Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




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








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Deafness" Quotes from Famous Books



... which may lead him into regions which are at 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

... 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 ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford

... for our works of kindness— Fame is not born alone of strength or skill; It sometimes comes from deafness and from blindness To petty words and ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest

... homage of friends and admirers could not strengthen the weak hands or confirm the feeble knees. In 1806 Dies notes that his once-gleaming eye has become dull and heavy and his complexion sallow, while he suffers from "headache, deafness, forgetfulness and other pains." His old gaiety has completely gone, and even his friends have become a bore to him. "My remaining days," he said to Dies, "must all be spent in this lonely fashion.... I have many ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... newspaper betook himself to a party at the house of a neighbor, where, only a few weeks earlier, a baby had been added to the family. On the editor's arrival at the house, he was met at the door by his hostess, a woman who suffered to some extent from deafness. After the usual exchange of greetings, the editor inquired concerning the health of the baby. The hostess had a severe cold, and she now misunderstood the visitor's inquiry concerning the baby, thinking that he was solicitous on her account. So she explained ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous

... especially of the scalp. 3. Severe injuries of the bones of the head; convulsions. 4. Impaired vision, from whatever cause; inflammatory affections of the eyelids; immobility or irregularity of the iris; fistula, lachrymalis, etc., etc. 5. Deafness; copious discharge from the ears. 6. Loss of many teeth, or the teeth generally unsound. 7. Impediment of speech. 8. Want of due capacity of the chest, and any other indication of a liability to a pulmonic disease. 9. Impaired or inadequate efficiency of one or both of the superior extremities ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper

... settled in West Cambridge, where he died suddenly in the pulpit. Among the constant attendants upon Mr. Damon's Sunday services at Lunenburg was a blacksmith named Kimball, who was afflicted with deafness. From his trade perhaps he had come to be called Puffer Kimball. From a front seat in the meetinghouse he had ventured upon the pulpit stairs, and finally he had reached the position of standing on an upper stair, ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... little edifice has the touching look that resides in everything supremely old; it has arrived at the age at which such things cease to feel the years; the waves of time have worn its edges to a kind of patient dulness; there is something mild and smooth, like the stillness, the deafness, of an octogenarian, even in its rudeness of ornament, and it has become insensible to differences of a century or two. The cathedral interested me much less than Our Lady the Great, and I have not the spirit to go into statistics about it. It ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... 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

... philosophers have often wished, the power of passing the day in contemplative tranquillity. But it seems that busy men seldom live long in a state of quiet. It is not unlikely that his health declined, he complains of deafness; "for," says he, "I took little care of my ears while I was not sure if ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... a 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, and thenceforward spoke ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera

... only to say that I know from my travels all over the country, conferring with the intelligent women to bring before them this great principle, that the good work is going on. It may be deafness yesterday and partial hearing to-day, but it will be full hearing to-morrow. To-day we may be blind to the truth; to-morrow we shall see the whole truth. We may not have another centennial before we shall see justice ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... of research along the lines of the deeper scientific mysteries of the occult and invisible of Nature-forces I have found the cause and cure of deafness and head noises, and I have been enabled by this same mysterious knowledge and power to give to many unfortunate and suffering persons perfect hearing again; and I say to those who have thrown away their money on cheap ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various

... Ireland 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 ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift

... and feeble at birth, was placed in a pen under violet glass. In twenty-four hours it was able to walk and became quite animated. By the same method a mule was reported to have been cured of obstinate rheumatism and deafness. Again, a canary-bird, which had been an exceptionally fine warbler, declined to eat or sing, and appeared to be in a feeble state of health. The bird in its cage was placed in the bath-room of its owner's ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... Napoleonic eagle. The hall was crowded with young men, corps-studenten being especially numerous, robust youths in caps and badges, and many of the faces were patched and scarred from duels in the Hirsch-Gasse. Von Treitschke, a dark, energetic figure, was received with great respect. Deafness, from which he suffered, affected somewhat his delivery. He told the story of the great battle, the frantic effort against combined Europe of the crippled French, the defection of the Saxons in the midst of the fight, the final driving of Napoleon ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... into a gig; she was much dishevelled by reason of the various huggings she had undergone from sundry bridesmaids and sympathetic female friends, chief among whom was a certain Mrs Crowder, who in virtue of her affection for the McLeod family, her age, and her deafness, had constituted herself a compound of mother and grandmamma to Flora. The gig was fitted to hold only two. When Flora was seated, Reginald Redding—also somewhat dishevelled owing to the hearty, not to say violent, congratulations of his male friends—jumped ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne

