A manual of diseases of the ear / by George P. Field.

  • Field, George P (George Purdey)
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of diseases of the ear / by George P. Field. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    persevering use of the syringe and warm water will almost always be successful, especially if the auricle be piilled upwards and backwards. Where much swelling and inflammation of the soft parts are present (and these are often very severe from irritation and pressure of the foreign body), they must, together with the acute pain, be relieved by freely applying leeches in front of the tragus; for the meatus and membrana tympani are extremely sensitive Avhen pressed upon by hard substances. After the inflammation has been allayed by this means, and also by the use of fomentations, the syringe will easily remove the foreign body; but we should by no means attempt the removal so long as the slightest tumefaction is present. Above all, it is necessary in each case to make a careful inspection of the meatus with the speculum to see whether there actually is something to remove. Often and often have most lamentable results followed attempts to extract with instruments substances which have either never been in the ear at all, or have fallen out of it unnoticed, and not only should the body be looked for by aid of the reflector and speculum, but all instrumentation, with the exception of the aural syringe, shoiild be performed only through the speculum. For this purpose a short and broad speculum is to be preferred. Inflammation of the brain and death have not infrequently been caused in this way ; or, if life has been spared, total deafness has followed. Vomiting and coughino- are sometimes met with from irritation of the auricular branch of the pneumogastric (Toynbee). These symptoms of course instantly vanish when the pressure is removed. It is often advisable to turn the patient on his side and syringe from below, or, as Hinton first pointed out, to place him on his back, if the foreign body, as frequently happens, is jammed into the angle formed by the anterior wall of the meatus and the membrana tympani. The agglutinative method of removal is strongly recommended by some authors: it consists in fixing the impacted body by means of glue or coaguline to a piece of linen attached to a holder, and with- drawing the same when the glue has firmly set on the foreign body. Adhesive plaster attached to a piece of string may be used in the same way. Liiwenberg recommends that a camel's