Chapter Text
Muggle Movements
by Isa Stevens
AllHail asks; I hear that Muggles are capable of curing or producing items that assist deaf people. How is it possible for deaf men to hear without transfiguring the ear (which is a feat done only by the best of healers) or drinking a potion? How do Muggle instruments do that?
There are many methods non-magicals have available to treat deafness, some of which can be directly compared to wixen methods, and others that have no true comparison.
Some forms of hearing loss can be easily treated with minor procedures. For example, I know a muggleborn who, when she was a child, dealt with occasional hearing loss in the right ear. This was treated at home by dropping into the ear a potion that dissolved the obstruction every few weeks. When this was not sufficient to clear the obstruction, the healer had a device that would spray pressurized water into the ear. By moving the outer structures of the ear about and with careful aim, the obstruction could be cleared. Many types of minor hearing loss can be cleared with easy procedures.
Some more serious kinds of deafness can be treated with more serious surgical procedures. For example, if the bones of the ear have abnormalities, a surgeon may be able to alter the abnormality by reshaping the problem area. A rather common example is the act of “putting tubes in the ear”. This procedure involves placing tiny tubes in the ear to create a pathway for liquids that build up and cause hearing loss to drain. Most often, this procedure is done for children that face regular ear ailments.
An external device that can treat hearing loss is the hearing aid. This is a device placed in the ear, that essentially takes in sound, and adjusts the sound to fit the range that the person can hear. For example, if a person has trouble hearing quieter sounds, but can hear louder noises, might have hearing aids that make things sound louder to their ear. These could be compared to enchanted children’s toys that take in noises and emit an altered version; simply targeted to take advantage of what noises the patient can still hear.
The most intriguing of muggle solutions, however, is the cochlear implant. This is for cases where little hearing remains in the ear, and surgical means are not preferred for one reason or another. This device consists of an external part, and an implant within the scull. Much like a hearing aid, the external component takes in sounds and sends out modified ones; however, they are not sent to the ear, but to the metal device implanted in the head. This device then directly stimulates the nerves of the ear, essentially tricking them to believe the ear is functioning normally and hearing the sounds the external component is hearing. These implants are generally more effective in small children or adults who had hearing, but lost it.
Beyond these medical treatments, muggles also have a variety of societal solutions to the problem of hearing loss. For example, they have developed a series of hand signals that can substitute for words to allow deaf and mute people to communicate. Deaf persons may also learn to “read lips”, by which they can deduce what people are saying by watching the movement of the mouth. While none of these solutions to deafness are perfect, they have allowed the non-magical hearing impaired to improve their quality of life, and be an active part of society despite disability.