1923.] Case of Miss Thatcher, born Deaf and Dumb. Mr. URBAN, MTS July 9. ISS THATCHER, whose Portrait we now send you, (see Plate I.) was born totally deaf, and consequently insensible to the use of language. Her case proves in a very decided manner what advantages may be attained by scientific and humane perseverance: at the same time it opens to view a reasonable hope, that these poor unfortunate beings, to whom this inlet of human knowledge appeared irrevocably closed, are not all in that dreadful situation. The community are under great obligations to any man who is the first to stem the torrent of error, and prove so distinctly that all the sons of Esculapius of olden time, as well as those of the present day, who have consigned this class of diseases to the incurable list, are not to be implicitly relied upon. Diseases of the Ear, we are assured by several, and we know it to be the opinion of some of the highest members of the profession, are very little if at all understood by the general practitioner; but a gentleman who turns the whole force of a well-educated mind, aided by experience, to one branch of a profession, must necessarily rise to eminence. We see this daily in every walk of life, and it is a proof of liberality and honourable feeling in the medical and surgical profession, to submit (as it is well known they do) cases of defective sight, hearing, &c. &c. to the gentlemen who make those respective departments of practice their constant study, and from the number of cases continually presenting themselves, must be well skilled in affording relief. Before men of science and education undertook the treatment of deafness and diseases of the auditory organs, they were affections for which most old women had a never-failing nostrum, or which the itinerant Empiric appropriated to himself. Many of these delude the public, both in the metropolis and the country, even at the present day; but the gentlemen who have devoted themselves to this line of practice and justly claim respectability are, we believe, only four in the whole of this great empire, all of whom now reside in London. It is neither our province nor wish to draw a comparison between these GENT. MAG. July, 1823. 9 gentlemen; they have no doubt each their own peculiar opinions and methods of treatment. Not that we mean to convey an idea, that each applies a favourite remedy to every case indiscriminately; this would be stigmatising them as system-mongers, than which nothing can be more opposite to true science. No doubt they all give their Patients a clear, honourable opinion of the case presented to them, formed upon a comprehensive view of the various symptoms. Here it is the man of ability shines superior to the Empiric; the first applies a remedy from a knowledge of its effects in relieving a peculiar malady; the Charlatan blunders on, and if by chance one case out of a thousand succeeds, he uses every art to cause all the unsuccessful cases to be buried in oblivion. Miss Thatcher is a native of Bristol, of a highly respectable family, but since the acquirement of hearing, she has become an orphan, and Mr. Wright, with the consent of her father, previous to his death, and her nearest relatives, has adopted her as his own: she is about sixteen years of age, finely formed, peculiarly interesting in manners and disposition, and gifted with considerable intellectual powers. Her voice is harmonious and natural, but owing to a double uvula, or rather a division of it, she cannot pronounce some letters and words so fluently as other persons, which is to be attributed to that cause alone, as others similarly circumstanced (although they are by no means common instances,) have the same difficulty. Her hearing is however quite perfect, and she forms altogether a very striking example of the successful treatment of extreme deafness, whilst her case, which is well authenticated, will diffuse a ray of hope that will penetrate wherever a similar instance is to be found, and we trust will excite the ability, and stimulate the perseverance of others to carry on and perfect the benefits which this new discovery opens to the world; for this young lady is not the only case wherein the same modes of treatment have succeeded, and there is reason to believe, that had her Majesty Queen Charlotte's life been prolonged, she intended to have become the Patroness of an Institution, where children, thus deprived from birth of the valuable sense of hearing, might have received the 10 Case of Miss Thatcher, born Deaf and Dumb. the advantages of the same treatment; for her Majesty expressed herself much gratified by such a proof that these cases were not all incurable, and was pleased to cause the Royal thanks to be conveyed to Mr. Wright, for one of his publications on the Ear, which her Majesty personally desired him to send her, and in honouring him with the grant of an appointment as her Surgeon-Aurist (see London Gazette, Jan. 20, 1818), declared in a letter written by her Majesty's command, that the honour was conferred in consequence of her Majesty having had an opportunity of witnessing the efficacy of Mr. Wright's practice and ability as an Aurist." From one of Mr. Wright's works on "Nervous Deafness," it appears that this young lady's case was a species of dropsy of the membrane, generally known by the name of the drum of the ear, which being formed of several laminæ, some of them were kept apart by extravasated fluid. He considers this case as of very rare occurrence, but is of opinion that the most frequent cause of total and