Close
A hearing dog in the 19th century!
By H Dominic W Stiles, on 12 June 2012
On our Twitter account @Hearing_Library we follow that worthy cause Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, which has been going for 30 years. I just came across this story from Dr. W.R. Roe’s Derby Institution magazine, Our Deaf and Dumb for September 1892. After discussing whether animals are ever born deaf (with an example of a deaf cow and blue-eyed cats), concluding that examples of deaf dogs and horses do not seem to have been observed, the author continues,
We have, however, heard of a deaf and dumb lady living in a German city, who had, as a companion, a younger woman, who was also deaf and dumb. They lived in a small set of rooms opening on the public corridor of the house. Somebody gave the elder lady a dog as a present. For some time, whenever anybody rang the bell at the door, the dog barked to call the attention of his mistress. The dog soon discovered, however, that neither the bell nor the barking made any impression on the women, and he took up the practice of merely pulling one of them by the dress with his teeth, in order to explain that some one was at the door. Gradually the dog ceased to bark altogether, and for more than seven years before his death he remained as mute as his two companions.
So hearing dogs are not new!
Click for larger image
2 Responses to “A hearing dog in the 19th century!”
- 1
-
2
H Dominic W Stiles wrote on 13 June 2012:
Hello Alison. Well, it is not simple. We are actually two libraries & are not just about Deaf People. To bore you with the details-
– The UCL Ear Institute Library, which is broadly otorhinolaryngological (ear, nose & throat), with the collection owned by UCL, &
– The RNID Library, formerly a branch of the RNID (Action on Hearing Loss) when it was in Gower St. The RNID collection used to be broader & cover ENT as well as anything academic related to deafness, hearing loss, hearing, speech & language etc.When the libraries combined 8 years ago & UCL took over running the collection (still owned & supported by the Action on Hearing Loss), as UCL has a speech language library (Chandler House) it made sense to let the collections complement each other & to avoid duplicating what we cover. The RNID collection mainly covers audiology, deafness & sign language. So you see it is not a library that is just about deaf people. To call it Deafness Library would have been misleading. I was not responsible for dreaming up the name, but the options were limited in number, & some names were I think already taken. Now I hope that has not sent you to sleep!
A question: why do you call your Twitter account “Hearing Library” when you are about deaf people?