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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



... perpetual grinding of wheels, sawing their way through the loose stones at the top, or ploughing through the wet foundation, was hardly an improvement on the music arising from the jolts and jerks along the causeway. Men's minds got confused in the immensity of the uproar, and deafness became epidemic. In winter, the surface of Macadam formed a series of little lakes, resembling on a small scale those of Canada; in summer, it formed a Sahara of dust, prodigiously like the great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... Cotton Mather, present at the gallows, restored the crowd to faith by reminding them that the devil had the power to dress up like an angel of light. Rebecca Nurse, a woman of unimpeachable character hitherto, unable from partial deafness to understand, so as to explain, the allegations made against her, was convicted notwithstanding every proof ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... assistants, most of the nursing devolved on her as well. One patient who was critically ill she was obliged for six weeks to nurse entirely both by night and day. Nervous debility was the natural consequence of such overwork, and a deafness from which she had suffered at Kaiserswerth so much increased that the doctor ordered her to rest. That was not immediately possible, as there was no one to take her place, and when at last a successor had been found, and she was able to return home, she was so weary both in body and mind that she ...
— Excellent Women • Various

... governor of the State called up Silas, me answering for him on account of his deafness, and asked everybody to come in to town next Saturday night to hear this new commissioner of agriculture that he is going to appoint make the opening address of his office, I reckon you could call it. You know Silas is the ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... 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 I thought his lack of complete hearing an infirmity calling for a sort of sympathy on my part. Anyway ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... that the reason why no cry whatsoever had been heard from the lips of Mrs. Williamson, is due to the positions of the parties as I have sketched them. Coming behind Mrs. Williamson, unseen therefore, and from her deafness unheard, the murderer would inflict entire abolition of consciousness while she was yet unaware of his presence. But with the servant, who had unavoidably witnessed the attack upon her mistress, the murderer could not obtain the same fulness of advantage; and she therefore ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... Shrilling, roaring and honking, we swooped through the ancient town, zigzagging from curb to curb. The great-great-grandam of the village was tottering across the street when the blast of the Lancia's siren pierced the deafness of a century and she sprang for the sidewalk with the agility of a young gazelle. We missed her by half an inch, but at the next corner we had better luck and ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... broom with it, in his dream, which swept a beautiful crossing of itself. But old Oliver sat still a long time, talking half aloud; for his usual drowsiness did not come to him. It was nearly five months now since Dolly was left to him, and he felt his deafness and blindness growing upon him slowly. His infirmities were not yet so burdensome as to make him dependent upon others; but he felt himself gradually drawing near to such a state. Dolly's clothes were getting sadly in want of mending; there was scarcely ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton

... blindness saw more beautiful visions, and Beethoven in his deafness heard more heavenly music, than most of us can ever ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... calling it His garden, He has called His servants, saying: "Now is the time for them to come, to test the gold of virtue." Now let us not play the deaf man. Were our ears stopped by cold, let us cleanse us in the Blood, hot because it is mingled with fire, and all deafness shall be taken away. Hide thee in the Wounds of Christ crucified; flee before the world, leave thy father's house; flee into the refuge of the Side of Christ crucified, that thou mayest come to the Land of Promise. ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... 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 ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles

... difficult to believe Nature self-existent, it is much more difficult to believe some self-existent Super-nature, capable of producing it. In their anxiety to get rid of a natural difficulty, they invent a supernatural one, and accuse Universalists of 'wilful blindness,' and 'obstinate deafness,' for not choosing so unphilosophic a mode of explaining ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell

... are confronted with unpleasantness without notice. A telephone subscriber has an evident advantage, for he can switch off the connection when the message begins to be unpleasant. Statesmen or politicians have been known to cultivate convenient deafness; but that is a mere pretence. The unpleasant things heard, would still continue to rankle. It is not every one that has the courage of Mr. Herbert Spencer who openly resorted to his ear plugs whenever his visitor ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... Artillery. The lithe, severe, gristly, sanguine person, whose eyes flashed even in repose, was General Stoneman, Chief of Cavalry. The large, sleepy-eyed, lymphatic, elderly man, clad in dark, civil gray, whose ears turned up habitually as from deafness, was Prince de Joinville, brother to Louis Philippe, King of France. The little man with red hair and beard, who moved quickly and who spoke sharply, was Seth Williams, Adjutant-General. The stout person ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend

... essential to hearing, as the "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 ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills

... vii., p. 331.).—In looking up your Numbers for April, I observe a Minor Query signed SHIRLEY HIBBERD, in which your querist states that in all white cats stupidity seemed to accompany the deafness, and inquires whether any instance can be given of a white cat possessing the function of hearing ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various