... 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

... came imploring me to cure him of deafness, but I could not undertake his case. In any of those countries a medical missionary would be of incalculable benefit ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn

... some five-and-forty years ago, is smoking a cigar, and appears to be making an offer of marriage to his cook. Beethoven both my friend Mr. H. Festing Jones and I have had the good fortune to meet; he is an engineer now, and does not know one note from another; he has quite lost his deafness, is married, and is, of course, a little squat man with the same refractory hair that he always had. It was very interesting to watch him, and Jones remarked that before the end of dinner he had become positively posthumous. One ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler

... no beauty in a beard striped and mottled 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 through her ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... 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

... faithfulness this labor was pursued, the Roman and Venetian note-books testify. "For the studies he made from Raphael," writes Leslie, "he paid dearly; for he caught so severe a cold in the chambers of the Vatican as to occasion a deafness which obliged him to use an ear-trumpet for the remainder of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... had drunk much more than he had intended—to see what had happened. He saw Clay Levins standing close to him, his thin lips in a cruel curve, his eyes narrowed and glittering, his body in a suggestive crouch. The silence that had suddenly descended smote Marchmont's ears like a momentary deafness, and he looked foolishly around him, uncertain, puzzled. Levins' voice shocked him, sobered ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... me: 'Be sure it is all true. I see it every day in my Jane'—her maid, who is mesmerised for deafness, but not, I believe, with much success curatively. As a remedy, the success has been far greater in the Martineau case than in others. With Miss Mitford's maid, the sleep is, however, produced; and the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... expedient of dropping the ear-trumpet. In herself, she was an agreeable old lady; but she seldom let her opinions rest long enough for one to get at her on the merely human side, and she cultivated a retired life, partly on account of her deafness, partly because her opinions made society shy of her, and partly because she did not think society worth her time and attention. She was a good woman, with a mind of exceptional caliber, but the world admired ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... earshot, sound, hearing distance. Associated Words: auditory, acoumeter, acoumetry, acoustic, audible, audibility, audiometer, deaf, deafness, microcoustic, microphonous, otacoustic, inaudible, inaudibility, clairaudient, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

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

... 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 you ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... several other Western journals, a paragraph in which it is said that I am in the habit of taking quinine as a stimulant; that I have depended upon the excitement it produces in writing my verses, and that, in consequence of using it in that way, I had become as deaf as a post. As to my deafness, you know that to be false, and the rest of the story is equally so. I abominate all drugs and narcotics, and have always carefully avoided every thing which spurs nature to exertions which it would not otherwise make. Even with ...
— Study and Stimulants • A. Arthur Reade

