The Paris Review

Teaching Them to Speak: On Juan Pablo Bonet and the History of Oralism

Children being taught to speak at a school for the deaf.

Beginning in the Middle Ages and continuing well beyond the eighteenth century, “medical” treatments were devised in an effort to “cure” deafness. Many were violent, yielding illness, suffering, and at times death: Hot coals were forced into the mouths of the deaf to get them to speak “by the force of the burning.” Catheters were inserted through the nostrils, twisting them through the nasal cavity and into the Eustachian tubes and injecting burning liquids. Wide holes were drilled into the crown of a young girl’s skull so she could “hear” through the openings. Severe blistering agents were applied to the neck, scorching it from nape to chin with a hot cylinder full of magical burning leaves. Adhesive cotton was applied and set afire; vomitories and purgative agents were used; hot needles were injected into the mastoids, or the mastoids were removed altogether. One French doctor threaded the necks

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Paris Review

The Paris Review1 min read
Mother
The bird was blue and grayLying on the stairsThere was somethingMoving inside of itAnd still I knew it was deadI promised my motherI wouldn’t touch anythingThat had been long goneInside something turned and wiggledThere’s a kind of transformationThat
The Paris Review1 min read
Sketches
Eric Nathaniel Mack was born in Columbia, Maryland, in 1987. As a child, he often visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where his father was a plexiglass specialist and his mother an archivist. In his teenage years, he worked at hi
The Paris Review22 min read
Supportive Husband
There were less intimate places available, so it was odd when a woman took the seat directly facing mine across the subway aisle. I looked up from my book and right back down: a couple of months before, we’d gone home together. She had a Southern acc

Related Books & Audiobooks