1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Amman, Johann Conrad

AMMAN, JOHANN CONRAD (1669–c. 1730), Swiss physician, was born at Schaffhausen in 1669. After graduating at Basel in 1687 he began to practise at Amsterdam, where he gained a great reputation. He was one of the earliest writers on the instruction of the deaf and dumb, and first called attention to his method in his Surdus loquens (Amsterdam, 1692), which was often reprinted, and was reproduced by John Wallis in the Philosophical Transactions (1698). His process consisted principally in exciting the attention of his pupils to the motions of his lips and larynx while he spoke, and then inducing them to imitate these movements, till he brought them to repeat distinctly letters, syllables and words. The edition of Caelius Aurelianus, which was undertaken by the Wetsteins in 1709, was superintended by Amman. He died about 1730 at Warmoud, near Leiden.