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Deafness   Listen
noun
Deafness  n.  
1.
Incapacity of perceiving sounds; the state of the organs which prevents the impression which constitute hearing; want of the sense of hearing.
2.
Unwillingness to hear; voluntary rejection of what is addressed to the understanding.
Nervous deafness, a variety of deafness dependent upon morbid change in some portion of the nervous system, especially the auditory nerve.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Deafness" Quotes from Famous Books



... sigh? Surely, also, from pity for the poor man. His infirmity was no such great one; he had an impediment in his speech, and with it, as many are apt to have, deafness also: but it was an infirmity. It was a disease. It was something out of order, something gone wrong in God's world; and as such, Christ could not abide it; he grieved over it. He sighed because there was sickness in a world where there ought to be nothing but health, and sorrow where there ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... Norden's 'Voyage d'Egypte,' on large paper, and many other fine books. It was also rich in natural science, topography, and antiquities. Dibdin describes her as 'at the head of all the female collectors of Europe.' Miss Currer, who suffered from deafness, was an intimate friend of Richard Heber, and it was rumoured at one time that this distinguished bibliomaniac was engaged to be married to Miss Currer, but the event did not transpire. Miss Currer's books ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... a new title to speak. It is deafness; and I know from deafness that I run a worse chance with a man whose mouth is ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... and hitherto fruitless solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of her Sage. Might but the united voice of Germany prevail on him to return; nay could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went away! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences or affects the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance: in the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; the Privy Council itself can hitherto elicit ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... through the ear-trumpet with as much caution as deafness would tolerate, said, "Dear old lady, look up at the library window, if you please, for the muezzin has climbed his minaret ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis

... for rest and refreshment, when the hard life from which her marriage released her allowed them a few days' respite by the rocks and sands and breakers of the Northumberland shore. The Duke of Devonshire, whose infirmity of deafness did not interfere with his enjoyment of music, was an enthusiastic admirer of Mrs. Arkwright, and her constant and affectionate friend. Their proximity of residence in Derbyshire made their opportunities of meeting very frequent, and when the Arkwrights visited ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble

... nearly over, and though, in one way, the best meal in the week for her because all her children were sure to be at home, it was apt to be pure purgatory on a hot day, with Sheba dawdling and grumbling and Rosalind spilling pea-soup on her Sunday dress, and Aunt Elsie's deafness increased by the weather to ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... using good practical precautions for the town, and that is the best mode of asking for protection," said Lydgate, with a strong distaste for the broken metaphor and bad logic of the banker's religion, somewhat increased by the apparent deafness of his sympathy. But his mind had taken up its long-prepared movement towards getting help, and was not yet arrested. He added, "The town has done well in the way of cleansing, and finding appliances; and I think that if the cholera should come, even our enemies will ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... making fun of him, and there followed a stuttering quarrel between the two parties, each one finding it more and more difficult to express himself as his anger rose. Thiemet, who besides his role of stammering was also playing that of deafness, addressed his neighbor, his ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... miracles in the tales they relate of the medicinal powers of music. A fever is removed by a song, and deafness is cured by a trumpet, and the pestilence is chased away by the sweetness of an harmonious lyre. That deaf people can hear best in a great noise, is a fact alleged by some moderns, in favour of the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... was not sent on his work with any illusions as to its success, but, on the contrary, he had a clear premonition that its effect would be to deepen the spiritual deafness and blindness of the nation. We must remember that in Scripture the certain effect of divine acts is uniformly regarded as a divine design. Israel was so sunk in spiritual deadness that the issue of the prophet's work would only be to immerse the mass of 'this people' farther ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... poet of the Renaissance, he entered the household of the Duke of Orleans at the age of ten, spent three years as page of James V. of Scotland, and traveled much about Europe on various embassies. At eighteen, attacked by deafness, he withdrew to the college of Coqueret and was won to poetry by study of the ancients. It was then that a common love for the classical literatures and a common zeal for imitating their beauties in French ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield

... servant of Count de Faura, who was born deaf and without tongue, was that way for many years, and adoring one day the miracle of Saint Vicente, was cured of his deafness, his tongue grew, ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera

... rate, in his past had turned him into a silent, brooding man, seldom coming out of his thoughts until it came to a bargain, when he woke up like a giant from sleep. His deafness helped to fasten this silent habit deeper upon him. Also he was touchy about his deafness: didn't like at any time to be reminded of it; and was apt to fly into a sudden rage if anyone brought up a reminder, even by a chance hint. ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... and extraordinary in her look, as well as I could discern by the imperfect light of the apartment. I put a few unimportant questions to her, to which she replied, but seemed to be afflicted to a slight degree with deafness. Her hair was becoming grey, and I said that I believed she was older than myself, but that I was confident she had less snow on ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... a frequent cause of both slight and aggravated deafness. Of 156 deaf mutes examined 59 per cent had adenoids, while only 6 per cent of the general run of the children in the neighborhood had this trouble. In mouth breathing, the current of air entering the mouth draws out some of the air from the ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... the Beasts along, By sweet Rhetorick of his learned Tongue, 'Twas deafness made the Adder sin; and this Caus'd him, who should have ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley

... the bell, as it was about to move, she swung far out suspended in mid-air, oscillating, thus preventing the bell from ringing. Hemingway's deafness prevented him from hearing the bell ring, but as he had been deaf for 20 years, he attributed no ...
— Something Else Again • Franklin P. Adams

... strong personality that I had my hand back of my ear too, and spoke in a low, slightly drawling nasal, like his—"Allison," I repeated, "don't you miss a great deal by being deaf?" Now, it is said with tender regret, but a deep and sincere regard for truth, that my friend makes a virtue of a slight deafness. He uses it to avoid arguments, assignments, conventions, parlor parties—and bores—and deftly evades a whole lot of "duty" conversations as well. Of course I know all this now, but in those days ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... was now enjoying a momentary interval of ease, and welcomed his guest very cheerfully, although without attempting to do more than extend his hand to him and beg him to sit near. Notwithstanding all deafness the compliments of the morning, the enquiries after different members of each other's family, and the comments on the weather, were made and understood and interchanged with great facility, and the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... dispose my existence for the present. I am not called a companion, but a lady in waiting, which would be only another term for the same thing, if I were not really very much attached to the Princess, old and deaf as she is. And that is saying a great deal. No one knows what deafness means who has not read aloud to a deaf person, which is what I do every day. I do not think I ever told you about her. I have known her all my life, ever since I was a little girl in the convent in Vienna. She used to come and see me and bring me good things—and books of prayers—I ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford

... understand, and I think she will be willing when she gets home, don't you? Oh, Evangeline, won't we all be happy to have Carruthers cured of his poor little deafness o' hearing! I know the doctor, and he knows ears! We'll trust him, Evangeline. He will do everything in the world there is to be done. And we'll ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... gazing on this splendor, suddenly I heard a shriek. Shrill, ringing midst the woods In piercing clearness, through my ears it cut, And left a sense of deafness. Startled, round I gazed. Again the horrid sound thrilled past. I knew it then as the terrific cry Of the fierce, bloody panther. In our woods Naught fiercer, bloodier dwells, when roused by rage Or hunger. Oft our hunters had of late Marked the huge foot-prints of the ravenous beast, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... "hair-cells," the terminals of the auditory nerve, the latter nerve itself, and several other parts—are well shown. Should the Eustachian tube be closed owing to swelling of its lining mucous membrane, a certain amount of temporary deafness may result, because, the air within the middle ear (drum) being absorbed, and fresh air not being admitted, the outer air presses against the drum-head uncounteracted, and renders the conducting ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... Clary's Grove genus. As there was a crowd at the "ladies' department," that is, the dry-goods and finery, where it happened Lincoln was commonly besieged, the language was resented by woman's weapons—tosses of the head, affected deafness, glances into the future, and so on, but the clerk resented it in another way. He ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... cause of all the hysterical afflictions of women.[3] Epilepsy, mental and nervous maladies,[4] in which the patient seems no longer to belong to himself, and infirmities, the cause of which is not apparent, as deafness, dumbness,[5] were explained in the same manner. The admirable treatise, "On Sacred Disease," by Hippocrates, which set forth the true principles of medicine on this subject, four centuries and a half before Jesus, had not banished from the world so great ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... "My mother's deafness is very trifling you see—just nothing at all. By only raising my voice, and saying any thing two or three times over, she is sure to hear; but then she is used to my voice. But it is very remarkable that she should always hear Jane better ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... early death of infants. It slays those who otherwise would be strong and vigorous, sometimes striking down with palsy men in their prime, or extinguishing the light of reason. It is an important factor in the production of blindness, deafness, throat affections, heart-disease and degeneration of the arteries, stomach and bowel disease, kidney-disease, and affections of the bones. Congenital syphilis often leads to epilepsy or to idiocy, and most of the victims who survive are a charge on the State. This indictment ...
— Venereal Diseases in New Zealand (1922) • Committee Of The Board Of Health

... to discover fresh mysteries, or about the arrival of the Messiah. But if you began to speak to him about distilleries, taxes, estates, and things in connection with them, he would open his eyes widely and would listen to you like a man struck with deafness, because these things are to him like a sealed letter. For him, beyond his sacred books, the world ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

