04.08.01 Hein’s Castle
38th Clip - Title: Hein’s First Experiment - (05:18 mins - 3:41:40 hours)
Caution: Graphic ASL description of an experimental cure of deafness. Not for the faint-hearted. A picture included.
This clip is posted in memory of those deaf people who needlessly suffered from painful experiments in the attempts by quacks, parents, scientists, and doctors from the past (and present) in curing their deafness and/or muteness. It is up to you to include the cochlear-implanted in this group of deaf people.
Enjoy the first of several horrible episodes in the deaf child’s stay in Hein’s Castle. Carefully click away . . .
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Commentary: In the annals of medical history, we see countless horrible experiments in curing anything undesirable in human life. Several journals and blogs explained those experiments in curing deafness. Even today, we see people trying to cure hearing loss, see this website. As in this clip, people poured liquid imaginable and not into the ears and tried to enlarge the Eustachian tubes by inserting various sticks into them. A small and smooth metal stick, called the “Eustachian catheter”, was invented for insertion into Eustachian tubes by the famous Dr. Itard, teacher of the Wild Boy of Aveyron (see page 132 to 134 of Lane’s book, When the Mind Hears).
This picture below (click on it to enlarge) was scanned from page 498 of the book: Looking Back: A Reader on the History of Deaf Communities and Their Sign Languages, edited by Renate Fischer and Harlan Lane, published by SIGNUM Press in Hamburg, Germany.
I want to share a story reflecting the nature of the clip here. I was a Montessori pre-school teacher for the Tripod school in 1988 and 1989. I remembered one 3 or 4 years old deaf boy who had a difficult time being separated from his parents, standing by the gate crying with his arms outstretched and hands clawing for several long minutes before I had to bring him inside the classroom. It went on for some weeks before this behavior began to subside. Anyway, for many weeks, I noticed cotton balls inside both of his ears. I had to inquire his parents’ on why, which was their homeopathic attempt in curing their son’s deafness. They put various liquids, some smelling bitter, some sweet, some both, in the cotton. Sure enough, as most of deaf people know, the parents stopped doing this and began the long process of accepting their son’s deafness.