See Thomassinus,Vetus ac nova disciplina, pars i. lib. i. c. 51 f. and lib. ii. c. 29 f. (Lugdunum, 1706); J. N. Seidl,Der Diakonat in der katholischen Kirche(Regensburg, 1884); R. Sohm,Kirchenrecht, i. 121-137 (Leipzig, 1892); F. J. A. Hort,The Christian Ecclesia(London, 1897).
See Thomassinus,Vetus ac nova disciplina, pars i. lib. i. c. 51 f. and lib. ii. c. 29 f. (Lugdunum, 1706); J. N. Seidl,Der Diakonat in der katholischen Kirche(Regensburg, 1884); R. Sohm,Kirchenrecht, i. 121-137 (Leipzig, 1892); F. J. A. Hort,The Christian Ecclesia(London, 1897).
DEACONESS(ἡ διάκονοςorδιακόνισσα, servant, minister), the name given to a woman set apart for special service in the Christian Church. The origin and early history of the office are veiled in obscurity. It is quite certain that from the 3rd century onward there existed in the Eastern Church an order of women, known as deaconesses, who filled a position analogous to that of deacons. They are quite distinct from the somewhat similar orders of “virgins” and “widows,” who belonged to a lower plane in the ecclesiastical system. The order is recognized in the canons of the councils of Nicaea (325) and Chalcedon (451), and is frequently mentioned in the writings of Chrysostom (some of whose letters are addressed to deaconesses at Constantinople), Epiphanius, Basil, and indeed most of the more important Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries. Deaconesses, upon entering their office, were ordained much in the same way as deacons, but the ordination conveyed no sacerdotal powers or authority. Epiphanius says quite distinctly that they were woman-elders and not priestesses in any sense of the term, and that their mission was not to interfere with the functions allotted to priests but simply to perform certain offices in connexion with the care of women. Several specimens of the ordination service for deaconesses have been preserved (see Cecilia Robinson,The Ministry of Deaconesses, London, 1878, appendix B, p. 197). The functions of the deaconess were as follows: (1) To assist at the baptism of women, especially in connexion with the anointing of the body which in the ancient Church always preceded immersion; (2) to visit the women of the Church in their homes and to minister to the needs of the sick and afflicted; (3) according to the Apostolical Constitutions they acted as door-keepers in the church, received women as they entered and conducted them to their allotted seats. In the Western Church, on the other hand, we hear nothing of the order till the 4th century, when an attempt seems to have been made to introduce it into Gaul. Much opposition, however, was encountered, and the movement was condemned by the council of Orange in 441 and the council of Epaone in 517. In spite of the prohibition the institution made some headway, and traces of it are found later in Italy, but it never became as popular in the West as it was in the East. In the middle ages the order fell into abeyance in both divisions of the Church, the abbess taking the place of the deaconess. Whether deaconesses, in the later sense of the term, existed before 250 is a disputed point. The evidence is scanty and by no means decisive. There are only three passages which bear upon the question at all. (i) Romans xvi. 1: Phoebe is calledἡ διάκονος, but it is quite uncertain whether the word is used in its technical sense. (ii) 1 Tim. iii. 11: after stating the qualifications necessary for deacons the writer adds, “Women in like manner must be grave—not slanderers,” &c.; the Authorized Version took the passage as referring to deacons’ wives, but many scholars think that by “women” deaconesses are meant. (iii) In Pliny’s famous letter to Trajan respecting the Christians of Bithynia mention is made of two Christian maidservants “quae ministrae dicebantur”; whetherministraeis equivalent toδιάκονοι, as is often supposed, is dubious. On the whole the evidence does not seem sufficient to prove the contention that an order of deaconesses—in the ecclesiastical sense of the term—existed from the apostolic age.
In modern times several attempts have been made to revive the order of deaconesses. In 1833 Pastor Fleidner founded “an order of deaconesses for the Rhenish provinces of Westphalia” at Kaiserswerth. The original aim of the institution was to train nurses for hospital work, but its scope was afterwards extended and it trained its members for teaching and parish work as well. Kaiserswerth became the parent of many similar institutions in different parts of the continent. A few years later, in 1847, Miss Sellon formed for the first time a sisterhood at Devonport in connexion with the Church of England. Her example was gradually followed in other parts of the country, and in 1898 there were over two thousand women living together in different sisterhoods. The members of these institutions do not represent the ecclesiastical deaconesses, however, since they are not ministers set apart by the Church; and the sisterhoods are merely voluntary associations of women banded together for spiritual fellowship and common service. In 1861 Bishop Tait set apart Miss Elizabeth Ferard as a deaconess by the laying on of hands, and she became the first president of the London Deaconess Institution. Other dioceses gradually adopted the innovation. It has received the sanction of Convocation, and the Lambeth Conference in 1897 declared that it “recognized with thankfulness the revival of the office of deaconess,” though at the same time it protested against the indiscriminate use of the title and laid it down emphatically that the name must be restricted to those who had been definitely set apart by the bishop for the position and were working under the direct supervision and control of the ecclesiastical authority in the parish.