... colloquial use of a language must be acquired when the organs are young and lissom. I began too late. And besides, I have laboured under the great disadvantage that my deafness prevents me from sharing in the hourly lessons which those who hear all that is going on ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... established. The affirmations of his genius were plainly apparent to him, if not to others, and he knew that he was on the threshold of creating imperishable masterpieces. A great future was opening out before him, which, however, was in great part to be nullified by his approaching deafness and other physical ailments. His letters at this time to his friend Dr. Wegeler, at Bonn, and to others, are full ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... any of Mrs. Amos's words to her, which were several; and though Mrs. Amos, half alarmed by her deafness, did not know but she might be witnessing something dreadful on deck, and spoke with some importunity. Eleanor was thinking she had not a minute to lose. Beyond the time of Mr. Rhys's talking to the other visitor on the schooner's deck, there could be but small interval before he would ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... was a pleasant surprise that evoked the wildest enthusiasm. They yelled with pleasure, bestowed upon us all the terms of adulation until they exhausted their vocabulary, and blew their elephants' tusks until I confess I was compelled to stuff my fingers into my ears, fearing deafness. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... 'im wot 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 by theirselves talking ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... a story well, does the old gentleman, and but for his deafness would be a brilliant talker. When I gave his health, with a few complimentary verses on his marvellous youth, the old fellow in a gracious reply called me his dear colleague. My master Astier corrected him—'future colleague.' Laughter and applause. 'Future colleague' ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... 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 window. Look at ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... Deafness, dumbness, short-sightedness, tertiary or quaternary ague, gout, epilepsy, polyp, varicose veins, a breath indicating an internal malady, sterility among the women—such were the grounds accepted for complete ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... his voice, as she set about her dressing. He was in his private office, talking with a patient whose deafness caused him to raise his own tones considerably; the closed door between could not keep out all the sound. She felt her invasion of his life more keenly than ever as she realized afresh how close to him her own life was to be lived. Marrying a village ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... 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 ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... could make Mary hear without actually opening the door; but it was a forlorn hope. Mary was generally afflicted with deep deafness if one particularly wanted her hearing to be acute. She was now. Audrey called ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... 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

... Deafness. — N. deafness, hardness of hearing, surdity|; inaudibility, inaudibleness[obs3]. V. be deaf &c. adj.; have no ear; shut one's ears, stop one's ears, close one's ears; turn a deaf ear to. render deaf, stun, deafen. Adj. deaf, earless[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... but separated from 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 ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... what's the matter with him," said Mrs. Nixey, drawing his slate to her, and writing in the boldest letters she could form, as if his deafness made it needful to ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton

... larder on wheels; a procession of big motor transport trucks keeping their intervals of distance with the precision of a battleship fleet at sea. We should have known that they belonged to the army by the deafness of the drivers to appeals to let us pass. All army transports are like that. What the deuced right has anybody to pass? They are the transport, and only fighting men belong in front of them. Our car in trying to go by to one side got stuck in a rut that an American car, built for bad roads, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... John, nodding acquiescence emphatically. On seeing this, old Martha, knowing nothing about the matter because of her deafness, nodded emphatically also, and said, "that's so, Tommy, I always 'ad a settled conviction that you was right, except," she added, as if to guard herself, "except w'en ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne

... means well off, 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, ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler

... his ravenous maw. E'en as a dog, that yelling bays for food His keeper, when the morsel comes, lets fall His fury, bent alone with eager haste To swallow it; so dropp'd the loathsome cheeks Of demon Cerberus, who thund'ring stuns The spirits, that they for deafness wish in vain. We, o'er the shades thrown prostrate by the brunt Of the heavy tempest passing, set our feet Upon their emptiness, that substance seem'd. They all along the earth extended lay Save one, that sudden rais'd himself to sit, Soon as that way he saw us pass. "O thou!" ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... well, where, by a coincidence, each finds a husband. She of the hideous face easily satisfies Huanebango, while the vile-tempered maiden as readily contents the heart of Corebus, for Sacrapant has previously hurled blindness upon the former, and upon the latter deafness, because they dared to enter his realms in search of Delia. Meanwhile the brothers continue their quest and eventually come upon Sacrapant and their sister making merry together at a feast. At once the lady is sent indoors, thunder and ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne

... somebody said, love to speak learnedly of "Handel and Glueck." It is not needful here to tell the story of his brilliant life and the big events it crowded into the four and seventy years between 1685 and 1759. His friend Mattheson, like Beethoven, spent his later years in the dungeon of deafness. Haendel, like his great rival Bach (who was born the same year), spent seven years in almost total blindness, three operations having failed. In almost every other respect the careers of these two men were unlike, particularly in the obscure and prolific married life of the one and in the almost ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... 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

... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... over, Mathouillet thanks me with a smile. If I look at the temperature chart, Mathouillet's smile follows me, but not questioningly; Mathouillet has faith in me, but his smile says a number of unspoken things that I understand perfectly. Conversation is difficult, on account of this unfortunate deafness—that is to say, conversation as usually carried on. But we two, happily, have no need of words. For some time past, certain smiles have been enough for us. And Mathouillet smiles, not only with his eyes or with his lips, but with his nose, his beardless chin, his ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel

... 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 and sweet ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea

... Mlle. Bashkirtseff had suffered with her eyes, and, getting better of that, she had an attack of deafness. For these reasons she went, in the summer of 1880, to Mont-Dore for treatment, and was much benefited in regard to her deafness, though not cured, and now the condition of her lungs was recognized, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement

... market-price of a second edition before publication?" I softly queried. "I had no money. I was ashamed to beg, and I was too well brought up to steal anything adroitly enough not to be caught. And so, in view of my own uncle's deafness to the prayers of an impecunious orphan, I have descended to this that I might furnish butter for my daily bread." I refilled my glass and held the sparkling drink for a moment against the light. "This time next year," said I, as dreamily, "I shall be able to afford cake; for I shall have ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... 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 this world, and make you for ever happy ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... 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 into inverted motion, another branch ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

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

... we, but, in truth, in these, and all other matters, except the regular routine of living, I was for a considerable time kept apart from my fellows by the deafness brought on by the explosion. I lived in a little soundless world of my own with those dearest to me,—Carette, and my mother, and my grandfather, and Krok, and Jeanne Falla, and George Hamon. And ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... 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

... answered not a word, which was the less surprising, inasmuch as she had been dumb for a quarter of a century past. But Balder, supposing her silence to proceed from stupidity or deafness, repeated ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... is obvious. Persons suffering with serious congenital defects, as natural blindness, deafness, deformity of the limbs, or defective development of any part, will be more or less likely to transmit the same deformities or deficiencies to their children. There are, of course, cases of natural blindness, as ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... fixed in his person that doth induce contempt hath also a perpetual spur in himself to rescue and deliver himself from scorn.' Is that why so many of the world's greatest benefactors were men who bore in their bodies the marks of physical affliction—blindness, deafness, disease, and the like? They felt that they were heavily handicapped, and that their handicap called them to make a supreme effort 'to rescue ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... this heterogeneous assembly, it is not easy to speak with sufficient praise. The chimney-sweeper's absurd affectation sets the similar airs of the Frenchman in a most ridiculous point of view. The old fellow with a trumpet at his ear, has a degree of deafness that I never before saw delineated; he might have lived in the same apartment with Xantippe, or slept comfortably in Alexander the copper-smith's first floor. As to the nobleman in the centre, in the language of the turf, he is a mere pigeon; ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... the sick person; he healed the servant of the centurion by absent treatment, and restored sight by spitting on the eyes[15] or anointing them with clay made with spittle[16], or by requiring faith.[17] He healed a withered hand, cured impediments in speech and deafness, all without medical applications, even replacing an ear severed by ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd

... 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 it noted ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... waste of a penny as another man would of a hundred pounds, and yet he would 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 be, and as clever, and could talk as ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... statues must come down." I have often detected the like deception in the cloth shoe, wadded pelisse, wig and spectacles, and padded chair of Age. Nature lends herself to these illusions, and adds dim sight, deafness, cracked voice, snowy hair, short memory, and sleep. These also are masks, and all is not Age that wears them. Whilst we yet call ourselves young, and all our mates are yet youths and boyish, one good fellow in the set prematurely sports a gray or a bald head, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... representing a large amount of wasted energy and expense.[3] Syphilis is, 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 ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... a profuse 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, and was soon in good Health, and able to ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... he cautiously sanctions alcohol, which should often be the 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 red pepper either in tincture or in powder, ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... railway feeding Egypt, 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

... 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 ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... home were scarcely working as he had intended. The estimable Mrs. Widger, partly by reason of her deafness and partly of native stupidity, had only half understood his instructions about the letters. She knew she was to stamp them and she knew she was to post them, but the dates in the corners might have been runic inscriptions ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various

... follows a copious, acrid watery discharge, which gradually becomes thick and yellow. Often the inflammatory action may extend to the orifice of the eustachian tube, causing obstruction with temporary deafness, or ringing in the ears. Severe facial neuralgia may be caused by the pressure from the swollen parts upon the ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... 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 ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 6: Harriet Martineau • John Morley

