Have you ever been curious about where the expression 'deaf and dumb' came from? Did you know that Deaf people have their own culture? This paper I wrote when studying ancient medicine explores the roots of western Deaf culture and attempts, as much as possible for a hearing person to do, to view the subject from a Deaf perspective. The Hippocratic view of deafness in the ancient world is based on a philosophical foundation rather than a physiological understanding. In the extant texts there is a clear linking of the function of intelligence to the ability to speak which placed a stigma on the deaf, particularly those deaf prelingually. The scholarship in this area to date has focused on the issue from a hearing perspective; that of deafness as a disability. I argue that the nature of the discussion needs to be changed to one of the roots of Deaf [i] culture in western civilization. The inability of Hippocratic medicine to understand dea...
