A clinical manual of the diseases of the ear / by Laurence Turnbull.

  • Laurence Turnbull
Date:
1872
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A clinical manual of the diseases of the ear / by Laurence Turnbull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    paralysis of the right side of the face. Her father stated that, eight years previously, she had, in play, put a small shell into her ear; that the surgeon, in endeavoring to remove it, forced it deeper into the ear, breaking the shell, and causing intense pain. After its removal there was much discharge from the ear, and in a few clays the muscles of the right side of the face lost their power, which they have not regained. Upon examination there was no vestige of the membrana tympani; the mucous membrane of the tympanum was very thick and red, and there was not the slightest power of hearing. As an agent to assist the syringe in the removal of a shell from the ear, there can be nothing better than a delicate bent wire. By this means shells have been removed with great facility at Howard Hospital, by hooking the bent wire into the opening of the shell; but when they are flat, the reflex stream of water brings them near enough to be seized with a pair of angular forceps.* The author is confirmed in this opinion by the most dis- tinguished aural surgeons of the present age, namely, Wilde, Toynbee, Troltsch, and Ilinton. In cases where the foreign body is irregular or ovoid in shape and fixed firmly, the plan of Jonathan Hutchinson, F.R.C.S., may be adopted. He has applied the principle of removing a cork from a bottle by a string. The string, in this case, when employed in the ear, is a silver wire of five or six strands, in the form of a loop. This will be less apt to do any injury than the forceps, scoop, etc. I have a horror of the use of the scoop [so has the author] so generally employed, because it can only act as a sort of lever, and because I have repeatedly known it to do much damage. We have, Mr. Hutchinson observes, a specimen in the museum, in which a bean was, by its agency, thrust through the membrana tympani, and produced death by its irri- tation. The forceps are little better. * Transactions American Medical Association, 1865, p. 429.