In addition to Miss Robinson’s book cited above, seeChurch Quarterly Review, xlvii. 302 ff., art. “On the Early History and Modern Revival of Deaconesses” (London, 1899), and the works there referred to; D. Latas,Χριστιανικὴ Ἀρχαιολογία, i. 163-171 (Athens, 1883);Testamentum Domini, ed. Rahmani (Mainz, 1899); L. Zscharnack,Der Dienst der Frau in den ersten Jahrhunderten der chr. Kirche(1902).
In addition to Miss Robinson’s book cited above, seeChurch Quarterly Review, xlvii. 302 ff., art. “On the Early History and Modern Revival of Deaconesses” (London, 1899), and the works there referred to; D. Latas,Χριστιανικὴ Ἀρχαιολογία, i. 163-171 (Athens, 1883);Testamentum Domini, ed. Rahmani (Mainz, 1899); L. Zscharnack,Der Dienst der Frau in den ersten Jahrhunderten der chr. Kirche(1902).
DEAD SEA,a lake in Palestine occupying the deepest part of the valley running along the line of a great “fault” that has been traced from the Gulf of Akaba (at the head of the Red Sea) to Hermon. This fracture was caused after the end of the Eocene period by the earth-movement which resulted in the raising of the whole region out of the sea. Level for level, the more ancient rocks are on the eastward side of the lake: the cretaceous limestones that surmount the older volcanic substrata come down on the western side to the water’s edge, while on the eastern side they are raised between 3000 and 4000 feet above it. In the Pleistocene period the whole of this depression was filled with water forming a lake about 200 m. long north to south, whose waters were about the same level as that of the Mediterranean Sea. With the diminishing rainfall and increased temperature that followed that period the effects of evaporation gradually surpassed the precipitation, and the waters of the lake slowly diminished to about the extent which they still display.
The length of the sea is 47 m., and its maximum breadth is about 9½ m.; its area is about 340 sq. m. It lies nearly north and south. Its surface being 1289-1300 ft. below the level of the Mediterranean Sea, it has of course no outlet. It is bounded on the north by the broad valley of the Jordan; on the east by the rapidly rising terraces which culminate in the Moabite plateau, 3100 ft. above the level of the lake; on the south by the desert of the Arabah, which rises to the watershed between the Dead and the Red Sea—65½ m. from the former, 46½ from the latter; height 660 ft.—and on the west by the Judean mountains which attain a height of 3300 ft. On the east side a peninsula, El-Lisān (“the tongue”), of white calcareous marl with beds of salt and gypsum, divides the sea into two unequal parts: this peninsula is about 50 ft. high, and is connected by a narrow strip of marshland with the shore. Its northern and southern extremities have been named Cape Costigan and Cape Molyneux, in memory of two explorers who were among the first in modern times to navigate the sea and succumbed to the consequent fever andexhaustion. North of the peninsula the lake has a maximum depth of 1278 ft.; south of it the water is nowhere more than 12 ft., and in some places only 3 ft. The surface level of the lake varies with the season, and recent observations taken on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund seem to show that there are probably cyclical variations also (ultimately dependent on the rainfall), the nature and periodicity of which there are as yet no sufficient data to determine. In 1858 there was a small island near the north end rising 10 or 12 ft. above the surface and connected with the shore by a causeway; this has been submerged since 1892; and owing to the gradual rise of level within these years the fords south of the Lisān, and the pathway which formerly rounded the Ras Feshkhah, are now no longer passable.
The slopes on each side of the sea are furrowed with watercourses, some of them perennial, others winter torrents only. The chief affluents of the sea are as follows:—on the north, Jordan and ‘Ain es-Suweimeh; on the east Wadis Ghuweir, Zerka Ma’in (Callirrhoë), Mōjib (Arnon), Ed-Dera’a, and el-Hesi; on the west, Wadis Muhawāt and Seyāl, ‘Ain Jidi (En-Gedi), Wadi el Merabbah, ‘Ain Ghuweir, Wadi el-Nar, ‘Ain Feshkhah. The quantity of water poured daily into the sea is not less than 6,000,000 tons, all of which has to be carried off by evaporation. The consequence of the ancient evaporation, by which the great Pleistocene lake was reduced to its present modest dimensions, and of the ceaseless modern daily evaporation, is the impregnation of the waters of the lake with salts and other mineral substances to a remarkable degree. Ocean water contains on an average 4-6% of salts: Dead Sea water contains 25%. The following analysis, by Dr Bernays, gives the contents of the water more accurately:—
Specific gravity 1.1528 at 15.5° C.
