Deafness practically illustrated / [James Yearsley].

  • James Yearsley
Date:
[1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Deafness practically illustrated / [James Yearsley]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    127/200 page 115
    asserted curative effect in the external passage; and the great majority possess sufficiently irritating properties to cause a degree of inflammation of its lining mem- brane and of the external surface of the membrana tympani. No application to the external passage can produce any favourable change in the state of the middle ear, which is the usual seat of disease; the most such means can do is to excite the entire auditory organ, and consequently the acoustic nerve, so as to render it for a time morbidly sensitive to sound, which sensitiveness disappears, and falls even below the natural standard, when the stimulus is exhausted. This fact will account for the temporary advantage in hearing which patients generally experienced who submitted themselves to the rubbing in of an ointment into the external meatus by means of a soft instrument, as practised by a well known physician. Few left his house who did not for the remainder of the day hear noises louder; but, alas! the improvement was decep- tive, it was but the effect of the stimulus, and subsided with it. If attention to the ears be necessary in the com- mencement of deafness generally, it is especially so in the forms of impaired hearing, combined with otorrhcea of gradual origin. This is of all aural diseases the most difficult to arrest when it has existed a long time, though at the outset, the most simple means would suffice for its removal. It commonly begins with an altered state of the ear-wax, and a sense of dryness and itching in the ears, which impel the sufferer to pick the meatus with pins, &c., and thus provoke in- stead of ward off the disorder. Protection of the meatus from cold, and the use of a solution of nitrate
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