... tell us what we cannot do. They assume that blindness and deafness sever us completely from the things which the seeing and the hearing enjoy, and hence they assert we have no moral right to talk about beauty, the skies, mountains, the song of birds, and colours. They declare that the very sensations we have from the sense of touch ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... medical experiences of other tropical countries, and is not afraid of improving upon time-honored methods. The daily dose of quinine is seldom less than forty-five grains, and patients are not allowed to leave their beds until their temperature has remained normal for five days at least. Complaints of deafness are disregarded; if the patient turns of a blue color he may be consoled by a dose of Epsom salts. It is claimed that by this drastic treatment the relapses are prevented which, in India and elsewhere, probably account for at least nine attacks ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... due to a defect; but the nature of the defect is different in different cases. Deaf-mutism is so varied that frequently two unrelated deaf mutes may have hearing children. But if the deaf-mute parents are cousins, the chances that the deafness is due to the same unit defect are increased and all of the children ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... horse, my dear, afore I turned to my prayers at my bedside, coming down the street without his rider. He came like a rumble of deafness in my ears. Oh, my boy, I thought, Is it Robert's horse?—knowing you've got enemies, as there's no brave man has not got 'em—which is our only hope in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... deafness caused him to pass much of his long life in comparative retirement. His last thirty years were spent with his friend, the critic and poet, Theodore Watts-Dunton, at Putney on the Thames, a few miles southwest of London. Swinburne died in 1909 ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... point out that the system of electing representative peers robs us of even that modicum of democratic peers of Parliament which Great Britain is able to secure, and we repeat the argument of Mr. Gladstone that the distance of Dublin from Westminster and the consequent deafness of the House of Commons to Irish opinion is to a slight extent redressed by the small excess—calculated on lines of proportion—which Irish ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... calling upon his friend Cruikshank one day, had much ado in making the artist's aged servant aware that a visitor awaited at the portals; again and again he knocked, but in vain; the servant's deafness was proof against the onslaughts of a vigorous if not wholly artistic door implement. At last, losing all patience, he picked up the foot-scraper and was about to impetuously hammer away at the panels, when the caricaturist, ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... life about me, I hear, and my head is lightened, but in a room the hubbub comes back, and I am deaf as a Sinner. Did I tell you of a pleasant sketch Hood has done, which he calls Very Deaf Indeed? It is of a good naturd stupid looking old gentleman, whom a footpad has stopt, but for his extreme deafness cannot make him understand what he wants; the unconscious old gentleman is extending his ear-trumpet very complacently, and the fellow is firing a pistol into it to make him hear, but the ball will pierce his skull sooner than the report reach his sensorium. I chuse a very little ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... approaching from the bridge, seemed suddenly to be stricken with blindness, deafness, and a curious ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... households. Then, just as the old woman had arrived at the last steps, he pushed forward quickly and rubbed against her cheeks the hair which covered his face, bawling out in her ear, on account of her deafness: "How well you look, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... I am not going to trouble you with requests for a fortune or a throne; you get prayers enough of that sort from other people, and from your habit of convenient deafness I gather that you experience a difficulty in answering them. But there is one thing I should like, which would cost ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... were not unsuitable figures here. The former heroically planted the bridges by which we cross to Goat Island and the Wake-robin-crowned genius has punished his temerity with deafness, which must, I think, have come upon him when he sunk the first stone in the rapids. Jack seemed an acute and entertaining representative of Jonathan, come to look at his great water-privilege. He told us ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... all the debt incurred in my Oxford escapade yet—the last "little bill" being a sharp attack of lumbago, out of which I hope I have now emerged. But my deafness alone should bar me from decent society. I have not the moral courage to avoid making shots at what people say, so as not to bore them; and ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... forget the terrible suffering we endured. We had no blankets, and it was getting late in the fall. Some of us were entirely barefooted, and our feet so sore that we left stains of blood at every step. Deafness, too, seized upon us so intensely, occasioned by our weak condition, that we coud not hear the report of a gun fired at a distance of only a ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... teach them to articulate, as he considered the attempt to do this to be a great mistake, it being a painful effort to the child, which never leads to any good practical result. In some cases where deafness has been accidentally brought on after children have learned to speak, it is then as far as possible kept up; but even then the effort, as we saw, was ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... came on the age of signals; whistlings outside the windows, rattling of the railings, comes through letter-boxes and ventilation grids, even—on occasions of special deafness—pebbles thrown against the panes! A broken window, and a succession of whoops making the air hideous during the progress of an extra special tea party, evoked the displeasure of the mistresses in turns, and a second verdict ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... thousands of sufferers have been instantly enabled to hear the human voice in a low tone without causing one instant's pain, inconvenience, or trouble to a child, or aged nervous sufferer of either sex. This truly important discovery for the cure of deafness, obviating as it does all the former dangerous and fatal operations, has been made by the eminent aurist, DR. DAVID THOMAS, ten years Consulting Surgeon, at 14. Stroud Street, Dover, the first application of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 208, October 22, 1853 • Various