The density of the water averages 1.166. It increases from north to south, and with the depth. The increase is at first rapid, then, after reaching a certain point, becomes more uniform. At 300 metres its density is 1.253. The boiling point is 221° F. To the quantity of solid matter suspended in its water the Dead Sea owes, beside its saltness, its buoyancy and its poisonous properties. The human body floats on the surface without exertion. Owing principally to the large proportion of chloride and bromide of magnesia no animal life can exist in its water. Fish, which abound in the Jordan and in the brackish spring-fed lagoons that exist in one or two places around its shores (such as ‘Ain Feshkhah), die in a very short time if introduced into the main waters of the lake. The only animal life reported from the lake has been some tetanus and other bacilli said to have been found in its mud; but this discovery has not been confirmed. To the chloride of calcium is due the smooth and oily feeling of the water, and to the chloride of magnesia its disagreeable taste. In Roman times curative properties were ascribed to the waters: Mukaddasi (A.D.985) asserts that people assembled to drink it on a feast day in August. The salt of the Dead Sea is collected and sold in Jerusalem; smuggling of salt (which in Turkey is a government monopoly) is a regular occupation of the Bedouin. The bitumen which floats to shore is also collected. The origin of this bitumen is disputed: it was supposed to be derived from subaqueous strata of bituminous marl and rose to the surface when loosened by earthquakes. It is, however, now more generally believed that it exists in the breccia of some of the valleys on the west side of the lake, which is washed into the sea and submerged, till the small stones by which it is sunk are loosened and fall out, when the bitumen rises to the surface.
History.—The earliest references to the sea or its basin are in the patriarchal narratives of Lot and Abraham, the most striking being the destruction of the neighbouring cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. (SeeSodom.) The biblical name is the Salt Sea, the Sea of the Arabah (the south end of the Jordan valley), or the East Sea. The name in Josephus isAsphaltites, referring to the bituminous deposits above alluded to. The modern name is Bahr Lūt or “Sea of Lot”—a name hardly to be explained as a survival of a vague tradition of the patriarch, but more probably due to the literary influences of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Koran filtering through to the modern inhabitants or their ancestors. The name Dead Sea first appears in late Greek writers, as Pausanias and Galen. At En-Gedi on its western bank David for a while took refuge. South of it is the stronghold of Masada, built by Jonathan Maccabaeus and fortified by Herod in 42B.C., where the last stand of the Jews was made against the Romans after the fall of Jerusalem, and where the garrison, when the defences were breached, slew themselves rather than fall into Roman hands.
The sea has been but little navigated. Tacitus and Josephus mention boats on the lake, and boats are shown upon it in the Madeba mosaic. The navigation dues formed part of the revenue of the lords of Kerak under the crusaders. In modern times navigation is practicallynil. The lake, with the whole Jericho plain, is claimed as the personal property of the sultan.
The medieval travellers brought home many strange legends of the sea and its peculiarities—some absurd, others with a basis of fact. The absence of sea-birds, due to the absence of fish, probably accounts for the story that no birds could fly over it. The absence of vegetation on its shores, due to the scanty rainfall and general want of fresh water—except in the neighbourhood of springs like ‘Ain Feshkhah and ‘Ain Jidi, where a luxuriant subtropical vegetation is found—accounts for the story that no plant could live in the poisonous air which broods over the sea. The mists, due to the great heat and excessive evaporation, and the noxious miasmata, especially of the southern region, were exaggerated into the noisome vapours that the “black and stinking” waters ever exhaled. The judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah (which of course they believed to beunderthe waters of the lake, in accordance with the absurd theory first found in Josephus and still often repeated) blinded these good pilgrims to the ever-fresh beauty of this most lovely lake, whose blue and sparkling waters lie deep between rocks and precipices of unsurpassable grandeur. The play of brilliant colours and of ever-changing contrasts of light and shade on those rugged mountain-sides and on the surface of the sea itself might have been expected to appeal to the most prosaic. The surface of the sea is generally smooth (seldom, however, absolutely inert as the pilgrims represented it), but is frequently raised by the north winds into waves, which, owing to the weight and density of the water, are often of great force.