... interests and the 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 so tremendous a self-martyrdom:—and he loved her too well to outrage her feelings ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... degree of 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 block up the passage ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... more of an actual peril, in that one foul act, than the leper in his whole stricken life. The twin shames of venereal disease, blinked by every health board in the country (Detroit possibly deserves a partial exception) are, in their effect upon the race, in blindness, deafness, idiocy, and death so dreadful a menace to-day, that consumption alone can march beside them in the leadership of the destroyers. Typhoid, so easily conquerable, claims its annual thousands of sacrificed victims. And the slaughter of the innocents goes endlessly on, recorded only ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... deafness, and in fear lest she should approach the basket, George from the window bellowed: "Thank you, Mrs. Pinner. But I won't have tea, if you please. Won't have tea. I drink milk— milk. A lot of milk. I'm ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... any two minutes," said Bell. "I am always William the Silent. I should be Beethoven if it were not for the deafness, but that I could not ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards

... continued: "I believe your chief trouble lies in the fact that newspaper standards are so different from those of a college. On a newspaper it is a case of get the story and no questions asked. It isn't honor that counts. It is shrewdness, determination, dogged persistence, hardness of head, and deafness to personal appeal ...
— Grace Harlowe's Fourth Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... 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 it noted so, here on the margin of my charge-sheet." ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... ear was shut to the noises of the world, the strife of tongues, and as her mother said, "she did not know what a bad word was," only it was tuned to holy things. She always knew what was going on in church, and by her eager attention learnt to do everything in school; and when her deafness was increased by her fever, and she could not hear her mother's and sisters' voices, she could follow the prayers Papa read, the delirium fled away from them. Oh! it is a blessing and a privilege to have been near such a girl; but then—though ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... for the stomach," replied the old man, very slowly and distinctly, but not too loud, that he might not remind her of her deafness. Then seeing Semestre smile, he drew nearer, and with winning cheerfulness continued: "Be sensible, and don't try to part the children, who belong to each other. Xanthe, too, is fond of figs, and, if Leonax shares his father's taste, how will the sweet fruit of your favorite trees ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of hearing the Dean preach in the Abbey, he sent me a very kind invitation to come on the next Sabbath to the Deanery before the service, and on account of my deafness Lady Augusta would take me into a seat close to his pulpit. Accordingly she stowed me in a small box-pew, which was close against the pulpit, and within arms' length of the Dean. His sermon was a beautiful essay on Solomon ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

... 'Now, my deafness,' said Mr. Swancourt impressively, 'is a dead silence; but William Worm's is that of people frying fish in his head. Very ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy

... because the virtue of gratitude, as stated above (Q. 106, A. 6), inclines to return something more. Wherefore ingratitude is properly denominated from being a deficiency of gratitude. Now every deficiency or privation takes its species from the opposite habit: for blindness and deafness differ according to the difference of sight and hearing. Therefore just as gratitude or thankfulness is one special virtue, so also is ingratitude one ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... Sweat, and continued till the 4th; when it went off, and her Urine let fall a copious whitish Sediment. She had then little or no Fever. The Dullness of Hearing still continued, though it was much less than before. After this the Deafness went gradually away. She continued the Use of the cordial Mixture, with the Cortex, till the 12th, and recovered Strength daily. After this, she had no other Medicine, except two Doses of the Tincture of Rhubarb, ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... the sounds that are plainly coming to his ear because his thought, back of that his heart, is elsewhere. Hearing, seeing is with the heart back of ears and eyes. God is spoken of as silent. Yet His silence may be simply our deafness. The truth is He is speaking all the time, but we are so absorbed that we do not hear. He is ever looking into our faces with His great, tender, deep eyes, but we are so wrapped up in something else that ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... the son of a poor clergyman, and had an extraordinary passion for botany. Every 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 ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford

... to the Bath, for a deafness, which I have been plagued with these four or five months; and which I am assured that pumping my head will remove. This deafness, I own, has tried my patience; as it has cut me off from society, at an age when ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... 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 ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... the creation of the world and the fate that's to come and the transformation of every sort of creature and every sort of beast out of the Apocalypse, but you've persisted like a senseless idol in your deafness and your dumbness and have brought Ensign Erkel to the same, like the veriest ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... yet you shall hear this identical violin, in the hands of an everyday performer, emit such squeals and screams as shall set your teeth on edge for a twelvemonth, curdle your whole frame, and make you vehemently anathematize all benevolent institutions for the relief of deafness. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various

... officer, will dismount all guns, and strike them into the hold. The reasons for this action will be at once apparent to commanders of vessels, when they reflect that, in case of collision, the guns would be useless as signals, owing to the extraordinary deafness of the officers belonging to the Peninsular and Oriental Mail Steamship Company; and a reference to the details of the Oneida's disaster will show the danger of the guns breaking loose and destroying human life. They will, therefore, be at ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various