congenital deafness is to be attributed to the injudicious exposure of infants by nurses and others to sudden changes of temperature, cold ablutions in the first moments of existence, &c. &c. but he does not think that there are so many children born deaf, as is generally be lieved. It is commonly supposed, that in the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, the children receive medical aid as to the malady under which they labour; but by a correspondence published in 1819, it appears that Mr. Wright offered to attend the children in that Institution gratuitously; and His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, the Patron, with the advice of Dr. Bain, one of the Censors of the College of Physicians, recommended that the offer should be accepted; to which the Committee returned the following answer: [July, "Resolved, That as this Institution is established only for the purposes of Instruction, it is the opinion of this Committee that they cannot, consistently with their sense of the confidence reposed in them by the Parents, permit the Pupils received by them for Education alone, to be subjected to any Medical Treatment whatever in regard to their Deafness, while they are in the Asylum, and that a copy of this Resolution be respectfully communicated to his Royal Highness the Patron." When the proposal was made, it was explained to the Committee that the modes of treatment were not kept secret, neither were they painful, nor in any respect injurious to the constitution; and under those circumstances, with facts before them to shew that it was no vain theory, surely parents ought to have had an option, whether they would or would not subject their children to a trial of the curative process, thus proposed. We understand the illustrious Patron was of opinion, that if such rules existed, whereby the Committee considered themselves obliged to give the above reply, a general meeting of Governors ought to have been convened, for the purpose of taking into consideration the propriety of rescinding such regulations. If, indeed, the method of treatment was calculated to give pain, or derange the health of the children, the general meeting of Governors would have evinced parental solicitude by refusing the offer; but it was not proposed that the children should be subjected to the ridiculous plan of having their constitutions injured, and probably their lives destroyed with mercury*; nor their ears burned with caustic t Indeed, the Governors would only have had to look at Miss Thatcher, to be convinced that the process was not injurious to health; and every person who sees this print of her, will be of the same opinion, for Miss Drummond has shewn her usual taste and spirit of execution in the portrait, and the engraver has performed his part in a Several cases are quoted, and much force of reasoning used by Mr. Wright, in a little work on "The improper use of Mercury in cases of nervous Deafness." + The case of the Duke of Wellington, into whose ears a solution of caustic was put to relieve an imaginary opacity of the drum of the ear, must serve as a caution against the use of this application; for though numberless cases might be cited in which it has occasioned equally injurious effects, yet when a misfortune occurs to such an illustrious individual, it becomes known to all the world. The Duke's life was considered by his medical attendants as being seriously threatened, previous to his departure for the Congress, owing to this application, and his Grace's hearing has been very defective, until recently, since Mr. Wright's attendance upon him: but we understand that gentleman is in great doubt whether the hearing on one side will ever be restored. manner 1823.] Death and Burial of Lady Katharine Grey. manner so ereditable to himself, that the public have a faithful resemblance of the young lady who is the subject of these observations. C. S. & R. M. Life Governors of the Chancel at Yoxford, the bowels of ye Lady Deaf and Dumb Asylum. lady Katharine had been committed prisoner Mr. URBAN, June 1. THERE seems to have been an error which has crept into all our Historians, respecting the fate of the Lady Katharine Grey, youngest daughter of Henry Grey Duke of Suffolk, and the Lady Frances, daughter of Charles Brandon. The main points of her history are well known, and no doubt, correctly detailed; but it is of her death and burial that I am now speaking. Dr. Fuller, in his quaint way, gives us the following account: "She was born at Bradgate, and (when her father was in height) married to Henry Lord Herbert, son and heir to the Earl of Pembroke; but the politic old Earl, perceiv ing the case altered, and what was the high way to honour, turned into the ready road to ruin, got pardon from Queen Mary, and broke the marriage quite off. This Heraclita, or Lady of Lamentation, thus repudiated, was seldom seen with dry eyes for some years together, sighing out her sorrowful condition; so that though the roses in her cheeks looked very wan and pale, it was not for want of watering. Afterwards Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, married her privately without the Queen's licence, and concealed it till her pregnancy discovered it. Queen Elizabeth beheld her with a jealous eye, unwilling she should match either foreign Prince or English Peer, but follow the pattern she set her of constant virginity. For their presumption this Earl was fined 15,000/. imprisoned with his lady in the Tower, and severely forbidden her company; but love and money will find or force a