The first to navigate the sea in modern times was an Irish traveller, Costigan by name, in August and September 1835. Owing largely to the folly of his Greek servant, who, without his master’s knowledge, threw overboard the drinking-water to lighten the boat, the explorer after circumnavigating the sea reached Jericho in an exhausted condition, and was there attacked by a severe fever. The greatest difficulty was experienced in obtaining assistance for him, but he was ultimately conveyed on camel-back to Jerusalem, where he died; his grave is in the Franciscan cemetery there. His fate was shared by his successor, a British naval officer, Lieutenant Molyneux (1847), whose party was attacked and robbed by Bedouins. W. F. Lynch, an American explorer (1848), equipped by the United States government, was more successful, and he may claim to be the first who examined its shores and sounded its depths. Since his time the duc de Luynes, Lartet, Wilson, Hull, Blanckenhorn, Gautier, Libbey, Masterman and Schmidt, to name but a few, have made contributions to our knowledge of this lake; but still many problems present themselves for solution. Among these may be mentioned(1) the explanation of a remarkable line of white foam that extends along the axis of the lakealmostevery morning—supposed by Blanckenhorn to mark the line of a fissure, thermal and asphaltic, under the bed of the lake, but otherwise explained as a consequence of the current of the Jordan, which is not completely expended till it reaches the Lisān, or as a result of the mingling of the salt water with the brackish spring water especially along the western shore; (2) a northward current that has been observed along the east coast; (3) various disturbances of level, due possibly to differences of barometric pressure; (4) some apparently electrical phenomena that have been observed in the valley. Before we can be said to know all that we might regarding this most interesting of lakes further extensive scientific observations are necessary; but these are extremely difficult owing to the impossibility of maintaining self-registering instruments in a region practically closed to Europeans for nearly half the year by the stifling heat, and inhabited only by Bedouins, who are the worst kind of ignorant, thievish and mischievous savages.
(R. A. S. M.)
DEADWOOD,a city and the county-seat of Lawrence county, South Dakota, U.S.A., about 180 m. W. of Pierre. Pop. (1890) 2366; (1900) 3498, of whom 707 were foreign-born; (1905) 4364; (1910) 3653. It is served by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and the Chicago & North-Western railways. It lies on hilly ground in the canyon of Whitewood Creek at an elevation of about 4530 ft. Deadwood is the commercial centre of the Black Hills. About it are several gold mines (including the well-known Home-stake mine), characterized by the low grade of their ores (which range from $2 to $8 per ton), by their vast quantity, and by the ease of mining and of extracting the metal. The ore contains free gold, which is extracted by the simple process of stamping and amalgamation, and refractory values, extracted by the cyaniding process. Several hundred tons of ore are treated thus in Deadwood and its environs daily, and its stamp mills are exceeded in size only by those of the Treadwell mine in S.E. Alaska, and by those on the Rand in South Africa. The discovery of gold here was made known in June 1875, and in February 1877 the United States government, after having purchased the land from the Sioux Indians, opened the place for legal settlement.
DEAF AND DUMB.1The term “deaf” is frequently applied to those who are deficient in hearing power in any degree, however slight, as well as to people who are unable to detect the loudest sounds by means of the auditory organs. It is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between the deaf and the hearing at any particular point. For the purposes of this article, however, that denotation which is generally accepted by educators of the deaf may be given to the term. This makes it refer to those who are so far handicapped as to be incapable of instruction by the ordinary means of the ear in a class of those possessing normal hearing. Paradoxical though it may seem, it is yet true to say that “dumbness” in our sense of the word does not, strictly speaking, exist, though the term “dumb” may, for all practical purposes, fairly be applied to many of the deaf even after they are supposed to have learnt how to speak. Oral teachers now confess that it is not worth while to try to teach more than a large percentage of the deaf to speak at all. We are not concerned with aphasia, stammering or such inability to articulate as may be due to malformation of the vocal organs. In the case of the deaf and dumb, as these words are generally understood, dumbness is merely the result of ignorance in the use of the voice, this ignorance being due to the deafness. The vocal organs are perfect. The deaf man can laugh, shout, and in fact utter any and every sound that the normal person can. But he does not speak English (if that happens to be his nationality) for the same reason that a French child does not, which is that he has never heard it. There is in fact no more a priori reason why an English baby, born in England, should talk English than that it should talk any other language. English may be correctly described as its “mother tongue,” but not itsnaturallanguage; the only reason why one person speaks English and another Russian is that each imitated that particular language which he heard in infancy. This imitation depends upon the ability to hear. Hence if one has never heard, or has lost hearing in early childhood, he has never been able to imitate that language which his parents and others used, and the condition of so-called dumbness is added to his deafness. From this it follows that if the sense of hearing be not lost till the child has learnt to speak fluently, the ability to speak is unaffected by the calamity of deafness, except that after many years the voice is likely to become high-pitched, or too guttural, or peculiar in some other respect, owing to the absence of the control usually exercised by the ear. It also follows that, to a certain extent, the art of speech can be taught the deaf person even though he were born deaf. Theoretically, he is capable of talking just as well as his hearing brother, for the organs of speech are as perfect in one as in the other, except that they suffer from lack of exercise in the case of the deaf man. Practically, he can never speak perfectly, for even if he were made to attempt articulation as soon as he is discovered to be deaf, the fact that the ear, the natural guide of the voice, is useless, lays upon him a handicap which can never be wiped out. He can never hear the tone of his teacher’s voice nor of his own; he can only see small and, in many instances, scarcely discernible movements of the lips, tongue, nose, cheeks and throat in those who are endeavouring to teach him to speak, and he can never hope to succeed in speech through the instrumentality of such unsatisfactory appeals to his eye as perfectly as the hearing child can with the ideal adaptation of the voice to the ear. Sound appeals to the ear, not the eye, and those who have to rely upon the latter to imitate speech must suffer by comparison.
