Abstract
“Deaf peddling” refers to the practice by deaf individuals — or hearing people feigning deafness — of selling sign language alphabet cards or other sundries to sympathetic hearing folks in mall food courts or airports. In the medical realm, however, it might instead denote the peddling of “cures” to individuals anxious to restore their hearing. In her groundbreaking work Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History, Jaipreet Virdi examines over two centuries’ worth of devices, potions, rituals, and surgeries marketed as panaceas for hearing loss. Virdi combines extensive historical research with personal memoir, poignantly recounting her own experience with deafness. She weaves together newspaper and magazine advertisements, professional and lay medical journals, her own material interaction with various devices, and accounts by deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals themselves to argue that while the demarcations between quack cures and legitimate treatments have been — and still remain — obscure, the pursuit of...
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