SPOKE AGAIN, AFTER FIVE YEARS’ SILENCE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18056, 17 January 1927, Page 9

SPOKE AGAIN, AFTER FIVE YEARS’ SILENCE.

MY WIFE WILL HAVE THE SHOCK OF HER LIFE. (Special to the “Star.”) LONDON, November 20. A man who had been deaf and dumb for five years yesterday'- found that he could both speak and hear upon recovering from an anaesthetic after a minor operation at St Bartholomew's Hospital. West Smithfield, K.C. The man, Mr Ernest Babbage, aged twenty-seven, a Londoner, who is employed at a shop in Fenchurch Street, E.C., became deaf and dumb as the result of a blow on the side of the neck during an amateur boxing tournament in North London. Yesterday morning he went to the hospital for the treatment of an inflamed finger caused by a deeply imbedded splinter. The surgeons told him. by a written message, that he would have to be given an anaesthetic before the splinter could be removed, as the operation would be a painful one.

Air Babbage objected vigorously, and wrote that he did not wish to have an anaesthetic and would suffer the pain. Further written messages passed, and Mr Babbage eventually consented to have the anaesthetic.

When Mr Babbage showed signs of regaining consciousness after the operation, an attendant touched him. lie immediately cried out, “ Leave me alone! I’m quite all right!”

The attendant hurried to the surgeon and said that apparently he had not been given the deaf-and-dumb patient.

Insisting that no mistake had been made, the surgeon hurried to the patient and found, to his astonishment that the man had recovered both speech and hearing. So delighted was the man himself that he spoke to everybody” ho. could His final words on leaving the hospital were: My wife will have the shock of her lile when I get home.”