Deafness then, in our sense, means the incapacity to be instructed by means of the ear in the normal way, and dumbness means only that ignorance of how to speak one’s mother tongue which is the effect of the deafness.
Of such deaf people many can hear sound to some extent. Dr Kerr Love quotes several authorities (Deaf Mutism, pp. 58 ff.) to show that 50 or 60% are absolutely deaf, while 25% can detect loud sounds such as shouting close to the ear, and the rest can distinguish vowels or even words. He himself thinks that not more than 15 or 20% are totally deaf—sometimes only 7 or 8%; that ability to hear speech exists in about one in four, while ten or fifteen in each hundred are only semi-deaf. He rightly warns against the use of tuning forks or other instruments held on the bones of the head as tests of hearing, because the vibration which is felt, not heard, may very often be mistaken for sound.
Dr Edward M. Gallaudet, president of the Columbia Institution for the Deaf in Washington, D.C., suggests the following terms for use in dividing the whole class of the deaf into its main sections, though it is obviously impossible to split them up into perfectly defined subdivisions, where, as a matter of fact, you have each degree of deafness and dumbness shading into the next:—thespeaking deaf,the semi-speaking deaf, themute deaf(ordeaf-mute), thespeaking semi-deaf, themute semi-deaf, thehearing muteand thehearing semi-mute. He points out that the last two classes are usually persons of feeble mental power. We should exclude these altogether from the list, since their hearing is, presumably, perfect, and should add thesemi-speaking semi-deafbefore the mute semi-deaf. This would give two main divisions—those who cannot hear at all, and those who have partial hearing—with three subsections in each main division—those who speak, those who have partial speech and those who do not speak at all. Where the hearing is perfect it is paradoxical to class a person with the deaf, and the dumbness in such a case is due (where there is no malformation of the vocal organs) to inability of the mind to pay attention to, and imitate, what the ear really hears. In such cases this mental weakness is generally shown in other ways besides that of not hearing sounds. Probably no sign will be given of recognizing persons or objects around; there will bein fact, a general incapacity of the whole body and senses. It is incorrect to designate such persons as deaf and feeble-minded or deaf and idiotic, because in many cases their organs of hearing are as perfect as are other organs of their body, and they are no more deaf than blind, though they may pay no attention to what they hear any more than to what they see. They are simply weak in intellect, and this is shown by the disuse of any and all of their senses; hence it is incorrect to classify them according to one, and one only, of the evidences of this mental weakness.
Extent of Deafness.—The following table shows the number of deaf and dumb persons in the United Kingdom at successive censuses:—Year.Number of Deaf and Dumb Persons.UnitedKingdom.England& Wales.Scotland.Ireland.185117,64910,31421555180186120,22412,23623355653187119,15911,51820875554188120,57313,29521425136189120,78114,19221254464190121,85515,24626383971From this we find that the proportion of deaf and dumb to the population has been as follows:—Year.Proportion of Deaf and Dumb to the Population.UnitedKingdom.England& Wales.Scotland.Ireland.18511 in 15501 in 17391 in 13401 in 126418611 in 14301 in 16391 in 13101 in 102518711 in 16421 in 19721 in 16101 in 97418811 in 16941 in 19531 in 17451 in 100818911 in 18141 in 20401 in 18931 in 105319011 in 18971 in 21321 in 16941 in 1122There has, therefore, been on the whole a steady decrease of those described as “deaf and dumb” in proportion to the population in Great Britain and Ireland. But in the census for 1901, in addition to the 15,246 returned as “deaf and dumb” in England and Wales, 18,507 were entered as being “deaf,” 2433 of whom were described as having been “deaf from childhood.”Mr B. H. Payne, the principal of the Royal Cambrian Institution, Swansea, makes the following remarks upon these figures:—“The natural conclusion, of course, is that there has been a large increase, relative as well as absolute, of the class in which we are interested, which we call the deaf, and which includes the deaf and dumb. Indeed, the number, large as it is, cannot be considered as complete, for the schedules did not require persons who were only deaf to state their infirmity, and, though many did so, it may be presumed that more did not.“On the other hand, circumstances exist which may reasonably be held to modify the conclusion that there has been a large relative increase of the deaf. The spread of education, the development of local government, and an improved system of registration, may have had the effect of procuring fuller enumeration and more appropriate classification than heretofore, while 1368 persons described simply as dumb, and who therefore probably belong, not to the deaf, but to the feeble-minded and aphasic classes, are included in the ‘deaf and dumb’ total. It is also to be noted that some of those who described themselves as ‘deaf’ though not born so may have been educated in the ordinary way before they lost their hearing, and are therefore outside the sphere of the operation of schools for the deaf.