PREFACE. MUCH in the following pages was suggested by observations made on a young woman, deaf, dumb, and blind, in the workhouse at Rotherhithe, a few weeks before the meeting of the British Association at Plymouth. What I had then learned respecting her was read to the Members of the Medical Section. A second visit to her, in the summer of last year, furnished me with a few further particulars; and these also were communi cated to the Medical Section of the British Association at Manchester. Some physiological observations have been since added. Should the subject excite as much interest in the minds of those who may take the trouble to read what I now submit to them, as it has long held in mine, results may be produced, which, if I live, I shall read with avidity, and no doubt with instruction, whether they concur with or invalidate the conclusions at which I have arrived. The following abstracts of the two papers read to the British Association were printed in their Reports for the years 1841 and 1842: 1841. "Some observations of a case of |