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.

    42/590 (page 32)
    ance and empiricism only. One author named Gadesden rec- ommends that, in cases of inflammation of the ear, one of the lower classes be hired to suck out, by means of a tube placed in the meatus externus, all the morbid material of the ear; and this is said to be a cure for all kinds of deafness, not even excepting that from a purulent affection of the organ. Lincke believes that Peter de la Cerlata was the first to use a specu- lum for widening the auditory canal for purposes of inspec- tion.* 1560] Johannes Arcularius gave some sensible rules for the management of aural disease. He declaimed, for instance, against the indiscriminate practice of stuffing the ear with cotton; but he advised an extremely peculiar means of extracting a foreign body from the ear. The head of a lizard was to be cut off, placed in the affected ear, and allowed to remain there for three hours. The animal is then to be removed, when the foreign body will be found in its mouth. 1560] Alexander Benedetti recommends, as a remedy for pain in the ear, the semen of a boar, which is to be carefully taken from the vagina of a sow, before she has dropped it upon the ground. This, however, is the suggestion of a writer on general medicine, and not on otology. 1523-1562] Gabriel Fallopius, in this century, seems to be entitled to the honor of having first taught that a discharge of pus from the ear of a child should not be meddled with ; for as Fallopius gravely taught, and as has been gravely repeated by his legitimate successors for two hundred and seventy-three years, this discharge of pus is an effort of na- ture to throw morbid material out of the head through the ear. The otorrhcea of adults, according to Fallopius, is also a discharge from the brain, and should not be treated by astringents, but with mild, cleansing remedies. He used an aural speculum, and employed sulphuric acid to remove polypi. 1600] In the seventeenth century we hear of De Vigo, body surgeon to Pope Julius II., curing his Holiness of a very * The passage quoted to sustain this view is per inspectionem ad sole~n trahendo aurem et ampliando cum specula aut alio instrumento.