Memoir Upon the Formation of a Deaf Variety of the Human Race (1883) / Chapter Skim
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
Pages 19-26
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From page 19... ...
The same course adopted and pursued in the human race would undoubtedly lead to the same result." He concluded with the remark, " that every consideration of philanthropy as well as the interests of congenitally deaf persons themselves should induce their teachers and friends to urge upon them the impropriety of intermarriage." It 18 reasonable to suppose that, whatever influence Dr. Turner's statements may have exerted upon the marriages of the deaf throughout the country, his conclusions and beliefs must have had considerable weight with the pupils of his own institution, and this may perhaps have been the cause of the decrease in the proportion of intermarriages noted among the pupils of his institution since the date of his paper.
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From page 20... ...
marriages of deaf-mutes and especially between two deaf mutes, were far more common m America than in Europe; and that, except among the pupils of the New York Institution, the) e were ttoice as many deaf-mule men with hearing wives, as deaf-mute women with hearing husbands Piincipals of institutions for the deaf and dumb have personal knowledge of their pupils, and may therefore be able to arrive at correct conclusions regarding the results of intermarriage.
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From page 21... ...
E v e n though it were possible to arrive at a correct conclusion regarding the total number of deaf offspring recorded m the reports, still we would not be able to ascertain the actual number of deaf children born to the pupils. F o r it is obvious, from the following considerations, that the number recorded is so much less than the number born as to lead to the inference that in a considerable proportion of cases the deaf offspring are not recorded at all until some of the children make their appearance in the institution as pupils.
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From page 22... ...
I n the following tables this plan of addition has been adopted, and it must be remembered that the number of families noted and the number of deaf children born, as deduced from the reports of the American Asylum and Illinois Institution, must not bo taken to indicate the actual number of families formed by the pupils of these institutions, nor the actual number of deaf children born to them. They simply indicate a proportion, which is expressed in the third column by a percentage.
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From page 23... ...
80 23 28 7 239 34 14 2 * Class 4 givfs summation of classes 2 and i I have already stated that lu the majority ot the cases that have fallen under my personal observation where a deaf-mute was married to a hearing person that the hearing person belonged to a family containing deaf mutes, and this is significant m the light of the results deduced above, especially when we remember that the late Dr.
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From page 24... ...
Congenitally deaf parent known.fo have deaf-mute relatives 44 14 31.8 (6) Congenitally d<'af parent recorded as a sporadic case 18 None.
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From page 25... ...
These results are in close accordance with the experience of the venerable principal of the Pennsylvania Institution, as expressed in the following letter. P E N N S Y L V A N I A INSTITUTION ifon D E A F AND D U M B , Philadelphm, November 14, 1S83 A GRAHAJI B E L L , Esq D E A R SIR Continued lU health has prevented an earlier compliance with your request of October 15 The list I now send is full and accuiate, according to the recoids of the institution and my recollection In regard to most of the cases, I know of no place where fullei infouii.ition can be obtained than our books furnish A residence ol more than forty j ears m this institution has afforded nie abundant opportunity for observation in regard to the subject of your research A statement of the conclusious I have arrived at may be of some interest and use to j on In regard to the marriage of deaf mutes with each other, if both the man and the -woman are deaf from birth, there is very great danger -- I should say a strong probability -- that some of the offspring will be born deaf I know a family, however, where the mother is one of three congenitally dciif children and the father one of five, and the seven children they have had are all without defect In the list sent you all the parents, except lu two cases, were born deaf In one of these two cases the father could hear, in the other the mothei is a semi-mnte Where both parents became deaf adventitiously, there seems to be no more probability of the offspring being born deaf than there is where both parents liejvr Where only one of tie parents is congenitallj deaf, the children almost always beai Any further information I can give will be furnished wiUinglj Yours, respectfully, JOSHUA F O S T E R My attempts to deduce from the records of the marriages of the deaf the influences that cause the production of deaf offspring have met with only partial success.
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From page 26... ...
But when we consider that nearly all of these children were bom deaf, whereas nearly half of the deaf mutes of the country (45.9 per cent.) became deaf from accidental causes, we realize that the liabdity to the production of congenital deaf-mutes is more nearly twenty times that of the population at large than ten times.
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