Sound, Health and the Auditory Body-Politic

Abstract

It was not until the Restoration that Haüy’s work was reintroduced into blind education. Louis Braille, who entered the institution (now named the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles) in 1819, perfected Haüy’s raised-reading system, which had also been developed in earlier years by Charles Barbier de la Serre. Blind students were now encouraged to play an even wider range of musical instruments as a central part of their curricula. The director, Sébastian Guillié reported: “This year they received harp lessons for the first time. It wasn’t thought possible until now to teach them this instrument which is so difficult for the clear-sighted themselves, due to the difficult position of the body and the multiplicity of the strings that nothing differentiates.”¹ Braille, who became a very successful organist, was to benefit from this revitalized programme.² Hearing continued to play a leading role in medical circles throughout the late eighteenth century despite Haüy’s departure. The concept of the faux bruit had confirmed, rather than weakened, medical suspicions about the need for ethical hearing practices, re-emerging within medical culture as key to restoring a healthy social reality. It is possible to trace, however, a shift in discussions as to how ethical hearing might actually take place in the modern social setting. Audition was no longer relegated to the ear alone, but to the entire human body, which now harnessed its entire inner nervous system.