... 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 all about the Americanisms of the spectacle; that is to ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... His 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 and was buried at Bonchurch ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... sufferer 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 digested, semi-putrescent food, resulting sometimes in convulsions, ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... Major Nagen was Countess Anna's spy as well as his rival, and he tried to be rid of him; but in addition to the shortness of sight which was Nagen's plea for pushing his thin transparent nose into every corner, he enjoyed at will an intermittent deafness, and could hear anything without knowing of it. Brother officers said of Major Nagen that he was occasionally equally senseless in the nose, which had been tweaked without disturbing the repose of his features. He ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... subsequent instruction. But it and the Resurrection, which interpreted it, are set in the forefront, as they should always be. The main point insisted on is that the men of Jerusalem were fulfilling prophecy in slaying Jesus. With tragic deafness, they knew not the voices of the prophets, clear and unanimous as they were, though they heard them every Sabbath of their lives, and yet they fulfilled them. A prophet's words had just been read in the synagogue; Paul's words might set some hearer asking whether a veil had been over his heart ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... nature. "When I gets bothered," he says, "I often feels as if summut be busted in me head." As the herring season comes round, so will Tony 'hae the complaints again,' and few will pity a man who always looks so well. A few years back, Mrs Widger procured for his deafness some quack treatment—which did do him good;—but he himself had little faith in it, and did not persevere. Like the mothers who rejoice in delicate children rather than feed them properly and send them early to bed, Tony prefers to think his ailments ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... of adenoids is 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 ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen

... believe 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 ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... blind echo. He kept up Slowly. 'Twas a chill sway of air That autumn noon within the stair, Sick, dizzy, like a turning cup. His brain perplexed him, void and thin: He shut his eyes and felt it spin; The obscure deafness hemmed him in. He said: "the ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... 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 and Lungwort Azor's Turkish Balm, for the ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw

... 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

... to one, in the rather muffled voice of a man troubled by deafness, the impression he makes is by no means an impression of melancholy or despair; on the contrary it is the impression of strength, power, courage, and unassailable allegiance to truth. He is careless of appearance because he has something far better worth the while of his attention; he is aloof ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... may throw some light on the medical treatment of deaf people; as it may be learnt from their dreams whether the auditory nerve be paralytic, or their deafness be owing to some ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... cut off the only ray of joy and of light which still made its way into the soul of Quasimodo. His soul fell into profound night. The wretched being's misery became as incurable and as complete as his deformity. Let us add that his deafness rendered him to some extent dumb. For, in order not to make others laugh, the very moment that he found himself to be deaf, he resolved upon a silence which he only broke when he was alone. He voluntarily ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... such pressures is apt to be followed by disagreeable and even dangerous physiological effects, which are commonly referred to as caisson disease or compressed air illness. The symptoms are of a very varied character, including pains in the muscles and joints (the "bends"), deafness, embarrassed breathing, vomiting, paralysis ("divers' palsy"), fainting and sometimes even sudden death. At the St Louis bridge, where a pressure was employed equal to 41/4 atmospheres, out of 600 workmen, 119 were affected and 14 died. At one time the symptoms ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... lack of virtue; the wounds of my ignorance, of my malice, of my weakness, of my concupiscence; the shackles on my hands and feet, on my good works, that is; the shackles, too, on my affections, so that I dwell amidst darkness and rottenness and bitterness, and shrink not from it! My deafness, too, to the inner voice of my Shepherd; and, what is far worse, that I have chosen God for my enemy and my adversary as often as I have chosen mortal sin, and that I have thus offered Him the grievous insult of refusing to have Him for my God, and choosing ...
— On Prayer and The Contemplative Life • St. Thomas Aquinas

