens, Separat-Abdi uck aus dein Taub- sLummen-freund von 1874 und 1875.