... formed one of his favourite resorts was Heiligenstadt, situated about seven miles from Vienna. Here he went in the summer of 1802, after a severe illness. For some time past he had been suffering from increasing deafness, and the malady seemed now to have reached an acute stage, so that his country surroundings failed to exercise their accustomed charm, and he fell into a deep melancholy. Indeed, he appeared to have become impressed with the idea that his life-work was ended, and that he ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... ten minutes," shouted Mr. Polly, "and you'll pop like a roast chestnut. Don't understand me? Roast chestnut! Roast chestnut! POP! There ought to be a limit to deafness. Come on round to the front and see if we can find an attic ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... to be very neighborly." The director turned, with a smile, to include that lady in the conversation. But the local deafness had engulfed her. She was sitting peacefully by the window, with the air of one retired within herself, to think her own very remote thoughts. The visitor mentally improvised a little theory, and it seemed to fit the occasion. They ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... been done, while the resulting running ear tells the tale of woeful suffering. Earache must always be thought of as a possible cause when the cry of pain accompanies a cold in the head, and if medical aid is secured early, the abscess may be aborted and the deafness of later years entirely avoided. There is only one home remedy for earache, and that is the application of external heat, either by a hot-water bottle or hot-salt bag. Medical advice should be sought before anything whatsoever is dropped into ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler

... dangerous to put a pointed pencil or anything sharpened into the ear. "Boxing" the ear, shouting in the ear, exploding a paper bag, may split the drum and cause deafness. The best way to remove excess wax from the ear is to use a soft, damp cloth over the end of the finger. Ear-wax is a protection against insects getting in ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... decided to leap from cake to cake. Sam made the crossing without accident, but his companion slipped in when a few feet from shore. He was a good swimmer and landed safely, but the bath probably cost him his hearing. He was taken very ill. One disease followed another, ending with scarlet fever and deafness. ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... hearing requires perfection in the structure and functions of the different parts of the ear, and that portion of the brain from which the auditory nerve proceeds. Deafness is by no means unfrequent. We will now advert to some of the common causes of ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... Arrowhead, had lately attended an evening affair in the valley at which the hitherto smart tipple of Jamaica ginger had been supplanted by a novel and potent beverage, Nature's own remedy for chills, dyspepsia, deafness, rheumatism, despair, carbuncles, jaundice, and ennui. Laura had partaken freely and yet again of this delectable brew, and now suffered not only from a sprained wrist but from detention, having suffered arrest on complaint of the tribal sister who had been ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... fever in Summer and rheumatism and pneumonia in Winter, has sent many an artist to limbus. Joshua Reynolds escaped the damp of the Vatican with nothing worse than a deafness that caused him to carry an ear-trumpet for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... mind that from infancy onward had dwelt only upon what is noblest in literature, and from which had been excluded all that is enervating and degrading. A remarkable illustration of this is the familiar case of Helen Keller, whose acquisitions, by reason of her blindness and deafness, were limited to what was selected for her, and that mainly by one person, and she was therefore for a long time shielded from a knowledge of the evil side of life. Yet all vital literature is so close to life, and so full ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... deafness" is properly noticed by Mr. Hume. It was read to S—— a few days ago, to try whether he could detect the sophistry: he was not previously told what was thought of it ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... lady glanced up at him rather listlessly. She was growing deaf, or feigned deafness. He said to himself that perhaps she was much older than they knew—was growing tired. Her persiflage, which Charles had never much appreciated, was less frequent than of old, and she no longer poured out her witticisms with the placid sweetness of a person offering you bonbons. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... ornament of your sex; and in silence, if there be not wisdom, there is safety. You will, then, if you please, according to your custom, sit listening to all entreaties to explain, and speak—with a fixed immutability of posture, and a pre-determined deafness of eye, which shall put your opponent utterly out of patience; yet still by persevering with the same complacent importance of countenance, you shall half persuade people you could speak if you would; you shall keep them in doubt by that true want of meaning, "which puzzles more than wit;" ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... and lavender, but let him tell you by a quiver of the nostrils the various kinds of so-called scentless flowers, and let him bend his ear and interpret secrets that the universe is ever whispering to us who are pent in partial deafness because, ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... supposing total deafness to be an indispensable qualification in a candidate for the position ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various

... was gone, and Bartley Fallon was gone, and Mrs. Fallon's basket upset, and all in it strewed upon the ground—the tea here—the two pound of sugar there—the egg-cups there. Look, now, what a great hardship the deafness puts upon me, that I didn't hear the commincement of the fight! Wait till I tell James Ryan that I see below; he is a neighbor of Bartley's; it would be a pity if he ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... membrane inwards; if, on the other hand, the air on the other side becomes rarer, while the Eustachian tube becomes closed, the membrane will be pressed outwards. Pain is felt in both cases, and partial deafness is experienced.... By the act of swallowing the Eustachian tube is opened, and thus equilibrium is established between the external ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... cut in as we started to follow the family parade, "I'm hep to the situation. It's a cutey, take it from little Ikey. I'll have to charge you $8 for the sudden attack of deafness; then there's $19 for hardships sustained by my finger joints while conversing. The rest of the 100 iron men I'm going to keep as a souvenir of two good-natured ginks who wouldn't know what to do with a Tango if they ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... My deafness seemed to melt away; my spirit caught the fire; I joined my feeble, trembling voice with that melodious choir, And sang as in my youthful days: "Let angels prostrate fall; Bring forth the royal diadem, and crown Him ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... here stole along, once more blotting out the dog, and blackening all the mountain; while the stillness was so still, deafness might have forgot itself, or else believed ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville

