This article discusses hearing disability in early modern Europe, focusing on medical ideas to demonstrate a profound shift in thinking about deafness over the course of the eighteenth century. Scholars have previously described changes in the social status of the deaf in the eighteenth century, pointing at clerics’ sympathy for the deaf and philosophers’ fascination with gestures as the origin of language, but there is remarkably little scholarship on the growing interest in deafness and hardness of hearing by physicians. From the seventeenth century onwards, however, medical men investigated earwax and mucus in the Eustachian Tube and developed theories about the propagation of sound waves via fluid airs and nervous juices in relation to hearing and deafness. This article argues that this focus on fluids brought about a new medical understanding of auditory perception, which viewed hearing and deafness not as dichotomous but as states along a continuous spectrum. As such, this article offers a new perspective on the study and treatment of hearing difficulties in early modern Europe, arguing that there was no solid dividing line between deafness and hearing; if anything, it was permeable and unstable.
...More
Book
Jaipreet Virdi;
(2020)
Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History
(/isis/citation/CBB945172024/)
Book
Blume, Stuart S.;
(2010)
The Artificial Ear: Cochlear Implants and the Culture of Deafness
(/isis/citation/CBB001031571/)
Article
Mauldin, Laura;
(2014)
Precarious Plasticity: Neuropolitics, Cochlear Implants, and the Redefinition of Deafness
(/isis/citation/CBB001421190/)
Book
Graeme Gooday;
Karen Sayer;
(2017)
Managing the Experience of Hearing Loss in Britain, 1830–1930
(/isis/citation/CBB651894216/)
Chapter
Giovacchini, Julie;
(2011)
L'expérience par les sens: question de philosophe ou question de médecin?
(/isis/citation/CBB001200372/)
Article
Andreas Rydberg;
(2019)
Michael Alberti and the Medical Therapy of the Internal Senses
(/isis/citation/CBB156978076/)
Book
Christian Laes;
(2018)
Disabilities and the Disabled in the Roman World: A Social and Cultural History
(/isis/citation/CBB374372359/)
Chapter
Buton, François;
(2006)
Making Deaf Children Talk: Changes in Educational Policy towards the Deaf in the French Third Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB000774647/)
Article
Paul Eling;
Stanley Finger;
(2021)
Franz Joseph Gall on the “deaf and dumb” and the complexities of mind
(/isis/citation/CBB096600011/)
Article
Aicardi, Christine;
(2009)
The Analytic Spirit and the Paris Institution for the Deaf-Mutes, 1760--1830
(/isis/citation/CBB000931551/)
Article
Paul Dakin;
(2015)
Goldilocks or Granny?: Portrayals of Deafness in the English Novel
(/isis/citation/CBB496139440/)
Article
Pearce, J. M. S.;
(2013)
John Fothergill: A Biographical Sketch and his Contributions to Neurology
(/isis/citation/CBB001320366/)
Article
Giacomo Savani;
(2020)
The Lure of the Past: Ancient Balneology at the Turn of the Eighteenth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB527031394/)
Article
Loudon, Irvine;
(2001)
Doctors and Their Transport, 1750-1914
(/isis/citation/CBB000101394/)
Article
Gafner, Lina;
Ritzmann, Iris;
Weikl, Katharina;
(2011)
Gesundheitsmarkt in ärztlichen Praxisjournalen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts. Eine Einführung
(/isis/citation/CBB001252178/)
Article
Eriksen, Anne;
(2013)
Cure or Protection? the Meaning of Smallpox Inoculation, ca. 1750--1775
(/isis/citation/CBB001320601/)
Book
Cabré, Montserrat;
Ortiz, Teresa;
(2001)
Sanadoras, Matronas y Médicas en Europa
(/isis/citation/CBB000101360/)
Article
Alessandro Pastore;
(2018)
Dottrina dei sensi e laboratorio dell’esperienza nell’opera di Paolo Zacchia (1584-1659). A proposito delle nascite mostruose
(/isis/citation/CBB714050863/)
Book
Ellen Adams;
(2021)
Disability Studies and the Classical Body: The Forgotten Other
(/isis/citation/CBB173050561/)
Article
Ahuja, Nitin K.;
(2013)
“It Feels Good to Be Measured”: Clinical Role-Play, Walker Percy, and the Tingles
(/isis/citation/CBB001201346/)
Be the first to comment!