Joseph Kling dreamed of joining the Army, but his deafness prevented his acceptance into such a career. In 1924, he decided to test out a theory that jumping from a plane could cure deafness. Unfortunately, he remained deaf after the plunge.
5,000 Foot Plunge Fails as Deaf Cure
MITCHEL FIELD, N.Y., December 31, 1924. — Although physicians warned that the experiment was doomed to failure, Joseph Kling took a 5,000 foot plunge yesterday, in an effort to shake off the deafness which for 10 years had kept him out of the United States Army.
The plunge, made in an airplane at Mitchel Field, was unsuccessful, as forecast. Army doctors said Kling’s deafness was chronic, and that airplane diving, reputed to have cured some such cases, would not avail except where the deafness was the result of shock or of hysterical tendencies.
Kling, a garment worker, has conversed by lip-and-finger language since scarlet fever and diphtheria left him, 19 years ago, with thickened ear drums.
News that Kling was going to make a flight yesterday brought to the field John Gill, an accountant of Springfield, Mass., who also requested that he be taken up a few thousand feet and brought down in one swoop. But as his condition was similar to Kling’s, he remained on the ground.
Source: Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 31 Dec. 1924.