passage. By bribing the keeper, he bought (what was his own) his wife's embraces, and had by her a surviving son, Ed ward, ancestor to the Duke of Somerset. She died Jan. 26, 1567, a prisoner in the Tower, after nine years durance there." It appears from Bayley's "History of the Tower," p. 91, that on the 5th Sept. 1562, 4 Eliz. “the Ladie Katherine Grey, and the Erle of Hartford," were prisoners there: but from the following note, copied from a MS by Reyce, now in the College of Arms, relating to Suffolk Antiquities, it is equally clear that she did not die there: the note is as follows: "There lie buried in the Church and to Sir Owen Hopton, Lieftenant of the Tower, for marrying without the Queen's knowledge, and was by him kept at Cockfield Hall, in Yoxford, being his house, where she died. I have been often told by aged people in Yoxford, that after her death, a little dog she had, would never more eat any meat, but lay and died upon her grave." This statement is corroborated by the following entry in the Parish Register of Yoxford: "The Lady Katherine Gray, buried 21st Feb. 1567." D. A. Y. We have pleasure in presenting our Readers with the following curious particulars respecting the Toad, from which they will judge whether it is a noxious Reptile*. 1. TO SIR JOSEPH BANKS, SIR, Morton, 23 April 1808. HE following subject will, I trust, sufficiently apologize for the liberty I have thus taken, and I beg to be considered in terms of the greatest respect, your most obedient servant, SAMUEL HOPKINSON. The Toad, though a loathsome, is not generally considered a venomous animal by the common people, many of whom so far from indicating any fear or disgust at its sight, will frequently grasp it in their hands, and throw it wantonly at each other. That it is actually capable, however, of injuring the human frame, will appear from the following rare and perhaps unique occurrence. While Thomas Willson, a gardener of this place, was pulling down and repairing an old wall, in the early part of this cold and sterile month, he observed a cavity passing up the middle, with smooth and black as induced him to some outlets, at irregular distances, so suspect them the abodes of rats, or of of the day, the pendent position of the some other quadrupeds. The severity head, together with a cold, under which he then laboured, aggregately caused a more copious effusion of the *On this subject see vols. L. p. 873; LXXVIII. 1055; LXXIX. 303, 416, 573. nasal 12 Correspondence with Sir Joseph Banks, relative to the Toad. [July, nasal fluid than at other times. To have disposed of this drop by drop, repeatedly and deliberately in the way usual in more civilized life, would have impeded the operations of one so assiduously employed. It was removed by an apter process, the fore-finger and thumb, accompanied by a short and forward jerk of the head. Thus was the hand for several hours alternately employed, one while squeezing the humid nostrils, at another time removing, handling, and refitting the smooth stones surrounding the cavities. In the extremity of these gloomy recesses, about the close of day, were discovered five monstrous Toads, which finding their domains invaded, had crawled thither for safety. In the evening, this person, not in the least apprehensive of any evil consequences likely to ensue, returned to his house, where he had not been long seated by the fire, before he was seized with a sharp throbbing sensation never before experienced in that very part which, during the course of the previous day, had been so often pinched with the finger and thumb. In the night this increased, and before the ensuing morning, extended with a considerable degree of painful inflammation quite over his face, to the crown of his head upwards in a lateral direction to his ears and downwards to his shoulders. Though not yet aware of the source from whence the evil proceeded, still he now began to be alarmed, and recollecting what intercourse he so lately had with the ancient inhabitants of the hollow wall, to suspect the injury arose from them. On the following day, his nose was so swollen, his features so generally inflated, the colour of his face so heightened, that, independent of his corporal habiliments, not even a neighbour would have known him. In this state of pain, distortion, and suspense, did he continue nearly a week, at the end of which, finding no abatement of the malady, application was made to a farrier, who affixed a large leathern plaster consisting of honey and verdigrise, because it is reputed to have cured not long ago a man bitten by a viper in a hay-field, at Swinstead. To the part affected, this recipe had not been long applied, before its salutary efficacy began to be felt. Seven fertile ulcers burst out from his nose, which continued, for many days, to discharge a black foetid matter very profusely. The tumid member became daily less, the inflammation gradually subsided, the pain abated, and the features re-assumed their natural shape. The particulars of the above singular circumstance have thus been correctly and minutely detailed, with a view to caution persons, whose province more especially may lead them to such places as this and other reptiles are wont to inhabit, to convince them what seems clear beyond all possibility of doubt, that the Toad is actually possessed with a power of infusing, some how or other, a noxious quality into the human frame. The writer, however, begs to be understood, that, notwithstanding the reputed quality of the large leathern plaister, he does not vouch for