Volume 1

The lost senses / By John Kitto.

  • Kitto, John, 1804-1854.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The lost senses / By John Kitto. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that time he heard perfectly with both ears. During the three or four months he listened only, but used to repeat to himself the words he had heard. He at length broke silence, though he could speak but badly. The divines put many questions to him concerning his past life, his ideas of God, of the human mind, and of moral good and evil. But on all these and the like matters, his mind was an utter blank. He had, indeed, frequented the church, and did there as he saw others do : but he had led a purely animal life, entirely taken up with the objects he saw around him, but without drawing from what he beheld, or from the actions he wit- nessed, any of the inferences which might perhaps a priori have been expected. Another case is that of David Fraser, who was deaf anti dumb from his birth till seventeen years of age, when he had an attack of fever, which went off in the natural course, without his being bled. In a few weeks after his recovery he perceived a kind of motion in his brain, which gave him much uneasiness ; but at the same time he began to hear, and in process of time to understand speech. This naturally disposed him to imitate what he heard, and he attempted to speak. The servants of the house were much amazed to hear him; but several weeks elapsed before anything he said could be clearly understood. It is, however, remarked as a singularity, that long after, although he knew nothing of Gaelic, he spoke with the Highland accent, just like Highlanders who at his time of life had begun to learn the English tongue. It is observable, that in both these cases, the persons whose hearing was restored, were obliged to remain a considerable time silent, till by obser-