... filed in 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 later on, she felt that Great-aunt Eliza did not hear one word she ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... wife of the gallant pathfinder, General Fremont, was afflicted with deafness in the later years of her life. She,—the petted and flattered, the caressed and spoiled child of fortune, the honored and respected woman of power and superior ability—deaf, and unable to participate in the conversation going on around her. Many a woman under these conditions, would ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... 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 ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... was rather too old to play things well," the mother said to Kew. "But you should see me with Murray. Even my deafness never hindered me with him, I could always see what he said. Look, we made this road for the soldiers coming down to the wharf. Do you see the way we helped nature, by tampering with the roots of the beech. It is a perfect wharf, ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson

... the hands off than to touch the eye, or the nose, or the mouth, or the ear, etc., with them without having first washed them. Unwashed hands may cause blindness, deafness, foulness of breath, or a polypus. It is taught that Rabbi Nathan has said, "The evil spirit Bath Chorin, which rests upon the hands at night, is very strict; he will not depart till water is poured upon the hands ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... deafness overcome thee?" He used a word in the dialect which left no room for doubt as to his meaning; it was to be a different servant—a substitute for the squire he had already. The squire bowed his head in disciplined obedience and led ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... Hampstead and afterwards at Brighton were among our youthful resorts; and my aunt remains in my memory as a gentle, kindly old lady, much afflicted by deafness. Mr. Garratt died in 1858, aged 77, and his wife at the same age ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... with interest the careers of the boys of Friendship as they went out into the world, and of all the boys of the village Patterson had been his favorite. He had understood the trouble as well as if it had been carefully explained to him. His deafness had quickened his insight. A girl's lovely face on Pat's dressing-table, seen when he replaced a broken caster, partly told the story, and Mrs. Whittredge's pride and determination were no secret to ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard

... least, it has been used for the ear; for Sir Hans Sloan positively affirms that the "oyl or juice dropped into the ear is good against deafness."[79] Another mode of using tobacco, and not very common we hope, is what is called plugging, that is, thrusting long pellets or rolls of tobacco up the nose, and keeping them there during the night. As a dentifrice it is used in many ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... his first antidote against vanity. Before he left Ireland he contracted a disorder, as he thought, by eating too much fruit. The original of diseases is commonly obscure. Almost everybody eats as much fruit as he can get, without any great inconvenience. The disease of Swift was giddiness with deafness, which attacked him from time to time, began very early, pursued him through life, and at last sent him to the grave, deprived of reason. Being much oppressed at Moor Park by this grievous malady, he was advised to try his native air, and went to Ireland; but finding ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... of the party; and as the persons of the strangers were unknown, and the guise of a militia-man was often assumed by Fagan, our friend was not 'easy in his mind how to act.' His first idea was to feign deafness; but a second knock, loud enough to wake all but the dead, changed his intention—he raised the window and ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson

... afflicted with a total deafness for so considerable a portion of his life, as never to have heard the sound of his son's voice; and was thus rendered incapable of communicating to him that instruction which he might otherwise have ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... is 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 in ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... deaf, again, and the dumb cannot always make a will, though here we are speaking not of persons merely hard of hearing, but of total deafness, and similarly by a dumb person is meant one totally dumb, and not one who merely speaks with difficulty; for it often happens that even men of culture and learning by some cause or other lose the faculties of speech ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian

... thinking in confused fashion of the huge clergyman with his thundering voice, his great lambent eyes and his seductive gentleness; of his singular speculations and his hints, half menacing, half splendid, of things to come. Then he thought of the housekeeper with her deafness and her withered arm, and that white peace about her face; and, lastly, of Miriam, soft, pale beneath her dark skin, her gem-like eyes ever finding his own, and of the intimate personal relations so swiftly ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood

... young man, symptoms of deafness began to appear, and the fear of becoming a victim of this malady made the composer more sensitive than ever. He was not yet thirty when this happened, and believing his life work at an end, he became ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... to 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 ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... executive 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, ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various

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

... What a blessing deafness is sometimes! The ear cannot detect the delicate tremolo which might tell the story too plainly. And in the darkness of night, the ...
— On Christmas Day in the Morning • Grace S. Richmond

