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Deafness   /dˈɛfnəs/   Listen
Deafness

noun
1.
Partial or complete loss of hearing.  Synonym: hearing loss.



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"Deafness" Quotes from Famous Books



... 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 apart, looking ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other side, and can henceforth defy it and pass on superior. The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold is there only by sufferance,—by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... 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. ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... deafness, and the increasing thickness of the air, in which the two old figures were dimly seen as through a woolly veil, conversation was really impossible. There were many questions Maisie would have liked to ask about the kitten's future comfort, but she saw ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton

... of all of us, by the power of God and the merits of the blessed martyrs, in the same hour in which he entered was so perfectly cured that he walked without so much as a stick. And he said that, though he had been deaf for five years, his deafness had ceased along with the palsy. (Cap. ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... fails, which 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 ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs

... 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 ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... submitting our faculties to measurement lies in the curious unconsciousness in which we are apt to live of our personal peculiarities, and which our intimate friends often fail to remark. I have spoken of the ignorance of elderly persons of their deafness to high notes, but even the existence of such a peculiarity as colour blindness was not suspected until the memoir of Dalton in 1794. That one person out of twenty-nine or thereabouts should be unable to distinguish a red from a green, without knowing that ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... 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 ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

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

... 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 girl professed, at the third ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... disease germs. If fresh flowers of the plant be steeped for twenty-one days in olive oil whilst exposed to the sunlight, this makes an admirable bactericide; also by simply instilling a few drops two or three times a day into the ear, all pain therein, or discharges therefrom, and consequent deafness, will be effectually cured, as well as any itching eczema of the external ear and its canal. A conserve of the flowers is employed on the Continent against ringworm. Some of the most brilliant results have been obtained in suppurative ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... 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

... the Ear. Most catarrhal troubles are accompanied by an oversupply of mucus which frequently clogs up the Eustachian tube and produces deafness. For the same reason, colds and sore throat ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark

... life—'As men, in their bills, 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 Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... faculties are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the compliment to expect nobleness from us. Though we have gold to give, they demand only copper. We ask our neighbor to suffer himself to be dealt with truly, sincerely, nobly; but he answers no by his deafness. He does not even hear this prayer. He says practically, I will be content if you treat me as "no better than I should be," as deceitful, mean, dishonest, and selfish. For the most part, we are contented so ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau

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

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

... deafness, the Duke of Wellington consulted a celebrated physician, who put strong caustic into his ear, causing an inflammation which threatened his life. The doctor apologized, expressed great regrets, and said that the blunder would ruin him. "No," said ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... 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, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... unknown 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 ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... impress the Tanners with the importance of his late charge in the East as Margaret came down-stairs. His pompous tones, raised to favor the deafness that he took for granted in Mr. Tanner, easily ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill

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

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

... 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

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

... treatment; then a dose of three grains, three times daily for two weeks; and finally two grains, three times daily for the rest of the month of treatment will, in many cases, complete a cure. If the quinine cause much ringing in the ears and deafness, it will be found that sodium bromide taken with the quinine (in twice the dose) dissolved in water, will correct this trouble. If the patient is constipated and the bowel discharges are light colored, a few one-quarter grain doses of calomel may be taken every two hours, and followed ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... loud laughter of an age of intellectual ribaldry and self-conceit dies away and the gaunt figure of the last of the Crusaders still stands before us heroic in his childlike refusal of compromise, his burning compassion, his deafness to ridicule. In a sense we must all be ready to accept the jeering and the scorn that were poured out on the Knight of La Mancha, if like him we are to fight, even foolishly, for the things that are worth fighting for—either ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

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

... much to be wished that the truth of the often repeated assertion that consanguineous marriages lead to deafness, and dumbness, blindness, etc., should be ascertained; and all such assertions could be easily tested by the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... his mother, raising her voice as she now always did when she spoke to him, seeming to imagine that by this means she could make him comprehend better. He was not, however, in the least afflicted with deafness, and the loud tone was more likely to startle him than to calm the perturbation which was usually apparent when she addressed him. "My son, you are to take your airing this morning without me. You understand that this will be your last drive in this detestable city. You perfectly comprehend, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... a young man from the East alighted on the platform of the railway station, north of the town, and, entering the rickety omnibus that lingered there, seeking whom it might rattle to deafness, demanded to be driven to the Herald Building. It did not strike the driver that the newcomer was precisely a gay young man when he climbed into the omnibus; but, an hour later, as he stood in the doorway of the edifice he had indicated as his destination, depression seemed to have settled ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington

