Disability History Resources: Hearing Loss / Deafness

This book presents an edition of a previously unpublished notebook used by the seventeenth-century polymath John Wallis to teach language to the "deaf mute" Alexander Popham. Under the terms of the law Popham would not have been able to inherit his family title and property if he had remained unable to speak. This is one of the most famous cases in the history of deaf education. The notebook, which has recently come to light in the Popham family mansion, provides fascinating insights into the details of the instruction. It is a rare example of a manual tailor-made for the instruction of a known individual and its author is one of the foremost scientists of the period. If it had not been lost the work would have been a key document in the dispute between John Wallis and William Holder, both distinguished fellows of the Royal Society, on whose method had been successful in teaching Popham to speak. The Popham Notebook provides essential evidence towards the resolution of a debate that has been widely discussed ever since.David Cram and Jaap Maat place the work in its personal, social, and scientific contexts. They include a range of additional contemporary texts and provide a clear text with helpful annotations. The edition provides the means for a thorough reassessment of the work's contemporary value. Their introduction also includes a discussion of the theoretical issues underpinning the teaching of language to the deaf.

George Dalgarno's 'Art of Signs' ('Ars Signorum', 1661) was the first work in the seventeenth century to present a fully elaborated universal language constructed on philosophical principles. It contains a wealth of observations on human language and the nature of representation in general, and the author takes issue with leading philosophers of his day, notably Hobbes and Descartes, on epistemological and logical questions. By including the first complete English translation alongside the Latin, the present edition makes this seminal text accessible to a wider audience.The text is further elucidated by a previously unpublished autobiographical tract in which Dalgarno describes the development of his ideas, and his discussions with John Wilkins, who eventually was to produce a rival universal language scheme. In this tract Dalgarno provides, in unprecedented detail, a lucid account of the major issues involved in the debate on the structure of a philosophical language. Further tracts by Dalgarno reprinted here illustrate other facets of his thought. These include a series of broadsheets in which he advertised his scheme; 'The Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor' (1680) which contains some original observations concerning the teaching of language to the deaf; and a treatise on 'Double Consonants' - one of the earliest treatments of phonotactics.In bringing together for the first time the full range of Dalgarno's linguistic work - which has strking resonance with modern work in universal grammar and cognitive science - the present volume gives ready access to the ideas of this original and stimulating thinker.