its efficacy in the present, nor will he venture to recommend it in a future and similar instance, 2. To the Rev. SAMUEL HOPKINSON, Morton, near Bourn, Lincolnshire. REV. SIR, Soho-sq. June 18, 1808. YOUR favour, dated April 25, did not reach my hands till yesterday. For the account contained in it, I beg to thank you, though in fact I am not yet convinced that the swellings which took place in the nose of the person you describe, were owing to his having blown his nose with a finger with which he had touched stones blackened by the frequent contact of the Toads crawling over them. I have, from my childhood, in conformity to the precepts of a mother, void of all imaginary fear, been in constant habits of taking Toads in my hand, holding them there some time, and applying them to my face or nose, as it may happen. My motive for doing this very frequently, is to inculcate the opinion I have held since I was taught by my mother, that the Toad is actually a harmless animal, and to whose manner of life man is certainly under some obligation, as his food is chiefly those insects which devour his crops, and annoy him in various ways. To treat such an animal with cruelty, and to regard it with disgust, I have always considered as a vulgar error, and have thought it an act of humanity worthy the practice of a contemplative man, to convince his neighbours by every means in his power, that a helpless and harmless creature 1923.] Correspondence with Sir Joseph Banks, relative to the Toad. creature ought rather to be regarded with complacence and kindness, than with disgust, terror, and consequent persecution. In practice of humanity towards the Toad, which has now been continued nearly 60 years, in which time I have removed from some hundreds of persons the disgust they had been accustomed to feel at the sight of a Toad, and induced many to handle the animal, and imitate my custom of applying it to the face in order to prove that the thin skin of the lips and the cheeks were not subject to damage by the touch. I have never, in one instance, observed any consequence to follow the contact of the human skin with that of a Toad more than what happens when a beast, a bird, or a fish is handled. I cannot, therefore, at once decide, that the swellings, inflammation, and ulcers, that appeared on the nose, arose from handling the stones against which the Toads had rubbed. I incline much more to suppose that it was the effect of some constitutional disease which accidentally took place soon after the man had found the Toads in the wall, and which was erroneously attributed to venom. I am, Rev. Sir, Your most obedient servant, 3. SIR JOSEPH, Morton, June 24. I AM much obliged by the handsome and diffuse manner in which you have been pleased to favour me with an answer. Though ready to pay the utmost deference to your opinion in all matters relating to the operations of nature, still, under circumstances, of which I have actually been in a great degree an eye witness, it is utterly impossible to resist all at once, and to reject altogether, the plain evidence of sense, or to peruse your plan for removing the aversion which the generality of men entertain for the Toad, without turning pale with horror. Had my neighbour Willson been addicted to habits of intemperance, which we see daily punished with fiery and distorted features: had he, from other causes, been subject to cutaneous disorders: could any plausible reason be assigned for the fabrication of so curious a falsehood, one, then, might hesitate a while in assenting to his story. To all this, however, the re verse is the fact. He is a plain, sober, industrious, active man on the verge of sixty*, with a clear countenance that has never been deformed with a filthy ulcer, nor even with a pimple till a little after he had so repeatedly rejected that with his finger and thumb, at the same time he was employed in handling the stones, blackened and defiled by the reptiles in the cavity of the wall, which the highest orders of society commonly put carefully into the pocket. Nor has this person, since the seven ulcers ceased to flow, which was near three weeks after they first burst forth, been troubled with any similar complaint on any part of his body. Having never had the resolu lution to view this loathsome reptile, even from a distance or on horseback, without great violation to my feelings, I cannot but contemplate your experiment with dread. Though you have applied the toad repeatedly and assiduously to the most vulnerable part, still, I trust, you will have the goodness to excuse me in observing that you probably had no crack, nor sore at the time of application upon your lips, while the extremities of Willson's nose were, from a combination of causes, viz. the dry severity of the day, the dripping of the mucus, and the attrition of the finger and pressure of thumb, were under a considerable degree of excoriation. At this time and in this state, do I conceive and believe was the noxious quality of this horri ble reptile taken from the polluted stones by the finger and thumb, and conveyed directly by frequently pinching and squeezing the excoriated and humid nostrils to the nose. Supposing, however, that at the time of contact any openings existed upon your lips, we are not surely to infer, admitting its capability to infuse a venom, a certainty of your receiving the infection. You know, Sir Joseph, much better than I, that there is scarce any law in Nature without some exception. The small-pox, though a very common, is not a general disorder. Some never |