“In connexion with the census of 1891, it has been remarked in the report of the institution that no provision was made in the schedules for distinguishing the congenital from the non-congenital deaf, and that it was desirable to draw such a distinction. To ascertain the relative increase or decrease of one or the other section of the class would contribute to our knowledge of the incidence of known causes of deafness or to the confirmation or discovery of other causes, and so far indicate the appropriate measures of prevention, while such an inquiry as that recommended has, besides, a certain bearing upon educational views.“The exact number of ‘deaf and dumb’ and ‘deaf’ children who are of school age cannot be ascertained from the census tables, which give the numbers in quinquennial age-groups, while the school age is seven to sixteen. It is a pity that in this respect the functions of the census department are not co-ordinated with those of the Board of Education.”John Hitz, the superintendent of the Volta Bureau for the Increase of Knowledge Relating to the Deaf, Washington, D.C., U.S.A., gives the number of schools for deaf children, and pupils, in different countries in 1900 as follows:—Africa.Country.Schools.Teachers.Pupils.Algeria1337Egypt126Cape Colony49*77Natal127716*127* Incomplete.Asia.Country.Schools.Teachers.Pupils.China31043India31373Japan324337947453Australasia.Country.Schools.Teachers.Pupils.Australia641282New Zealand1550746332Europe.Country.Schools.Teachers.Pupils.Austria-Hungary382912440Belgium121811265Denmark557348France715984098Germany997986497Great Britain954624222Italy472342519Luxemburg1322Netherlands374473Norway554309Portugal2964Rumania1346Russia, Finland, Livonia341181719Servia22*26*Spain1160462Sweden9124726Switzerland1484650Turkey1450315225,886* Incomplete.North America.Country.Schools.Teachers.Pupils.Canada7130768United States126134710,946Mexico11346Cuba1135149011,760South America.Country.Schools.Teachers.Pupils.Argentine418133Brazil1935Chile1761Uruguay1734229Summary.Country.Schools.Teachers.Pupils.Africa716127Asia947453Australia746332Europe450315225,886North America135149011,760South America734229615478538,787These figures refer only to deaf children who are actually under instruction, not to the whole deaf population.While it is gratifying to find that so much is being done in the way of educating this class of the community, the number of schools in most parts of the world is still lamentably inadequate. For instance, taking the school age as from seven to sixteen, which is now made compulsory by Act of Parliament in Great Britain, and assuming that 20% of the deaf population are of that age, as they are in England, there should be 40,000 deaf pupils under instruction in India alone, whereas there are but seventy-three. There are 200,000 deaf of all ages in India. And what an enormous total should be in schools in China instead of forty-three! The whole of the rest of Asia, with the exception of Japan, has apparently not a single school. There must be many thousands of thousands of deaf (hundreds of thousands, if not thousands of thousands of whom are of school age) in that continent, unless indeed they are destroyed, which is not impossible. What are we to say of Africa, where only 100 pupils are being taught; of South America, with its paltry 200, and Australia’s 300? To come to Europe itself, Russia should have many times more pupils than her 1700. Even in Great Britain the education of the deaf was not made compulsory till 1893, and there are many still evading the law and growing up uneducated. Mr Payne of Swansea estimated (Institution Report, 1903-1904) from the 1901 census, that there must be approximately 204 deaf of school age in South Wales and Monmouthshire, while only 144 were accounted for in all the schools in that district according to Dr Hitz’s statistics.Dr Kerr Love (Deaf Mutism, p. 217) gives the following table, which shows the number of deaf people in proportion to the population in the countries named:—Switzerland1 in408Austria”765Hungary”792Sweden”977Prussia”981Finland”981Canada”1003Norway”1052Germany (exclusive of Prussia)”1074Portugal”1333Ireland”1398*India”1459United States”1514Denmark”1538Greece”1548France”1600Italy”1862Scotland”1885*Cape Colony”1904England”2043*Spain”2178Belgium”2247Australasia”2692Holland”2985Ceylon”4328* The figures for England, Scotland and Ireland, according to the 1901 census, are different and have been given above.According to a tabular statement of British and Colonial schools, June 1899, the proportion of those born deaf to those who lost hearing after birth was, at that time and in those countries, 2126 to 1251, as far as returns had been made. Several schools had, however, failed to give statistics. These figures show a proportion of nearly 59% congenitally deaf persons to over 41% whose deafness is acquired. Professor Fay, whose monumental work,Marriages of the Deaf in America, deserves particular attention, mentions (p. 38) that of 23,931 persons who attended American schools for the deaf up to the year 1890, 9842, or 41%, were reported as congenitally deaf, and 14,089, or 59%, as adventitiously deaf,—figures which exactly reverse those just quoted. The classification of deafness acquired in infancy with congenital deafness by some other authorities (giving rise to the rather absurd term “toto-congenital” to describe the latter) is unscientific. There is reason for the opinion that the non-congenital, even when hearing has been lost in early infancy, acquire language better, and it is a mistake from any point of view to include them in the born deaf.Other statistics vary very much as to the proportion of born deaf, some being as low as a quarter, and some as high as three-quarters, of the whole class. We can only say, speaking of both sides of the Atlantic, and counterbalancing one period with another, that the general average appears to be about 50% for each. Probably the percentage varies in different places for definite reasons, which we shall now briefly consider.
