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.

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    very much of instillations of various kinds for the relief of the different forms of deafness. He recommends speaking-tubes to the deaf. A.D. 130-201] Galen recognized the importance of the ear, inasmuch as it lies so closely to the head. Al- though his classifications of disease are very minute, we do not seem to learn much from his writings, except the value of agents that will excite the secretions of the nose and mouth, which he recommends in aural disease. He complains of the empirical practices of his predecessors in ordering now cold and now warm agents, now sweet and now sour ones. He also tells of a poor patient of some less learned, or less practical man than himself, who, in accordance with advice, used black pepper as a local means of treatment for an in- flamed ear, and whose sufferings were so much augmented, that he came near hanging himself. Galen objects to the common use of opium, which seems to have been employed very much in relieving the pain of aural disease. Tinnitus aurium, according to Galen, was due in some cases to exhalations from the stomach, and in others to in- creased sensitiveness of the ears. Both of these causes cer- tainly leave much to be wished for, in the way of exact knowl- edge, as to the nature of this distressing symptom. It would be tedious in the extreme to follow Galen through his classification of diseases of the ear, and remedies for them. Like his predecessors and contemporaries, he was not will- ing to admit that there were some diseases for which remedies were useless, so far as their knowledge went. The aural pre- scriptions of the ancients may well be compared to the mitrailleuse, dangerous far and wide. Ccvlius Aurelianus, a successor of Galen, stands out prom- inently from the absurd theorizers of his time, in his clear delineations of pain in the ear, and his sensible remedies for it—leeches, cups, poultices, mustard-plasters, and so on. Apollonius, quoted by Galen, took out foreign bodies with ear-spoons, forceps, hooks, etc., which were enveloped in wool and dipped in turpentine. He softened ear-wax with saltpetre in vinegar, and then removed it with lukewarm water or oiL