... trades. The taciturn storekeeper, who regards his customers with a stare of solemn amusement as Critturs born by some extraordinary vicissitude of nature to the use of a language that practically amounts to deafness and dumbness, never suffers his philosophical interest in them to affect his commercial efficiency; he drops them now and then a curt English phrase, or expressive Yankee idiom; he knows very well when they mean to buy and when they do not; and they equally wary and equally ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... that sort, but rather the external suffering that my unfortunate little head received at the hands of nurses, who half-suffocated me with the soap that produced temporary blindness in my eyes, and deafness in my ears, before the best family yellow or mottled was "slooshed" away, leaving me panting and hot. Then came the tremendous rubbing, followed by the jigging out of knots of hair with a cruel comb and the brushing which seemed to make numberless little holes in my tender scalp; ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... this complication. The disease of 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 of the eyelids is an occasional ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various

... where his feet shook A sad 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 air is ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... 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 ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell

... ought to have known it all along. Thousands of trifles mocked at her for her blindness, thousands of unheeded voices shrieked the truth into her opened ears. She felt miserably guilty. Not yet had she arrived at the stage when she could justify her blindness and deafness to herself. Later, she would understand how custom, the life-long habit of regarding the minister as a man apart, had helped to dull her perception. Later, common sense would prove her innocent of any wilful blunder. But just now, in her first bewilderment, it ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... 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 ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... during his sojourn apparently was to have been described in one of the London papers as quite deaf; and I could truly say to him that I had never imagined him at all deaf, or heard him accused of it before. "Oh, yes," he said, "I am a little hard of hearing on one side. But it isn't deafness." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

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

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

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

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

... I am not going to trouble you with requests for a fortune or a throne; you get prayers enough of that sort from other people, and from your habit of convenient deafness I gather that you experience a difficulty in answering them. But there is one thing I should like, which would cost you no trouble ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... their writings have alleged that the inhabitants of Atures and Maypures have been struck with deafness by the noise of the Great Cataracts, but this is untrue. When the noise is heard in the plain that surrounds the mission, at the distance of more than a league, you seem to be near a coast skirted by reefs and breakers. The noise is three times ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt

... 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 Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... rapidly in the post-chaise, he exclaimed, "Life has not many better things than this." On another occasion he said that he should like to spend his life driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman, clever enough to add to the conversation. The pleasure was partly owing to the fact that his deafness was less troublesome in a carriage. But he admitted that there were drawbacks even to this pleasure. Boswell asked him whether he would not add a post-chaise journey to the other sole cause of happiness—namely, drunkenness. "No, sir," said Johnson, "you are driving rapidly ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... 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

... severe admirer of truth. An illustration may be given. When afflicted by deafness he consulted a celebrated aurist, who, after trying all remedies in vain, determined, as a last resource, to inject into the ear a strong solution of caustic. It caused the most intense pain, but the patient bore it with his usual ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... at 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

... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 desert. Acres of the finest alluvial clay floated past ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... me, her hands in her lap, and her great eyes fix'd most dolefully. And when Captain Billy came down with news that we were safe and free to go on deck, we turn'd our faces from him, and said we thank'd him kindly, but had no longer any wish that way—too wretched, even, to remember his deafness. ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch

... affected with deafness. Cheselden, the surgeon, then in favour at court, persuaded her that he had hopes of being able to cure deafness by some operation on the drum of the ear, and offered to try the experiment on a condemned convict ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole

... 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 ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

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

... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various

... His apparent deafness rendered it a little difficult to make him fully understand that I must see Madame Walravens, and consign the fruit into her own hands. At last, however, he comprehended the fact that such were my ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... more than once ruined the performance of his symphonies; which he would conduct, even at the time when his deafness had become almost complete. The musicians, in order to keep together, agreed at length to follow the slight indications of time which the concertmeister (first violin-player) gave them; and not to attend to Beethoven's conducting-stick. Moreover, it should be observed, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... 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!" He cried, "who ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... pounced upon it like a tiger on its prey. 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 ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell

... reeking with the smaller mysteries of God's own Image, know us for His chosen servants, true believers in the Sermon on the Mount, elect disciples of Him who never did a miracle but to heal: who never struck a man with palsy, blindness, deafness, dumbness, madness, any one affliction of mankind; and never stretched His blessed hand out, but to give ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... 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 by urging ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... beyond an increasing deafness and the movement of the lips growing fainter and fainter, there had been little change in his condition for a week. But on the day we finished bending the schooner's sails, he heard his last, and the last movement of his lips died away—but not before I had asked him, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London

... 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 and deliver themselves ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... his leonine head and huge eyebrows impressed one by his earnestness and perspicacity, somewhat shut off from the world as he was by hereditary deafness. The dignified mistress of the house likewise belonged to a family that had made its name known in Danish literature. She was a Rosenstand-Goeiske. Jens was a cordial and attentive host, the daughters were all of them women ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes

... 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 him, whitened ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... thought of confiding his case to the said lady d'Amboise. But he made first awkwardly and shyly certain twists and turns, finding no terms in which to unfold his case. And the lady was also perfectly silent, since she was outrageously struck with the blindness, deafness and voluntary paralysis of the lord of Braguelongne; and said to herself, walking by the side of this delicate morsel, a young innocent of whom she did not think, little imagining that this cat so well provided with young bacon could ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... must, after each ablution, be carefully and well dried with a soft dry napkin, inattention to this advice has sometimes caused a gathering in the ear—a painful and distressing complaint, and at other times it has produced deafness. ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... While deafness is a serious misfortune, it is neither a sin, nor a disgrace, to be ashamed of. It is a handicap, to be sure, but one to be bravely and cheerfully faced, for it does not destroy the chances for happiness and success. It is cause for neither discouragement ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright

... the civil power." Yet in the great riot caused by the illegal impounding of Steve Gubbins's bull, when Bluetown was divided against itself, her constabulary force and "specials" ignominiously beaten and routed, Captain Muggs, with an heroic deafness to the call of glory and the selectmen, from a reluctance to shed the blood of his fellow-citizens, refused to call out his company, and concealed himself in a hayloft till the affray was over, the pound completely ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage

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

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

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

... he passionately admired that quality in others wherein he felt himself wanting. He was generous to others, not to himself. It is unfortunate that he studied the prose of the seventeenth century. Mr. Krehbiel evidently knew of his tone-deafness. Hearn wrote him that he could listen to Patti after he had read Krehbiel. This proves him to be of the "literary" type of music lover; music must first be a picture before it makes a tonal image in the cortical cells. The most ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

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

... 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 if I needed further company, I could people the grim stockade with old friends ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... well as its influence on the animal creation, has been variously attested; and its curative virtues have been no less extolled by the ancients.[116] Martianus Capella assures us, that fevers were removed by songs, and that Asclepiades cured deafness by the sound of the trumpet. Wonderful indeed! that the same noise which would occasion deafness in some, should be a specific for it in others! It is making the viper cure its own bite. But, perhaps Asclepiades was ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian

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

... cleaned his India-ink brushes. Bless me! it gave you a lesson, gentlemen snobs, to sustain the honor of the special army, and taught you to respect the black velvet plastron and double red bands on the trousers. In spite of his appearance of absence of mind and deafness, the Colonel had just before heard murmured around him the words "old Lantz," and "old dolphin." Very well, gentlemen officers, you know now that the old army was composed of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... 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

... 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 river Pactolus, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various

... 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 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... she read aloud. In this way Adela first came to know what was meant by literature, as distinguished from works of learning. The verse of Shelley and the prose of Landor fell upon her ears; it was as though she had hitherto lived in deafness. Sometimes she had to beg the reader to pause for that day; her heart and mind seemed overfull; she could not even speak of these new things, but felt the need of lying back in twilight to ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... for a long time reigned between the households. Then, just as the old woman reached the last steps, he pushed forward quickly and rubbed his hairy face against her cheeks, shouting in her ear, on account of her deafness: "How well you look, mother; sturdy as ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... 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 had not been five minutes up when ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