Extent of Deafness.—The following table shows the number of deaf and dumb persons in the United Kingdom at successive censuses:—
From this we find that the proportion of deaf and dumb to the population has been as follows:—
There has, therefore, been on the whole a steady decrease of those described as “deaf and dumb” in proportion to the population in Great Britain and Ireland. But in the census for 1901, in addition to the 15,246 returned as “deaf and dumb” in England and Wales, 18,507 were entered as being “deaf,” 2433 of whom were described as having been “deaf from childhood.”
Mr B. H. Payne, the principal of the Royal Cambrian Institution, Swansea, makes the following remarks upon these figures:—
“The natural conclusion, of course, is that there has been a large increase, relative as well as absolute, of the class in which we are interested, which we call the deaf, and which includes the deaf and dumb. Indeed, the number, large as it is, cannot be considered as complete, for the schedules did not require persons who were only deaf to state their infirmity, and, though many did so, it may be presumed that more did not.
“On the other hand, circumstances exist which may reasonably be held to modify the conclusion that there has been a large relative increase of the deaf. The spread of education, the development of local government, and an improved system of registration, may have had the effect of procuring fuller enumeration and more appropriate classification than heretofore, while 1368 persons described simply as dumb, and who therefore probably belong, not to the deaf, but to the feeble-minded and aphasic classes, are included in the ‘deaf and dumb’ total. It is also to be noted that some of those who described themselves as ‘deaf’ though not born so may have been educated in the ordinary way before they lost their hearing, and are therefore outside the sphere of the operation of schools for the deaf.
“In connexion with the census of 1891, it has been remarked in the report of the institution that no provision was made in the schedules for distinguishing the congenital from the non-congenital deaf, and that it was desirable to draw such a distinction. To ascertain the relative increase or decrease of one or the other section of the class would contribute to our knowledge of the incidence of known causes of deafness or to the confirmation or discovery of other causes, and so far indicate the appropriate measures of prevention, while such an inquiry as that recommended has, besides, a certain bearing upon educational views.
“The exact number of ‘deaf and dumb’ and ‘deaf’ children who are of school age cannot be ascertained from the census tables, which give the numbers in quinquennial age-groups, while the school age is seven to sixteen. It is a pity that in this respect the functions of the census department are not co-ordinated with those of the Board of Education.”
John Hitz, the superintendent of the Volta Bureau for the Increase of Knowledge Relating to the Deaf, Washington, D.C., U.S.A., gives the number of schools for deaf children, and pupils, in different countries in 1900 as follows:—
Africa.
Asia.
Australasia.
Europe.
North America.
South America.
Summary.
These figures refer only to deaf children who are actually under instruction, not to the whole deaf population.
While it is gratifying to find that so much is being done in the way of educating this class of the community, the number of schools in most parts of the world is still lamentably inadequate. For instance, taking the school age as from seven to sixteen, which is now made compulsory by Act of Parliament in Great Britain, and assuming that 20% of the deaf population are of that age, as they are in England, there should be 40,000 deaf pupils under instruction in India alone, whereas there are but seventy-three. There are 200,000 deaf of all ages in India. And what an enormous total should be in schools in China instead of forty-three! The whole of the rest of Asia, with the exception of Japan, has apparently not a single school. There must be many thousands of thousands of deaf (hundreds of thousands, if not thousands of thousands of whom are of school age) in that continent, unless indeed they are destroyed, which is not impossible. What are we to say of Africa, where only 100 pupils are being taught; of South America, with its paltry 200, and Australia’s 300? To come to Europe itself, Russia should have many times more pupils than her 1700. Even in Great Britain the education of the deaf was not made compulsory till 1893, and there are many still evading the law and growing up uneducated. Mr Payne of Swansea estimated (Institution Report, 1903-1904) from the 1901 census, that there must be approximately 204 deaf of school age in South Wales and Monmouthshire, while only 144 were accounted for in all the schools in that district according to Dr Hitz’s statistics.
Dr Kerr Love (Deaf Mutism, p. 217) gives the following table, which shows the number of deaf people in proportion to the population in the countries named:—
* The figures for England, Scotland and Ireland, according to the 1901 census, are different and have been given above.
