A practical treatise on the diseases of the ear : including the anatomy of the organ / by D.B. St. John Roosa.

  • Roosa, D. B. St. John (Daniel Bennett St. John), 1838-1908.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A practical treatise on the diseases of the ear : including the anatomy of the organ / by D.B. St. John Roosa. 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.

    32/590 (page 22)
    describe the three and a half turns of the cochlea and the membranous zone. 1665] The ceruminous glands, whose function and physio- logical action were first described by Nicolaus Stenon. Lincke speaks of him as Stenson ; but this must be a mistake in transcribing the name of the great Danish anatomist. Passing on to the seventeenth century we find Antonine Marie Valsalva rising up a head-and-shoulders above the ana- tomists of his age, and far exceeding his predecessors in the amount and exactness of his knowledge. He devoted more than sixteen years of his life to the study of the anatomy of the ear, and for the purpose of its study dissected more than a thousand heads. His master-work was a treatise on the ear.* This work passed through five edi- tions in a short time. He described the attachment of the tensor tympani to the Eustachian tube. He made the mis- take, however, of supposing that the ossicula auditus had no periosteum, and that the cavity of the tympanum was con- nected by many openings to the cavity of the cranium. He discovered the muscle that dilates the Eustachian tube and moves the uvula. He also showed that the fenestra ovalis was covered by membrane. His anatomical plates show a good knowledge of the cochlea and semicircular canals. Morgagni, himself an original investigator, a student and friend of Valsalva, edited his master's work and made some additions. Of Valsalva's contributions to the treatment of the ear, which were quite as important as his anatomical investiga- tions, we shall have occasion to speak in the second part of this sketch. 1714] Valsalva had a rival, whose name the lapse of time has well nigh effaced, Baymond Vieussens, who also wrote a work on the ear. He gave new names to various parts of the organ; but his descriptions are said by Lincke to be so mysterious that his contemporaries could not under- stand them. 1717] Bivinus, professor in Leipsic, observed an opening * Tractatus de Aure Humana. Lugdunum Batavorum, 1742.