There is one subject of philosophical curiosity to be found in Edinburgh ... a college of the deaf and dumb, who are taught to speak, to read, to write, and to practice arithmetick. They not only speak, write, and understand what is written, but if he that speaks looks towards them, and modifies his organs by distinct and full utterance, they know so well what is spoken, that it is an expression scarcely figurative to say, they hear with the eye.
—Samuel Johnson, British lexicographer and literary critic, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, 1773