... 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 ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... that the other was 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 trumpet ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... the winter storm and the summer heat, that she should never know rough work nor sad days, but that she should be as tenderly protected, as daintily cared for, as any lady of them all,—how often he said all these things, we need not enumerate; nor need we say with what unquestioning trust, and deafness to all the suggestions of probability, Jenny believed. Does not love, in fact, always believe what it hopes? Who would do away with the blessed insanity that clothes the marriage day with such enchantment? Who would dare ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... 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 ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... was irresistibly comic, and was the more remarkable for the spontaneousness of the whole thing and the admirable way in which the pair played into one another's hands. The deaf one even played his deafness, making it worse than it was so as to heighten the comedy. By and by we came to a stile which they pretended to have a delicacy in crossing, but the lady helped them over. We concluded that if these young men were average specimens ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... 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 ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... the Soudan, Rhodesia, Uganda, and the Union of South Africa. An able lieutenant to Botha was General Smuts. He co-operated with his chief in a campaign of education. They pointed out the absolute necessity for deafness to the German tempters, and succeeded in obtaining full co-operation for the Botha plan of invasion from the British Imperial Government and the South African Union. Concerning ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... give a hundred pounds easier than another would give a penny, when he's in the humour. But his humour is very odd, and there's no knowing where to have him; he's gross-grained, and more POSITIVER-like than a mule; and his deafness made him worse in this, because he never heard what nobody said, but would say on his own way—he was very ODD but not CRACKED—no, he was as clear-headed, when he took a thing the right way, as any man could ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... too proud to let it be seen that he had heard these words; like the ostrich, he feigned deafness and blindness in order not to seem aware of the looks and murmurs of his guests, which all went to prove that he had ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... in the English fashion, and Margarita served us most charmingly under the eagle eye of Miss Jencks, eating, herself, like a hungry school-girl, and stealing Roger's cakes impudently when the sometime directress of the Governor-General's household affected a well-bred deafness to her request for more. After tea Miss Jencks departed with her knitting and we three were comfortably silent; Margarita dreamy, I all in a maze at her, Roger relishing my wonder. The hyacinths smelled strong in the growing dusk, the Chinese dragons burned against ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell

... correspondent was, and succeeded in inveigling the stone-breaker to the manse. There, with the door snibbed, he opened out on Tammas, who, after his usual manner when hard pressed, pretended to be deaf. This sudden fit of deafness so exasperated the minister that he flung a book at Tammas. The scene that followed was one that few Auld Licht manses can have witnessed. According to Tammas the book had hardly reached the floor when the minister turned white. Tammas ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie

... 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 ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter

... alone with his conscience and get its approval, without using force or specious logic, then he begins to know what real Happiness is. But the individual must be careful that he is not appealing to a conscience perverted or deadened by the wrongdoing and subsequent deafness of its owner. The man who is honestly seeking to live his life in Consecration, Concentration and Conquest, living from day to day as best he can, by the light he has, may rely explicitly on his Conscience. He can shut his ears to "what the world ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan

... world to investigate these cures from the standpoint of a religion or pure science. What sights I have seen! Men and women of all ages and walks of life testifying that the waters of the sacred grotto have freed them from this or that malady, from tumors, lameness, deafness, blindness, tuberculosis, nervous trouble and numerous other afflictions. By thousands and tens of thousands these unfortunates crowd here from the four corners of the earth, an endless procession of believers, and ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett

... dreaming what their comrade had on hand. One of them, the chief of my squadron, caught sight of me in the lamplight, and came shouting after me into the street. I hurried on, however, pretending not to hear him, so he, with a curse at my deafness, went back at last ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Belgian throne was peacefully walking to and fro in a brown study, unconscious that the eyes of some hundreds of his future subjects were fixed upon his lightly-draped form. His deafness prevented him from hearing the noise outside the window, and rendered all warnings by means of sounds ineffectual. So the prince's chamberlain was aroused, and after some delay His Royal Highness was released from his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... jostle And the horse-tails toss, There rose to the birds flying A roar of dead and dying; In deafness and strong crying We signed ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton

... to suicide which is frequent among children, though rarer with girls than boys, she went one day into the kitchen for the carving-knife, that she might cut her throat; luckily the servants were at dinner, and the child retreated. Deafness, which proved incurable, began to afflict her before she was sixteen. A severe, harsh, and mournful kind of religiosity seized her, and this 'abominable spiritual rigidity,' as she calls it, confirmed all the gloomy predispositions of her mind. She ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley

... "red satin," holding 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 with troops and with citizens; the balconies were filled with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... 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 ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... its 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 the rest ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard

... tale almost as I have written it. The slipping oysters and the game of blind man's buff made the princess burst with laughing, in spite of her deafness. She agreed with the cardinal that I had acted with great discretion, and told me that I should be sure to succeed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... 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