... far-away cousin by marriage, who, though in good circumstances, and a very virtuous woman, may be said to have seen her best days, and is not what she was in her intellectual judgment, being afflicted with deafness and a species of palsy, besides other infirmities in her faculties. I misdoubt if I was wise in using my endeavours to make the poor body understand that I was at the other side of the world when my cousin was taken sick, all her ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... was a less stunning shock to Alice Egremont than to her aunt. Shielded by her illness, as well as by her simplicity and ignorance, she had never been aware of her aunt's attempted correspondence with the Egremonts, nor of their deafness to appeals made on her behalf. Far less had it ever occurred to her that the validity of her marriage could be denied, and the heinous error of her elopement seemed to her quite sufficient to account for her having been so entirely cast off by the family. The idea that as wife or widow she ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... mental labour. He often complained that his head was too busy for his body; and the continuity of his studies was frequently broken with attacks of hypochondria, want of sleep, and acute rheumatic pains. Along with these calamities, he was afflicted with another still more severe—with deafness almost total; but though he was now excluded from all communication with the external world, yet his mind still grappled with the material universe, and while he was studying the force of percussion, and preparing for a continuation of his "Dialogues on Motion," he was attacked with ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... Frank's deafness," said Jenny. "In a day or two he is going up to London to consult an aurist, and see whether he can keep his clerkship. Miles is going with him, and Rosamond takes Terry up to see his brother in ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge

... 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 and unnatural phenomenon. And ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad

... 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 from ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson

... cruelly mangled, crippled for life, condemned to life-long pains, blinded perhaps, and almost surely deafened. Ah, you spoke lightly of the dynamiter's peril; but even waiving death, have you realised what it is for a fine, brave young man of forty, to be smitten suddenly with deafness, cut off from all the music of life, and from the voice of friendship and love? How little do we realise the sufferings of others! Even your brutal Government, in the heyday of its lust for cruelty, though it scruples not to hound the patriot with spies, to pack the corrupt jury, to bribe the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... right hand and on my left all the way between Bloemfontein and Pretoria, and I never quite made up my mind as to which was the better. Bruce is a fighting man with an iron frame, and, in Gallipoli, his chief crab, his deafness, will be rather ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... than the one preceding Mr. Squire's peroration ensued. It was broken this time by Uncle Dad Simms, who proceeded to further glorify his deafness ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon

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

... ensuing bargain was nothing short of masterly. The stranger—a fishmonger's runner—turned as he met us and trotted alongside, shaping his hands like a trumpet and bawling down his price. Marc'antonio, affecting a slight deafness, signalled to him to bawl louder, hunched his shoulders, shook his head vehemently, held up ten fingers, then eight, then (after a long and passionate protest from above) eight again. By this time two other traffickers had joined the contest, and with scarcely a word on his side Marc'antonio ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... Lowestoft on this 24th of May, sitting in her chair, looking extremely well, though shrunk; her voice was firm and unchanged; no deafness; no dulness of sight; and when they served a little collation she had ordered for us, she got up, moved to the table, and ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... 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 ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... ring had been dipped cured lunacy; oil of a lamp burning 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 ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... greater part of Saville Row would be consumed. I persuaded her to prepare to transport her most valuable effects—"portantur avari Pygmalionis opes miserae." She behaved with great composure, and observed to me herself how much worse her deafness grew with the alarm. Half the people of fashion in town were in the streets all night, as it happened in such a quarter of distinction. In the crowd, looking on with great tranquillity, I saw a Mr. Jackson, an Irish gentleman, with whom I had dined this winter, at Lord Hertford's. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... we so often mistake for deafness in the old. It is the mind that is blunted and not the ear. Hence we octogenarians so often ask for your question over again. We do not grasp it the first time. We do not want you to speak louder, we only need to focus upon you a little ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... the finger alphabet," he said, "it would be of no use. I have been too miserable to learn it—my deafness only came on me a little more than a year since. Pardon me if I am obliged to give you trouble—I ask persons who pity me to write their answers when I speak to them. Come to my room, and you will find what you want—a ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... 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 the last thing she said was to desire her sisters ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Council, was 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 rendered ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards

... discourse, and sustaining the 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 ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... of a saint had been dipped cured lunacy; oil from a lamp burning before the tomb of St. Gall cured tumours; St. Valentine cured epilepsy; St. Christopher, throat diseases; St. Eutropius, dropsy; St. Ovid, deafness; St. Gervase, rheumatism; St. Apollonia, toothache; St. Vitus, St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints, the maladies which bear their names. Even as late as 1784 we find certain authorities in Bavaria ordering that any ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... smoking their cigars, little 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

... have fair knowledge. Schindler, in the second edition of his Biography of Beethoven, gives a few extracts from the Conversation Books (Conversations Hefte), in which, on account of the master's deafness, questions or answers were written down by those holding conversation with him. Beethoven read, and, of course, replied viva voce. We have not, it is true, his words, yet it is possible, at times, to gather their purport from the ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... deaf I'm going?' But it's deaf I'd been and blind, too, 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 dry as Kinvig when he was teetotal, and the cow-house was like a snowstorm with a ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine

... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... 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

... quickly intimate. The Abbe is above the middle height; wears his own grey hair; has an expressive countenance, talks much; and well, and at times drolly. Yet his wit or mirth is well attempered to his years. His manner of rallying his venerable friend is very amusing; for Dom Brial, from his deafness, (like most deaf men) drops at times into silence and abstraction. On each of my dinner-visits, it was difficult to say which was the hotter day. But Dom Brial's residence, at the hour of dinner, (which was four—for my own accommodation) happened luckily ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... pardon and peace.' Pr. and Med. p. 153. Hawkins, however (Life, p. 532), says, perhaps with considerable exaggeration, that at this time, 'he sunk into indolence, till his faculties seemed to be impaired; deafness grew upon him; long intervals of mental absence interrupted his conversation, and it was difficult to engage his attention to any subject. His friends concluded that his lamp was emitting its last rays, but the lapse of a short period gave them ample proofs to the contrary.' The proofs were The ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... London was visiting one of his poorer parishioners, an old woman, afflicted with deafness. She expressed her great regret at not being able to hear his sermons. Desiring to be sympathetic and to say something consoling, he replied, with unnecessary ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... 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

... I had explained "eyes" and "ears" to her, and the meaning of blindness and deafness, and yet could not make out why she was now using the word ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... and philosophers have often wished, the power of passing the day in contemplative tranquillity. But it seems that busy men seldom live long in a state of quiet. It is not unlikely that his health declined. He complains of deafness; "for," says he, "I took little care of my ears while I was not sure if my head was ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson

... most of the other attributes"; and that natural selection cannot develop any one superiority when animals are equally preserved by "other superiorities." But as natural selection will simultaneously eliminate tendencies to slowness, blindness, deafness, stupidity, &c., it must favour and improve many points simultaneously, although no one of them may be of greater importance than the rest. Of course the more complicated the evolution the slower it will be; ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... homage to Francis Hercules Valois. Religion in "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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... her 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 run down and extinguished. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to Hanging Rock to spend Saturday to Monday with her mother. Presbury, reduced now by various infirmities—by absolute deafness, by dimness of sight, by difficulty in walking—to where eating was his sole remaining pleasure, or, indeed, distraction, spent all his time in concocting dishes for himself. Mildred could not resist—and who can when seated at table with the dish ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... 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 ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... which for years the old miser had assumed when it suited him, and which, together with the deafness of which he sometimes complained in rainy weather, was thought in Saumur to be a natural defect, became at this crisis so wearisome to the two Cruchots that while they listened they unconsciously made faces ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac

... intolerant of as the 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, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... the barn for some unlawful purpose; and as I made no answer to any questions put to me, they concluded I was dumb. When I remembered I had not given evidence of speech, I determined to act as if I was dumb; and when the magistrate called to me, I also thought deafness was often united with dumbness, and I made my mind up to act both deaf and dumb, and when he called "Boy, come here," I took no notice, and did not appear to hear, until one of the officers led me from the box nearer to the magistrate, who demanded my ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green

... the dull 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 ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve



Words linked to "Deafness" :   deaf-muteness, conduction deafness, nerve deafness, tin ear, deaf-mutism, tone deafness



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com