According to a tabular statement of British and Colonial schools, June 1899, the proportion of those born deaf to those who lost hearing after birth was, at that time and in those countries, 2126 to 1251, as far as returns had been made. Several schools had, however, failed to give statistics. These figures show a proportion of nearly 59% congenitally deaf persons to over 41% whose deafness is acquired. Professor Fay, whose monumental work,Marriages of the Deaf in America, deserves particular attention, mentions (p. 38) that of 23,931 persons who attended American schools for the deaf up to the year 1890, 9842, or 41%, were reported as congenitally deaf, and 14,089, or 59%, as adventitiously deaf,—figures which exactly reverse those just quoted. The classification of deafness acquired in infancy with congenital deafness by some other authorities (giving rise to the rather absurd term “toto-congenital” to describe the latter) is unscientific. There is reason for the opinion that the non-congenital, even when hearing has been lost in early infancy, acquire language better, and it is a mistake from any point of view to include them in the born deaf.
Other statistics vary very much as to the proportion of born deaf, some being as low as a quarter, and some as high as three-quarters, of the whole class. We can only say, speaking of both sides of the Atlantic, and counterbalancing one period with another, that the general average appears to be about 50% for each. Probably the percentage varies in different places for definite reasons, which we shall now briefly consider.
Causes of Deafness.—These may be considered in two divisions, pre-natal and post-natal.
1.Pre-Natal.—A small percentage of these is due, it seems, to malformation of some portion of the auditory apparatus. Another percentage is known to represent the children of the intermarriage of blood relations. Dr Kerr Love (Deaf Mutism, p. 117) gives statistics from thirteen British institutions which show that on a general average at least 8% of the congenitally deaf are the offspring of such marriages. Besides this, little is known. Beyond all doubt a much larger percentage of deaf children are the offspring of marriages in which one or both partners were born deaf than of ordinary marriages. But inquiries into such phenomena have generally been directed towards tracing deafness and not consanguinity, or at least the inquirer has rarely troubled to make sure whether the grandparents or great-grandparents on either side were relations or not. Such investigations rarely go beyond ascertaining if the parents were related to each other, though we have proof that a certain tendency towards any particular abnormality may not exhibit itself in every generation of the family in question. To give an illustration, suppose that G is a deaf man. Several inquirers may trace back to the preceding generation F, and to the grandparents E, and even to the great-grandparents D, in search of an ancestor who is deaf, and such they may discover in the third generation D. But probably not one of these several inquirers will ask G if any of his grandparents or great-grandparents married a cousin, for instance, though they may ask if his father did. To continue this hypothetical case, the investigators will again trace back along the family tree to generations C, B and A in search of an originaldeafancestor, on whose shoulders they seek to lay the blame of both D’s and G’s deafness. Not finding any such, they will again content themselves with asking if D’s parents (generation C) were blood relations or not, and, receiving an answer in the negative, desist from further inquiry in this direction, assuming that D’s deafness is the original cause of G’s deafness. They do not, we fear, inquire if any grandparents or great-grandparents (hearing people) were related, with the same persistency as they ask if any were deaf. The search for deafness is pushed through several generations, the search for consanguinity is only extended to one generation. Perhaps if it were carried further, it would be discovered that A married his niece, and there lay the secret of the deafness in both D and G. In other words, the deafness in D is not the cause of that in G, but the deafness in both D and G are effects of the consanguineous marriage in A. All this is, however, merely by way of suggestion. We submit that if deafness in one generation may be followed by deafness two or even three generations later, while the tendency to deafness exists, but does not appear, in the intermediate generations, it is only logical to inquire if deafness in the first discoverable instance in a family may not be caused by consanguinity, the effect of which is not seen for two or three generations in a similar manner. Moreover it is probable that consanguinity in parents or grandparents may often be denied. An exhaustive investigation along these lines is desirable, for we believe that congenital deafness would be proved to be due to consanguinity in hearing people, if the search were pushed far enough back and the truth were told, in a far greater percentage of cases than is now suspected. This is not disproved by quoting numbers of cases where no deafness follows consanguinity in any generation, for resulting weakness may be shown (where it exists) in many other ways than by deafness.
This theory receives support from the statistics quoted by Dr Kerr Love (Deaf Mutism, p. 132), where the percentage of defective children resulting from the consanguineous marriages of hearing people increases in almost exact proportion to the nearness of affinity of the parents. It is further borne out bystatistics of the duchy of Nassau, and of Berlin, both quoted by Dr Kerr Love (pp. 119, 120). These show 1 deaf person in 1397 Roman Catholics, 1101 Evangelicals and 508 Jews in the former case, and 1 in 3000 Roman Catholics, 2000 Protestants and 400 Jews in the latter. When we are told that “Roman Catholics prohibit marriages between persons who are near blood relations, Protestants view such marriages as permissible, and Jews encourage intermarriage with blood relations,” these figures become suggestive. We find the same greater tendency to deafness in thinly-populated and out-of-the-way districts and countries where, owing to the circle of acquaintances being limited, people are more likely to marry relations.