... disappointed crowds considered it a desertion indeed. Even Alderman Fox, deeply troubled as he was, could offer no consolation to his fellow-citizens. He, who was formerly stone-deaf, had gone one day to see Schlatter at Omaha, and when the latter took his hand his deafness had completely disappeared. Full of gratitude, he offered Schlatter a large sum of money, which was refused. He then offered the hospitality of his house at Denver, and this being accepted, Schlatter arrived there, preceded by the glory of his saintly reputation and his miraculous ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... 40 To say he nat'rally abhorr'd Th' old-fashion'd trick, To keep his word; Though 'tis perfidiousness and shame In meaner men to do the same: For to be able to forget, 45 Is found more useful to the great, Than gout, or deafness, or bad eyes, To make 'em pass for wond'rous wise. But though the law on perjurers Inflicts the forfeiture of ears, 50 It is not just that does exempt The guilty, and punish th' innocent; To make the ears repair the wrong Committed by th' ungovern'd ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... 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

... external air becomes denser, it will press the tympanic 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 ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... means to attain more. Much neglect of pressing after peace and reconciliation with him, through a Mediator, and of living up to the profession which we make of him. Despising of his holy ordinances and means of worship; deafness and stupidity under the calls of his Word. Profanation of his holy sacraments, neglect of secret prayer (wherein much of the life of religion lies), and of prayer in families, or a negligent, careless and superficial performance thereof; ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery

... to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Every person who knew Dr. Johnson must have observed that the moment he was left out of the conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind appeared to be preparing itself. He fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic gestures; but this he never did when his mind was engaged ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... not be denied that Miss MARTINEAU is one of the cleverest women of our time; deafness and ugliness have induced her to cultivate to the utmost degree her intellectual faculties, and several of her books are illustrations of a mind even masculine in its power and activity; but the constitutional feebleness, waywardness, and wilfulness of woman is nevertheless not unfrequently ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... at a little distance, taking advantage of the innumerable heights and hollows, concealed by the darkness, and favoured not only by the nurse's deafness, but by the uproar of the wind and surf. She entered the pavilion, and, going at once to the upper story, opened and set a light in one of the windows that looked towards the sea. Immediately afterwards the light at the schooner's mast-head was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... services while I was in possession of all my faculties and the full vigour and strength of my being, there were advantages they could not possibly acquire with me in, say, another thirty years, when I should probably be suffering from rheumatism, chronic dyspepsia, deafness, dim sight, loss of memory and certainly from approaching old age. I concluded by offering them three days' free trial (I always do best in the first three days); if I failed to give satisfaction by the end of that period they could return me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various

... the kidneys usually results 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 ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... be a good man, whether deaf or whether dumb; and of all our fellow-craftsmen (whom yet they count a jealous race), I never knew one but gave you the name of honesty and kindness: come to think of it gravely, this is better than the finest hearing. We are all on the march to deafness, blindness, and all conceivable and fatal disabilities; we shall not all get there with a report so good. My good news is a health astonishingly reinstated. This climate; these voyagings; these landfalls at dawn; new islands peaking from the morning bank; new forested harbours; new passing alarms ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... head, and mercurial ointment externally, with calomel internally, are principally recommended in this fatal disease. When the patient cannot bear to be raised up in bed without great uneasiness, it is a bad symptom. So I believe is deafness, which is commonly mistaken for stupor. See Class I. 2. 5. 6. And when the dilatation of the pupil of either eye, or the squinting is very apparent, or the pupils of both eyes much dilated, it is generally fatal. As by stimulating one branch of lymphatics ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... better plight is the child suffering from enlarged tonsils and adenoids, which prevent proper nasal breathing and compel him to keep his mouth open in order to breathe. Perhaps one of his troubles is deafness. He is soon considered stupid. This impression is strengthened by his poor progress in school. Through no fault of his own he is doomed to failure. He neglects his studies, hates his school, leaves long before he has completed the course, and is well started on the road ...
— Health Work in the Public Schools • Leonard P. Ayres and May Ayres

... before the tomb of St. Gall cured tumors; wine in which the bones of a saint had been dipped cured fevers; St. Valentine cured epilepsy; St. Christopher cured throat disease; St. Eutropius, dropsy; St. Ovid, deafness; St. Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies which bear ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... possessed a very genial and sociable disposition, was highly intelligent and well informed, and in spite of an infirmity of deafness was a charming companion. His business qualifications are proven by the success of the establishment he founded, in spite of the succession of unforeseen and unavoidable disasters with which it had to contend. He was a man of very domestic ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... 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 ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth

... 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 ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart

... tube (Fig. 134) communicates with the mouth. Its function is probably to keep the air-pressure equal on both sides of the drum. When one catches cold the tube is apt to become blocked by mucus, causing unequal pressure and consequent partial deafness. ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... when I add that, notwithstanding the great increase in man's years, all his faculties are preserved in a state scarcely less perfect than that of pristine manhood. The eye is not dimmed, there is no deafness, the limbs are strong and agile, the teeth remain free from decay, pleasing to the sight, and valuable for the chief purposes for which they were given. In a word, whatever can contribute to beauty and health in man and woman remains all but intact to the last. Decadence ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... do give an account of the persons cured, and the diseases removed, so could I give you account of numberless numbers that have not only been made to live, but to live forever, by drinking this pure water of life. No disease comes amiss to it. It cures blindness, deafness, dumbness, deadness. This right holy water (all other is counterfeit) will drive away evil spirits. It will make you have a white soul, and that is better than a white skin.'—(Bunyan's Water of Life). Whoever offers to purify the heart, and heal a wounded conscience, by any other ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Swift's after-life, the one woman to whom his whole love was given. But side by side with the slow growth of his knowledge of all she was for him, was the slow growth of his conviction that attacks of giddiness and deafness, which first came when he was twenty, and recurred at times throughout his life, were signs to be associated with that which he regarded as the curse upon his life. His end would be like his uncle ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift

... and stupid for all down to that blessed minute, for there was Nessy laughing like fits, and working like mad, and drops of Brownie's milk going trickling out of my ear on to my shoulder. 'It's not deafness,' thinks I; 'it's love'; and my breath was coming and going and making noises like the smithy bellows. So I twisted my wrist and blazed back at her, and we both fired away, ding-dong, till the cows was as ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine

... he had answered quite enough for his shilling. If he went on, people would think he was an easy fish to catch. So he affected deafness, and looking straight past his eager questioners again repeated his stentorian request to ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed

... like infirmity in others—whether they are unconscious of, or indulgent to their own obscurity and fettered organ, the hindrance from the fettering of their neighbours' is redoubled. A man may think he is not deaf, or, at least, that you need not be so much annoyed by his deafness as you profess—but he will be quite aware, to say the least of it, when another man can't hear him; he will certainly not encourage him to stop his ears. And so with the converse; a writer who fails to make himself understood, as presumably in my case, may either believe in his heart ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... 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

... excitement, of curiosity, of surprise, of any sort of pronounced interest, began to arouse his distrust. But except for the felicitous pretence of deafness I had not tried to pretend anything. I had felt utterly incapable of playing the part of ignorance properly, and therefore was afraid to try. It is also certain that he had brought some ready-made suspicions with him, and that he viewed my politeness as a strange ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... 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

... of God's wrath, but of human ignorance, vice, or folly. And it was with deep satisfaction that I read in the last Report of the Schools for the Deaf and Dumb a statement of what were considered the most probable physical causes of deafness and dumbness, and a hope that it would be possible, hereafter, to prevent as well as cure ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley

... him and from the rest of the world by the almost impenetrable barriers of her deafness, sat Jenny Mullion. She was perhaps thirty, had a tilted nose and a pink-and-white complexion, and wore her brown hair plaited and coiled in two lateral buns over her ears. In the secret tower of her deafness she sat apart, looking down ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... garret and cellar to maunder to me in strangely distributed words of the things they have seen and considered. The recording of their tales is no more than a matter of ears and fingers. There are only two fates I dread—deafness and writer's cramp. The hand is yet steady; let the ear bear the blame if these printed words be not in the order they were delivered to me by Hunky Magee, true ...
— Options • O. Henry

... of the hamlet was tottering across to the undertakers to have her coffin tried on, when my frantic whistling and the bray of the bugle-horn pierced the deafness of a century. With a loud creaking of hinges she turned her head, summed up the situation at a glance and, casting off half-a-dozen decades "like raiment laid apart," sprang for the side-walk with the agility of an infant gazelle. We missed her by half-an-inch and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 19, 1919 • Various

... 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. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... discuss cures by faith. It suffices to say this: that in the first place most of such cures relate to hysteria, a disease we shall discuss later but which is characterized by symptoms that appear and disappear like magic. I have seen "cured" (and have "cured") such patients, affected with paralysis, deafness, dumbness, blindness, etc., with reasoning, electricity, bitter tonics, fake electrodes, hypnotism, and in one case by a forcible slap upon a prominent and naked part of the body. Hysteria has been the basis of many a saint's ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... some people do, that you can get the value of a great poem by studying an abstract of it in an encyclopaedia or by reading cursorily an average translation of it, argues really a kind of mental deficiency, like deafness or colour-blindness. The things that we have called eternal, the things of the spirit and the imagination, always seem to lie more in a process than in a result, and can only be reached and enjoyed by somehow going through the process again. If the value ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... 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 ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... reticence, she dwells no more on that painful topic, but goes on to make plans for them both, asks her old friend to come and cheer her in her loneliness; and the faithful Betsy, now a widow with grown-up step-children, ill herself, troubled by deafness and other infirmities, responds with a warm heart, and promises to come, bringing the comfort with her of old companionship and familiar sympathy. There is something very affecting in the loyalty of the two aged women stretching out their hands to each other across a whole lifetime. After ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)