... old gentleman, and he made them very much at home under the impression they had come to get married. A slight deafness was in ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine

... to slay others, send poison in the shape of customary gifts, so that the man that taketh the powders so sent, by tongue or skin, is, without doubt, speedily deprived of life. Women have sometimes caused dropsy and leprosy, decrepitude and impotence and idiocy and blindness and deafness in men. These wicked women, ever treading in the path of sin, do sometimes (by these means) injure their husbands. But the wife should never do the least injury to her lord. Hear now, O illustrious ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... in August, fearing the worst; but Stella rallied, and in the spring of 1727 he returned to London. In August, however, there came alarming news, when Swift was himself suffering from giddiness and deafness. To Dr. Sheridan he wrote that the last act of life was always a tragedy at best: "it is a bitter aggravation to have one's best friend go before one." Life was indifferent to him; if he recovered from his disorder it would only be ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... the last words,—for, besides the awful complexity of the squire's sentences, Mauleverer was slightly affected by the aristocratic complaint of deafness,—the earl answered, with ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of tuberculosis seven years after the second attack, and examination of the brain post-mortem revealed the cause of the deafness. There was destruction of the centre of hearing in both hemispheres (vide fig. 17), caused by blocking of an artery supplying in each hemisphere that particular region with blood. The cause of the blocking of the two arteries was ...
— The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song • F. W. Mott

... cultivated. Do we not see, every day, cases of misery entailed upon whole families, because one of the parties had overlooked or disregarded moral infirmity, which ought to have been a greater objection than any physical defect—than even blindness or deafness? ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... forenoon on urgent business. If it is anything secret you have to tell me, I hope you have not got your wonderful old witch in the back cave, for she seems to have discovered as thorough a cure for deafness as I found for ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne

... hinder parts as big as a great hunting-horn, which they use to wind instead of a trumpet. Monardus (Monardes, Historia Medicinal) writeth that a little of the powder of that horn put into the ear cureth deafness. ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh

... "forgetfulness") is literally any loss or defect of the Memory. Aphasia (in Greek "absence of speech") is a total or partial loss of the power of speech, either in its spoken or written form. The term covers the loss of the power of expression by spoken words, but is often extended to include both word-deafness, i.e., the misunderstanding of what is said, and word-blindness—the inability to read words. An inability to execute the movements necessary to express oneself, either by gesture, writing, or speech, is styled "motor aphasia," to distinguish it from the inability to understand familiar gestures ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... physician's mainstay. As he advocated ten-grain doses of calomel by way of preliminary cathartic, the American missionaries stationed on the River have adopted a treatment still more "severe"—quinine till deafness ensues, and half a handful of mercury, often continued till a passage opens through the palate, placing mouth and nose in directer communication. Dr. Ford also recommends during the invasion or period of chills external friction of mustard or of fresh ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Huber, first under the National Research Council, later under the office of the Surgeon General, which sent several medical officers to the University for purposes of instruction and to assist him. Dr. Stacey R. Guild, instructor in Anatomy, also made some valuable experiments in war deafness. Special investigations were carried on in the Bacteriological Laboratories under Dr. Novy, in the Pathological Laboratory under Dr. Warthin, and in the Psychopathic Hospital, where Dr. Barrett, while training successive increments of medical officers every six weeks, ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... elected Alderman, an office he held for twenty years. He might have been Mayor at any time, but he invariably declined that honour. He was one of the first creation of Borough Magistrates, and he conscientiously fulfilled the duties of that office until near his end, when increasing deafness ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... called Mrs. Trewthen a good mother; but though well meaning she was maladroit, and her intentions missed their mark. This might have been partly attributable to the slight deafness from which she suffered. Now, as usual, the chief utterances came from ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... had been in prison for some days. Till then he had been deaf to their noise. This is Feuerbach's story, but we shall see that it is contradicted by Kaspar himself, in writing. Thus the alleged facts may be explained without recourse even to a theory of intermittent deafness. Kaspar was no more deaf than blind. He 'was all there,' and though, ten days after his arrival, he denied that he had ever seen Weichmann, in ten days more his memory for faces was deemed extraordinary, and he minutely described all that, on May ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang

... illusions. One advertiser professes to give 'the philosophy of the science;' another undertakes to 'reveal the secret,' so as to enable any person to make the experiments; and another undertakes the cure of 'palsy, deafness, and rheumatism.' Lectures on the topic, in London and in the provincial towns, are now exciting great astonishment in the minds of many, and give rise to considerable controversy respecting the theory and the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various

... sentence was cut off by Miss Kate Lansdale, who appeared around the corner and paused politely before us, with a look of trained and admirable deafness. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... purpose of securing him. However, my master thought it was not wise to give any information respecting himself, and for fear that Mr. Cray might draw him into conversation and recognise his voice, my master resolved to feign deafness as the ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft

... has likewise detailed nine cases of deafness cured, or greatly relieved, by iodine. In most of these cases, the disease originated from obstruction of the Eustachian tube, the consequence of swelling of the tonsils, or of the membrane of the tube itself, from ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... of the Chamber of Peers, but excused from attendance on account of his deafness, had a handsome head, chilled by age, but with enough gray hair still to be marked in a circle by the pressure of his hat. He was short, square, and shrunken, but carried his hale old age with a free-and-easy air; and as he was full of excessive activity, which had now no ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... in anecdotes, unless it be for the purpose of illustrating some general principle. Women and weak men are all addicted to the vice. If a person of this description begins to annoy a company with his or her twaddle, the only cure for it is to affect deafness—a very convenient infirmity ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various

... thousand dollars, so I shall have to do without your eyes; but," he added, "I will tell you what I will do, I will give you twenty dollars if you will let me put a few drops from this bottle in your ears. It will not hurt, but it. will make you deaf. I want to try some experiments with deafness, you see. Come quickly, now! Here are the twenty ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... my ling'ren life should run, Drough years a-reckoned ten by ten, Below the never-tiren zun, Till beaebes ageaen be wives an' men; An' stillest deafness should ha' bound My ears, at last, vrom ev'ry sound; Though still my eyes in that sweet light, Should have the zight o' sky an' ground: Would then my steaete In time so leaete, Be jay or pain, ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... Columbia George's Honduras Sarsaparilla East India Hair Dye, colors the hair and not the skin Acoustic Oil, for deafness Vermifuge Bartholomew's Expectorant Syrup Carlton's Specific Cure for Ringbone, Spavin and Wind-galls Dr. Sphon's Head Ache Remedy Dr. Connol's Gonorrhea Mixture Mother's Relief Nipple Salve Roach and Bed Bug Bane Spread Plasters Judson's Cherry ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw

... subordinates; the methods to which they have recourse to attain that end are rather various. The following means, among others, is in great vogue, 'is quite a favourite,' as the English say; a high official suddenly ceases to understand the simplest words, assuming total deafness. He will ask, for instance, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... the gospel in her hand, was supported by Justice, "in orange velvet," armed with blade and beam. Prudence and Fortitude embraced each other near a column enwreathed by serpents "with their tails in their ears to typify deafness to flattery," while Patriotism as a pelican, and Patience as a brooding hen, looked benignantly upon the scene. This greeting duly acknowledged, the procession advanced into the city. The streets were lined ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... the gale still whistled through the crevices among the boulders, but presently he found himself in a silence that was so mighty a change from the ceaseless roar to which he was becoming accustomed, that he felt as though stricken with deafness. Up above him the light filtered down, tempered by the slab under which he had come, and enabled him still to find precarious hand ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... actually afflicted with deafness, never ask to have a sentence repeated. It implies a wandering attention. If your hearing is defective, say so, and your ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... You rascally lawyer, you! and whence does an ostler like you get your shilling to pay withal? Answer me." The examinate found it so difficult to answer the question, that he suddenly became afflicted with deafness. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... with grey, although it was perfumed with the sweets of Araby, and oiled with as pure and undefiled an unction as that which flowed from the horn of the ancient Samuel upon the head of the youthful David. His stateliness provoked her mirth—his deafness her impatience; and when she compared him with the joyous cavaliers, the brilliant and captivating men who graced the court of the gay and luxurious Louis, for whose gallant plumes and glittering armour she so often watched ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... eighteen.[172] In another case a father and his four children all became blind at twenty-one years old; in another, a grandmother grew blind at thirty-five, her daughter at nineteen, and three grandchildren at the ages of thirteen and eleven.[173] So with deafness, two brothers, their father and paternal grandfather, all became deaf at the ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... holiday was devoted to rambling about the country near London. He cared little for anything but his favourite science, but that he understood, and he never grew tired of it. I took no account of his deafness and dumbness; the one thing I saw was his mastership over a single subject. Gradually my incompleteness came to weigh on me like a nightmare. I imagined that if I had learned any craft which required skill, I should have ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... both child and mother, it is said. In the child it causes a tendency to brain disease, probably through disordered digestion and nutrition. In the mother it causes a strong tendency to deafness and blindness. If a child is nursed after it is twelve months old, it is generally pale, flabby and unhealthy, often rickety, one authority points out, while the mother is usually nervous, emaciated and hysterical. If pregnancy occurs under these conditions, the mother not only ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger

... might see the mighty figure. And so Beethoven, an artist of the same colossal order, wrote out for us those mysterious harmonies which his ear had for the first time heard; and which, in his mournful old age, it heard none the less plainly because of its complete physical deafness. And in this way Shakespeare wrote his "Othello"; spinning out no abstract thoughts about jealousy and its fearful effects upon a proud and ardent nature, but revealing to us the living concrete man, as his imperial imagination had ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... Benoit, Mrs. Lamotte; Doctor Heath's tardiness will furnish sufficient excuse, and Doctor Benoit's partial deafness will render him ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... what slender accidents the human ear may be imposed upon. The author was walking, about two years since, in a wild and solitary scene with a young friend, who laboured under the infirmity of a severe deafness, when he heard what he conceived to be the cry of a distant pack of hounds, sounding intermittedly. As the season was summer, this, on a moment's reflection, satisfied the hearer that it could not be the clamour of an actual chase, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... close of the discourse, when the precentor rose to read the remembering prayer, old Ebenezer Muir, then upwards of fourscore and thirteen, who had been brought into the church on a barrow by two of his grandsons, and was, for reason of his deafness, in the bench with the elders, gave him a paper, which, after rehearsing the names of those in distress and sickness, he read, and it was ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt

... and vision are the prime factors in communicating with environment. [As has been noted frequently in this book, mutism is a common residual symptom of the benign stupor.] Myers believes that in nearly every instance mutism follows stupor and is merely an attenuation of the latter process. When deafness is associated with mutism, he thinks it is often due merely to the inattention of ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch

... close of his life, he was afflicted by deafness, which made him feel exceedingly uncomfortable in mixed society. Thanks to a healthy constitution, unimpaired by excess and invigorated by active occupation, his working powers had lasted longer than those of most men. He was still cheerful, clear-headed, and skilful in the arts ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... sensory aphasia, or, more precisely, auditory aphasia. In pure auditory aphasia there is no inability to pronounce words or even to speak fluently, but there is, first, an inability to "hear words", sometimes called word deafness, and there is often also an inability to find the right words to speak, so that the individual so afflicted, while speaking fluently enough and having sense in mind, misuses his words and utters a perfect jargon. One old ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... enjoyment of that interchange of thoughts by flying from topic to topic just as their unshackled imagination suggested. But Fernand never questioned Nisida concerning the motive which had induced her to feign dumbness and deafness for so many years; she had given him to understand that family reasons of the deepest importance, and involving dreadful mysteries from the contemplation of which she recoiled with horror, had prompted ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... rather reluctantly. Great-aunt Eliza was toasting her toes—clad, as we noted, in very smart and shapely shoes—at the stove and looking quite at her ease. Cecily, determined to do her duty even in the face of such fearful odds as Great-aunt Eliza's deafness, dragged a ponderous, plush-covered album from its corner and proceeded to display and explain the family photographs. She did her brave best but she could not shout like Felicity, and half the time, as she confided to me ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... there sat not Pyotr Dmitritch, but another man whom every one called Mr. President. This consciousness of power prevented him from sitting still in his place, and he seized every opportunity to ring his bell, to glance sternly at the public, to shout. . . . Where had he got his short-sight and his deafness when he suddenly began to see and hear with difficulty, and, frowning majestically, insisted on people speaking louder and coming closer to the table? From the height of his grandeur he could hardly distinguish faces or sounds, so that it seemed that if Olga Mihalovna herself had gone up ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Blindness, deafness, loss of speech, every possible loss of function may follow a violent shock to a child's mind or bodily system. Care must be taken to avoid this. The moment you see the child affected by any strange sight or sound have, if possible, the child removed or the affecting ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk

... began at the foundation, so to speak, and crawled painfully over the carpet, paying special attention to the edges. Next, he fingered the baseboards carefully, rapping here and there, as though he expected some significant sound to penetrate his deafness. Rising, he went over the wall systematically, and at length, with the aid of a chair, reached up to the picture-moulding. He had gone nearly around the room, without any definite idea of what he was searching for, when his questioning fingers touched ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... put in Mr. Somershall, speaking across from the Chairman's left. Mr. Somershall was afflicted with deafness, but liked to assert himself whenever a word by chance reached him and gave him a cue. He leaned sideways, arching a palm around his one useful ear. "Excuse me; we brought it in 'attempted wounding,' I believe? I have ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... Miss Travers, then a young girl of nineteen, was suffering from partial deafness, and was recommended by her own doctor to go to Dr. Wilde, who was the chief oculist and aurist in Dublin. Miss Travers went to Dr. Wilde, who treated her successfully. Dr. Wilde would accept no fees from her, stating at the outset that as she ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... leads to the same divine issue, my poor friend," said Beethoven; "why, just see here—I'm stone-deaf, and can't hear a note of what I'm singing to you! But it is not about that I weep, when I am weeping. It was terrible when it first came on, my deafness, and I could no longer hear the shepherd's pipe or the song of the lark; but it's well worth going deaf, to hear all that I do. I have to write everything down, and read it to myself; and my tears fall on the ruled paper, and blister the lines, and make ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... trusty emissary, he walked round to the back of the house, to verify the total emptiness. His apprehensive despondency had said that it was absolutely empty, but upon consideration he supposed the house must have some guardian: likely enough, an old gardener and his wife, lost in deafness double-shotted by sleep! There was no sign of them. The night air waxed sensibly crisper. He thumped the backdoors. Blank hollowness retorted on the blow. He banged and kicked. The violent altercation with wood and wall lasted several minutes, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Geoffroy St. Hilaire has forcibly remarked, that certain malconformations very frequently, and that others rarely coexist, without our being able to assign any reason. What can be more singular than the relation between blue eyes and deafness in cats, and the tortoise-shell colour with the female sex; the feathered feet and skin between the outer toes in pigeons, and the presence of more or less down on the young birds when first hatched, with the future colour of ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... old man was abroad; not with fear, but with great wonder, and the regrets of deafness. And I saw that rather would he be shot than let these men go rob his son, buried now, or laid to bleach in the tangles of the wood, three, or it might be four years agone, but still alive to his father. ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... of his vocation. He was for some time a page of the court, was in the service of James V. of Scotland, and had his share of shipwrecks, battles, and amorous adventures. An illness which produced total deafness made him a scholar and poet, as in another age and country it might have made him a saint and an ascetic. With all his industry, and almost religious zeal for art, he is one of the poets who make themselves, rather than are born singers. ...
— Ballads and Lyrics of Old France: with other Poems • Andrew Lang

