AMMAN, JOHANN KONRAD. - Swiss physician, born at Sciaffusa in 1669, died at Warmond in 1724. He practised medicine in Holland, where, finding himself treating a deaf-mute girl, he undertook to educate her. Having achieved excellent results, he wished to continue in the art of educating the deaf-mute and in 1692 published the Surdus loquens, in which he dealt with the method he followed. The work was published in Latin at Amsterdam, and in German at Harlem; and in 1700 republished under the new title of Dissertatio de loquela (first Italian version by Vittorio Banchi, Siena, 1901).
The method proposed by Amman is the oral method, which others too had recommended before him. But he was the first to establish the oral method of educating the deaf-mute upon a sound scientific foundation. His work was widely disseminated, bringing decisive progress in the oral education of the deaf-mute. Besides providing a sound scientific foundation, Amman sets forth clearly and accurately
the practical procedure for teaching articulated speech to those born deaf, as the sole means of participating in social life, from which they would otherwise remain inexorably excluded because of their disability.