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

... be suddenly afflicted with deafness. After negotiating a line of vehicles, the Mercury leaped past the caves of Gough and Cox as though the drip of lime-laden water within those amazing depths were reeling off centuries in a frenzy of haste instead of measuring ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy

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

... 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

... not dare do that," said Confucius. "Tis that I am sick of men's immovableness and deafness to reason." ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous

... knock up. He was truly 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 ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... aught Monna Lisa knew, he might be a real husband. For Tito had thoroughly frightened Tessa into silence about the circumstances of their marriage, by telling her that if she broke that silence she would never see him again; and Monna Lisa's deafness, which made it impossible to say anything to her without some premeditation, had saved Tessa from any incautious revelation to her, such as had run off her tongue in talking with Baldassarre. For a long ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... 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 ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... out his boathook, got hold of the Vrouw's garments and hauled her on board. The moment she had recovered her breath she insisted on being taken back to the galiot; but the old boatman was suddenly seized with a fit of deafness, and wisely pulled away ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston

... Piper was not entirely devoid of the family charms. Nor was it from any lack of intelligence, nor from any defective social quality; for her precocity was astounding, and her good-humored frankness alarming. Neither do I think it could be said that a slight deafness, which might impart an embarrassing publicity to any statement—the reverse of our general feeling—that might be confided by any one to her private ear, was a sufficient reason; for it was pointed out that she always ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte

... and 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 ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle

... seldom that the power of hearing once entirely lost can ever be restored, and not always that even partial deafness can be cured, though it may often be relieved. Partial deafness is frequently owing to the accumulation and hardening in the ear of the ear wax, which may generally be remedied by dropping into the ear such articles as are calculated to soften, relax, and stimulate. For ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... Queen picture!" he burst out impulsively and went bounding to meet her half way. And Mary Fortune heard him, in spite of her deafness; and understood—he meant the Empress Louise. He had seen that picture of the beloved Empress tripping daintily down the stairs and, for all she knew, those expensive marble steps might have been built to give ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge

... Mr. Chamberlain on the article in the Daily News. Mr. Gladstone himself spoke of the consolations of old age; there is one consolation he did not mention. His absorption in the Bill and the slight deafness in one of his ears do not allow him to perceive so plainly the rude noises and interruptions by which he is often assailed from the Tory Benches. Moreover, the native chivalry of his disposition, the curious simplicity which has remained his central characteristic, in spite ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... 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

... 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.' ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... Sheriff," said the King, laughing, "ye have the tallest priests in Nottinghamshire that e'er I saw in all my life. If Heaven never answered prayers because of deafness, methinks I would nevertheless have blessings bestowed upon me, for that man yonder would make the great stone image of Saint Peter rub its ears and hearken unto him. I would that I had an army ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... 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, or on a lady's ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells

... failed to catch, and Moina obeyed, but with so bad a grace, the Mme. d'Aiglemont had never permitted herself to make her modest request again. Ever since that day when Moina was talking or retailing a piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to listen; but this infirmity of deafness appeared to put the Countess out of patience, and she would grumble thoughtlessly about it. This instance is one from among very many that must have gone to the mother's heart; and yet nearly all of them might have escaped a close observer, they consisted ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... 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 ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock

... and counters, her Skye terrier, her suppositious wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and incipient catarrhal deafness: the younger, her lamp of colza oil before the statue of the Immaculate Conception, her green and maroon brushes for Charles Stewart Parnell and for Michael ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... desertion—for the 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 ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... and laughter, excepting the Marchese d'Ateleta, who was old, and afflicted with incurable deafness; was padded and painted—in a word, artificial from head to foot. He was very like one of the figures one sees at a wax work show. From time to time—usually the wrong one—he would give vent to a little dry cackling ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

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

... Old Orpheus drew 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

... 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 cross-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 ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth

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

... his pipe, as he wended towards looking after his flock. Seeing the sleepers on their stone pillows, the thoughtless Czech mischievously blew louder,—started Adalbert broad awake upon him; who, in the fury of the first moment, shrieked: "Deafness on thee! Man cruel to the human sense of hearing!" or words to that effect. Which curse, like the most of Adalbert's, was punctually fulfilled: the amazed Czech stood deaf as a post, and went about so all ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle

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

... was rising to fame the struggle for existence was hard. No matter how late he toiled in legislative hall or union assembly, he read law when he got home. He was admitted to the bar, and despite his deafness he became an able advocate. When he had to appear in court he used a special apparatus with wire attachments that ran to the witness box and the bench and enabled him to hear everything that ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... [Laus Deo] I had prayed for 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.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

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

... he required. He would wait until the priest came up. The outer door stood wide open. It was through this door that Benedetto had fled. Sanselme heard the priest utter an exclamation of surprise, and then he went to his servant's door, and knowing her deafness knocked and called loudly to her to awake. This was Sanselme's salvation. He leaned from the window and caught a branch from the tree by which Benedetto had clambered to the upper room. This done, it was easy for Sanselme then ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... could 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

... 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 doctor, whose home ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond

... present you to my father. His deafness is not so bad that one has to speak loudly. To speak distinctly will ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath

... 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

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

... 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 before one's eyes and ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

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

... law-office in Boston. Here he at once entered upon a large and lucrative practice, both in the State and Federal courts, which kept steadily increasing for over twenty years, till declining health and partial deafness compelled him to withdraw from the courts of justice, and confine himself to office business. During this period, his opinion on abstruse and knotty points of law was often solicited by eminent counsel ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... 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

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

... 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 is like a ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko

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

... due to solitude are endless. Milton's greatest work was done when blindness, old age and the death of the Puritan government forced him into completest seclusion. Beethoven did his best work in the solitude of deafness. ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... 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

... with byways sweet with the scent and mellow with the beauty of waking primrose? Who would not welcome, for one wonderful night, the gift of ears that could hear the sounds which to little Solomon were known and understood, but many of which are lost in deafness to our dull ears? ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch

... medical man now plied the conductor-pianist with the contents of the mysterious phial, and placing a long, white ostrich plume in his hand, he made a signal for the orchestra to begin. The conductor, despite his deafness, appeared to comprehend what was going on and feebly waved the plume in air, and the first gloomy chords of the Marche Funebre a la Tartare were heard. Of all the funeral marches ever penned this composition certainly outdid them all in diabolical waitings and the gnashing of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... drawers and shutting them and reopening them and speaking to herself the while, until Jeanne, catching my puzzled expression, would whisper loudly in my ear with a tolerant smile, "Elle est tres VIEILLE." Jeanne had acquired a habit of raising her voice, owing to Madame's deafness, which resulted in her whispers partaking of the phonetic quality of those stage asides which, by a curious convention, while audible at the very back of the dress circle, are quite inaudible to the other characters on the stage. Whether Madame ever overheard these auricular confidences ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... that at the door, Betty?' asked Mrs. Falconer; for Robert had not shut the door so carefully as he ought, seeing that the deafness of his grandmother was of much the same faculty as ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... finger-tip. As for odours, let other folk be proud of smelling musk and lavender, but let him tell you by a quiver of the nostrils the various kinds of so-called scentless flowers, and let him bend his ear and interpret secrets that the universe is ever whispering to us who are pent in partial deafness because, forsooth, we see. ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... in the spirit in which it was made. For ten years he resided with the Lichnowskis, and these were probably the years of purest happiness in the great composer's life, although early in their course the terrible affliction of deafness began to be felt by him. He at this time freely frequented the salons of the Viennese nobility, many of whom were accomplished virtuosi themselves, and were able to appreciate the great genius of the new-comer, rough and bearish as oftentimes he must have appeared to them—a great contrast to ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... 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 ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs

... distinguished his professional career. When commanding in the Douro, some communications which Glascock had occasion to make to the Governor of Oporto not having received that attention which the English captain considered was due to them, and the governor having apologised for his deafness, Glascock replied that in future he would write to his excellency. He did so, but the proceeding did not produce the required reply. Glascock was then told that the governor's memory was defective; ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

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



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



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