... benefit of those who chanced to be deaf—and deafness was not uncommon in the London of that age, inscriptions of all sizes were thrown from the roof above upon the moving platforms themselves, and on one's hand or on the bald head of the man before one, ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... is tempted to eat what he knows from experience will disagree with him; a bitter coppery taste in the mouth, due to taurocholic acid—a common symptom of lithemia or of imperfect oxidation of albumen; emaciation, fatigue, depression, headache, buzzing in the ears and deafness, disturbance of sight, loss of memory, faintness and vertigo, very marked in some cases; sometimes tenderness and pain under the cartilages of the right ribs; the fretting of the sensitive surface of the bowels by imperfectly ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... became minister of the College Kirk in Glasgow, and his son in due time entered the High School there. In after-years his schoolmates remembered him as a very clever, but hardly a diligent boy. Though frequently absent from illness (one of these childish maladies caused the deafness in one ear from which he suffered), he always kept his place at the head of his class. "He never seemed to learn anything when the class was sitting down," wrote a fellow-pupil, "and on returning after one of his illnesses, he of course went to the bottom, but we ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... shall we count His gifts as naught? Was the work of God in him unwrought? The servant may through his deafness err, And blind may be God's messenger; But the Errand is sure they go upon,— The word is spoken, the deed is done. Was the Hebrew temple less fair and good That Solomon bowed to gods of wood? For his tempted heart and wandering feet, Were the songs of David less pure and sweet? ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... billet-dooing passed between us! We would have required a porter for the sole purpose. Then we had stolen interviews of two hours' duration each, for several successive nights, at the old horologer's back-door, during which, besides a multiplicity of small-talk—thanks to his deafness—I tried my utmost to entrap her affections, by reciting sonnets, and spouting bits of plays in the manner of the tragedy performers. These were the happy times, sir! The world was changed for me. Paddington canal seemed the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various

... 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, ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... however, one of the many who learn to curb the impulse of a charitable intention. She looked out of the window, and pretended not to notice that the culprit had addressed his remark to her. To complete this convenient deafness she gave a simulated little cough of abstraction, which entirely gave ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... tat-tat of the drill. Going into the bedroom and closing the door, I found that it was still audible to me, but an old man, inclined to deafness and asleep, would scarcely have been awakened by it. In about ten minutes Craig displayed a neat little hole in the safe door opposite the one made by ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... point-blank when he proposed, but he proved to me in three minutes that I'd really accepted him; and it was the same thing ever after. A wonderfully brilliant man, though slightly trying at times, especially in church, where he always snored so unnecessarily loud—or so it seemed to me. I often think deafness has its compensations, though I'm sure I ought to be thankful at my age that my hearing is still so acute. However, I didn't hear the shot the other night, but the castle walls are thick even in that detestable modern addition, and besides, ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce

... 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

... to do for him! I know a fellow in Smith's Valley will cure him in a minute. That fellow has cleaned the deafness all out of Washington County a dozen times. I never knew a case of it that could stand up against him ten seconds. Take three parts of snake-root to a gallon of waggon-grease, and—I'll go and see if ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)

... for 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 ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... days are past I shall return this way with my squaw. No longer will I wait for her to feign deafness to my piping. She shall listen to it and follow me to ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson

... 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 than ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... a whispered voice, the not infrequent result of prolonged deafness, complete isolation from the rest of humanity causing the gradual loss of sound values in the afflicted person; but the whisper, coming from such a mountain of flesh, conveyed the impression that the speaker's ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... To state is sufficient. Gwynplaine, meditating on the limits of his destiny, proved the total uselessness of his effort. He proved the deafness of high places. The privileged have no hearing on the side next the disinherited. Is it their fault? Alas! no. It is their law. Forgive them! To be moved would be to abdicate. Of lords and princes expect nothing. He who ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... The Crewe deafness was proverbial. Mary's great-grandmother had gone stone deaf at the age of thirty-five; her daughter had inherited the affliction and her granddaughter, the aunt with whom Mary had spent her childhood, had inherited it also ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... roof to fall. But the roof withstood the strain, thanks to a sagacious deafness on the part of the judge. If, indeed, he had not been visited by a sudden deafness, it is difficult to see how he would have handled ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett

... pleasing charm. As the elder sister looked round in silence, Ellinor attempted to draw the old woman into conversation. She would fain have elicited some particulars of the habits and daily life of the recluse; but the deafness of their attendant was so obstinate and hopeless, that she was forced to give up the attempt in despair. "I fear," said she at last, her good-nature so far overcome by impatience as not to forbid a slight yawn; "I fear we shall have a dull time of it till my father arrives. Just ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 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 ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... the operation. To the shy who may encumber his path his bearing seems marked by an indifference which they magnify into aversion, and are thereby the worse confounded. In a land where such convention reigns they go through life like persons afflicted with a partial deafness; between them and the happier world there is as it were a crystalline wall which the pleasant low voices of confidence ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith

... case of deafness was cured by the following remedy: (An aged person, whose hearing had been very good, gradually became so deaf as not to be able to hear common conversation; after suffering some months, the patient thought of trying the following remedy:) of honey, brandy ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... House for eighteen years when he declined further service there. He was then elected to the Senate where he remained eighteen years longer, when he declined further service there. During the last part of his last term he was troubled with a growing deafness which I suppose had much to do with his declining to enter upon the contest for another reelection. He was regarded by the manufacturers of Massachusetts as their faithful and powerful representative. He had several contests for his seat in the Senate when his opponents ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... ministry, besides general references to the cure of many that were possessed. Of these specific cases the Gadarene demoniac shows symptoms of violent insanity; the boy cured near Caesarea Philippi, those of epilepsy; in other cases the disease was more local, showing itself in deafness, or blindness, or both. In the cures recorded Jesus addressed the possessed with a command to the invading demon to depart. He was ordinarily greeted, either before or after such a command, with a loud outcry, ...
— The Life of Jesus of Nazareth • Rush Rhees

... he meant, but 'is deafness come on ag'in. Henery Walker 'ad an extra dose o' gin put in, and arter he 'ad tasted it the old gentleman seemed to get more amiable-like, and 'im and Henery Walker sat ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... furlongs he passed almost all the Zmudzians. He soon reached the first German trooper, whom he at once challenged according to the then prevailing custom among the knights, to surrender or fight. But the German feigned deafness. He even threw away his shield to relieve the horse, and bent in the saddle and spurred his horse. The old knight struck him with his broad axe between the shoulder-blades, and ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... and will be very glad to make a little money by teaching Margaret singing and Italian. I have heard she is a splendid teacher. As for Margaret forming any intimate friendships while with me, you can set your mind at rest on that point, for my deafness has increased so much since I last saw you that I do no visiting in the ordinary sense of the word, but am quite happy with my books and my garden. Then, too, I have a large acquaintance with my poorer neighbours in the surrounding villages, and though my lameness prevents me from walking ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... again, the most serious single cause of the most severe forms of brain disease and insanity, this often coming on many years after the infection, and when the early symptoms were but slight. Blindness and deafness from the beginning of life are in a large proportion of cases due to syphilis. There is, indeed, no organ of the body which is not liable to break down, often with fatal results, through syphilis, so that it has been well said that a doctor who knows syphilis ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... six Vitellian legions and the whole Hostilia army had that very day covered thirty miles, and, hearing of their comrades' defeat, were already arming for battle and would be on them immediately. This alarming news cured their obstinate deafness to the general's advice. He ordered the Thirteenth legion to take up their position on the raised Postumian high-road. In touch with them on the left wing in the open country were the Seventh Galbian, beside ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus

... 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 ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the guitars, for the astronomer had now placed both hands over his ears in the vain endeavour to exclude "The Gipsies." Deafness, perhaps, rendered him yielding. In any case, he permitted Lady Enid to detach him from Mrs. Bridgeman and to lead him through the rooms in search ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... of the second act was laid and adjusted by my Lady Suffolk herself and Will. Chetwynd, Master of the Mint, Lord Bolingbroke's Oroonoko-Chetwynd;[1] he fourscore, she past seventy-six; and, what is more, much worse than I was, for added to her deafness, she has been confined these three weeks with the gout in her eyes, and was actually then in misery, and had been without sleep. What spirits, and cleverness, and imagination, at that age, and under those afflicting circumstances! ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole

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

... 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 ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... noble Composition in the World, removing all manner of Disorders of the Head and all Swimming or Giddiness proceeding from Vapours, &c., also Drowsiness, Sleepiness and other lethargick Effects, perfectly curing Deafness to Admiration, and ill Humours or Soreness in the Eyes, &c., strength'ning them when weak, perfectly cures Catarrhs, or Defluxions of Rheum, and remedies the Tooth-ach instantly; is excellently beneficial in Apoplectick Fits and Falling-Sickness, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... for anything I know to the contrary—their condition could hardly have been worse than it was. They were liable to sudden faintings of an unnatural character, to spasmodic movements and jerkings of the head and limbs, to trances, to the seeing of witches and devils, to deafness, to dumbness, to alarming outcries, to impudent and lying speeches and statements, and to almost everything else that was false, ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson

... is what I want to find out. The mission I have for you, Dave, is to watch Mulgrum. In a word, I have my doubts in regard to his deafness ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic

... but hear the music! Those great long heads of wild hyacinth are inside the piano, among the strings of it, and give that peculiar sweetness to her playing!—Pardon me: I forgot your deafness!" ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald

... of furnaces in the eyes, by a limpness of every limb, a relaxation of every fibre, by a longing to die and be quiet, by a craving to live and get out of the noise, by an all unutterable struggle between present blindness and longed-for sight, present deafness and an impatient, insane thirst to hear what was going on, between the faculties momentarily disordered and the faculties wildly striving to grasp again at order. And Sarrasin began to recover his reason and his senses, and, brave as he was, his nerves relaxed when he saw in the instreaming ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... somewhat like to a rhinoceros, with a white horn growing in his 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

... concupiscence," adopted by the Jews under the name of Asmodeus,[2] became the 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 an error. It was ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... exact courtesy and formal tenderness had no defect for her. She filled up all blanks with unmanifested perfections, interpreting him as she interpreted the works of Providence, and accounting for seeming discords by her own deafness to the higher harmonies. And there are many blanks left in the weeks of courtship which a loving faith ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot

... kind and considerate. Dr. Livingstone having fallen asleep after a fatiguing march, a hole in the roof of the hut he was in allowed the sun to beat on his head, and caused a splitting headache and deafness: while he was nearly insensible, he felt Masiko repeatedly lift him back to the bed off which he had rolled, and cover ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... be remedied by slight means are enlarged tonsils and adenoid growths back of the nose, both of which can be removed by a slight and almost painless operation, but which, if allowed to develop, often cause serious throat and lung troubles, deafness, and weakened minds. Slight defects of the eyes can be remedied by the wearing of glasses, but which if unchecked give rise to various nerve and spinal diseases as well as more serious eye troubles. It is believed now that most of the blindness of later life could be prevented by ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... DE RONSARD, born at a chateau a few leagues from Vendome, in the year 1524, was in the service of the sons of Francis I. as page, was in Scotland with James V., and later had the prospect of a distinguished diplomatic career, when deafness, consequent on a serious malady, closed for him the avenue to public life. He threw himself ardently into the study of letters; in company with the boy Antoine de Baif he received lessons from an excellent Hellenist, Jean Daurat, soon to be principal of the College Coqueret. ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... alone, keeps one from seeing what is to either side and behind it. It can also be compared to a continual sound in the ear, which does away with perceiving the harmony of many sounds. Such are the blindness and deafness induced on the mind by miracles. It is the same with anything confirmed but not regarded from rationality before ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... flute were playing airs from "The Fencing Master" in the hall, and people were shouting over the music. Old John Minafer's voice was louder and more penetrating than any other, because he had been troubled with deafness for twenty-five years, heard his own voice but faintly, and liked to hear it. "Smell o' flowers like this always puts me in mind o' funerals," he kept telling his niece, Fanny Minafer, who was with him; and he seemed to get a great deal of satisfaction out of this reminder. His ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... another of the elements of the eclectic method, employed with success inversely commensurate with the degree of deficiency arising from deafness. Where the English order is already fixed in his mind, and he has at an early period of life habitually used it, there is comparatively little difficulty in instructing the deaf child by speech, especially if he have a quick eye and bright ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... Dexter; but the old man had been suddenly smitten with that worst form of deafness peculiar to those who will not hear; and it was not until Dexter had pursued him round three or four beds, during which he seemed to be blind as well as deaf, that the old man was able to ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... through this incident that Edison acquired the deafness that has persisted all through his life, a severe box on the ears from the scorched and angry conductor being the direct cause of the infirmity. Although this deafness would be regarded as a great affliction by most people, and has brought in its train other serious baubles, Mr. Edison has ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... I found an elderly gentleman, slightly afflicted with deafness. According to the etiquette of their business regulations I was received in standing attitude, and in the few moments' interview were condensed the thoughts and feelings of years. He bought my book, for which he paid two dollars and a half ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... 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

... hath thy blameless life become A prey to the devouring tomb? A more mute silence hast thou known, A deafness deeper than thine own, While Time was? and no friendly Muse, That mark'd thy life, and knows thy dues, Repair with quickening verse the breach, And write thee into light and speech? The Power, that made the Tongue, restrain'd Thy lips ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb



Words linked to "Deafness" :   deaf-muteness, middle-ear deafness, hearing impairment, deaf-mutism, deaf, tin ear, nerve deafness, word deafness, conduction deafness



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