Deafness practically illustrated / [James Yearsley].

  • James Yearsley
Date:
[1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    blast,” “ringing of church bells in every direction,” ‘beating of drums,” “shower of rain,” “like some person breathing near the ear,” “ hammering, so vio- lent as to cause the head to jump from the pillow,” *“‘ people walking up stairs,” “‘ voices behind the patient, who cannot resist turning round, incredulous of the mental deception,” “beating a cracked brass kettle,” “‘music at a distance,” “noise as loud, and precisely similar, to that which is heard when standing between two large steam-engines, whilst the steam escapes.” Many of the noises thus described by patients are incessant, and none but the sufferers can estimate the misery they create. I do not remember to have seen more than one patient who did not consider the tinni- tus a grievous calamity, generally as much so as the accompanying deafness. It was in a private patient, a lady of rank and fashion, past seventy years of age. She consulted me for deafness, and in describing the tinnitus which accompanied it, she compared it to the band of the Opera; forgetful, perhaps ignorant, of the fact, that the tinnitus was but a symptom, she said, ‘‘ However, never mind that; relieve me of the deafness; I make the tinnitus a source of pleasure to me, for I can, at any time, go through either of the operas I was accustomed to hear in my younger days, and imagine I hear every instrument in the band, the voice of the singer rising, comme il faut, above them all, as dis- tinctly and agreeably as if I were in my opera box, instead of my bed.” —
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