... the Royal Commission on Venereal Disease, and Sir William Osier, who was a great authority, said that he could teach medicine on syphilis alone, because every tissue in the body is affected by it, and that the diseases of blindness, deafness, insanity and every form of disease may be due to syphilis. You have only to consider the effect that it had upon the army, and I understand that more than two army corps were invalided during the war ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout

... age and prodigious deafness carried him from house to house; first to all the principal places of entertainment, aristocratic, family, and commercial; then to more obscure taverns and boarding-houses, until the sun was high and the commerce of Liverpool in full swing; and at all these places ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... to my ears and shook my head violently to intimate my temporary deafness; and the figure disappeared, leaving the placid candle to watch me as it seemed with a kind ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... similarity between the closing part of this passage, about our deafness to the music of the stars, owing to the "muddy vesture," and the sonnet of Blanco White which speaks of the starry splendors to which our eyes are blinded by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... present closed to him. To accept the artistic conscience, the artistic aim, as the highest ideal of which the spirit is capable, is to be a Pharisee in art, to be self-sufficient, arrogant, limited. It is a kind of spiritual pride, a wilful deafness to more remote voices; and it is thus of all sins, the one which the artist, who lives the life of perception, whose mind must, above all things, be open and transparent, should be loth to commit. He should rather keep his inner eye—for the artist is like the ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... of the liberty, as well as those of the neighbourhood, have lived with me in great amity for near twenty years; which I am confident will never diminish during my life. I am chiefly sorry, that by two cruel disorders of deafness and giddiness, which have pursued me for four months, I am not in condition either to hear, or to receive you, much less to return my most sincere acknowledgements, which in justice and gratitude I ought to do. May God bless you and your families in ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... recognition. Children superbly allow themselves to become deaf, so to speak, to undesirable circumstances; most frequently, of course, to undesirable circumstances in the way of parental direction; so that fathers, mothers, nurses, or governesses, not comprehending that this mental deafness is for the time being entirely genuine, are liable to hoarseness both of throat and temper. Thirteen is an age when the fading of this gift or talent, one of the most beautiful of childhood, begins to impair its helpfulness under the mistaken stress of discipline; but Florence ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... vesicles on wounds (Baraduc), acne and other forms of cutaneous eruptions (the author of Onania, Clipson), dilated pupils (Skene, Lewis, Moraglia), eyes directed upward and sideways (Pouillet), dark rings around the eyes, intermittent functional deafness (Bonnier), painful menstruation (J. Chapman), catarrh of uterus and vagina (Winckel, Pouillet), ovarian disease (Jessett), pale and discolored skin (Lewis, Moraglia), redness of nose (Gruner), epistaxis (Joal, J.N. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... in recovery, but occasionally in death or in chronic Bright's disease of these organs. Inflammation of the middle ear with abscess, discharge of matter from the ear externally, and—as the final outcome—deafness, is not uncommon. This complication may be prevented to a considerable extent by spraying the nose and throat frequently and by the patient's use of a nightcap with earlaps, if the room is not sufficiently warm. Inflammation of the eyelids ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... enlargement of the tonsils occasions deafness from pressure on the passage leading to the internal ear, and is also apt to give rise to a troublesome hacking cough which sometimes excites apprehension lest the child's lungs should be diseased. When still more considerable the enlarged tonsils ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... Adams secured, he instantly laid hold on Fanny, and, with the assistance of the poet and player, who, hearing the battle was over, were now come up, dragged her, crying and tearing her hair, from the sight of her Joseph, and, with a perfect deafness to all her entreaties, carried her downstairs by violence, and fastened her on the player's horse; and the captain, mounting his own, and leading that on which this poor miserable wretch was, departed, without any more consideration of her cries than a butcher hath of those of a lamb; for indeed ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding



Words linked to "Deafness" :   deaf-muteness, deaf, hearing impairment, tone deafness, deaf-mutism, middle-ear deafness, hearing loss, hearing disorder, word deafness



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