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

  • Daniel Bennett St. John Roosa
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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    one day studying in a recumbent position upon a lounge, and when he got up he was dizzy and fell down at once. He did not become unconscious, but he found that he had a ringing in his left ear. He tested his hearing by means of the watch, and found that it was greatly impaired. From that time to this he has always had a ringing in his ear, with impairment of heal- ing. The tuning-fork was heard better in the sound ear. The hearing distance was—Right ear, f-f ; left ear, |f. Thes drum-head was a little sunken, and the light spot was small. Air entered both Eustachian tubes. There was no improve- ment after inflation of the ears. The patient, who is a careful physician, was confident that he never before had any disease of the ears. He stated also that he became much wTorse, as to the ringing, when overworked or fatigued from any cause. I am not ready to affirm that this is a true case of primary affection of the labyrinth ; but it seems to me that this is prob- ably the fact. Deafness to certain tones must of necessity be due to some affection of the cochlea, and this is an affection sometimes seen, as has been known since the experiments of Wollaston, who found that some persons were unable to hear the chirping of a cricket, which is the highest tone known. If we accept the theory of Helmholtz, that Corti's organ in the labyrinth is a resonance-apparatus, and that individual fibres of the audi- tory nerve in the cochlea are tuned for certain notes, the pathol- ogy of such cases becomes clear. It should be remembered, however, that this symptom, as well as double hearing, like tinnitus annum, may be merely secondary to an affection of the middle ear, which causes pressure and hypersemia of the cochlea. Indeed, double hearing, or the hearing of the last tones or syllables repeated or echoed, is usually a secondary symptom of middle-ear disease. It has been observed by Sir Everard Home,* Gruber,f Moos,:]: Knapp,§ S. M. Burnett,! * Transactions of Royal Society, 1800. f Lehrbuch, p. 626. % Klinik der Ohrenkrankheiten, p. 319. § Transactions of the American Otological Society, 1871. |1 Archives of Ophthalmology and Otology, vol. v., p. 527.