Deafness practically illustrated / [James Yearsley].

  • James Yearsley
Date:
[1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

    186/200 page 174
    and improvement of ear trumpets, but in vain. The first form of ear trumpet probably ever thought of, namely, the simple tin trumpet, is still the best. With its wide mouth, it intercepts, collects, directs, concen- trates and transmits sound through its conical canal, and impinges it upon the membrana tympani unal- tered and in all its intensity. More than this the most elaborate contrivance probably never will accom- plish. But, as I have before observed, intensity of sound is not all that is required, and to many persons with defective hearing it is highly offensive. Besides, if the augmentation of sound be so great as to overwhelm the enunciation, the ear trumpet is useless; hence ear trumpets too large are as inefficient as too small. The happy medium will be found in the tin trumpet I have adverted to, in the ear trumpet which is said to have been introduced into this country from America by Miss Martineau, or in the tubular ear trumpet invented by Dunker, a German. The common tin trumpet needs no description—cen- turies, probably, have seen it in use, and the inventive genius of ages has failed in superseding it; and within these few years, the witty and laughter-loving Hood, in his “ Tale of a Tin Trumpet,” has immortalized it.* The Martineau trumpet is about eighteen inches long, and consists of a bowl-shaped extremity, in which the sound is collected, and a conical tube, through which it is conveyed tothe ear. It aims at a more scientific ar- rangement than the unpretending tin trumpet, but I am not at all sure it is more effective. The Dunker hearing-tube, or, as it is sometimes called, * See New Monthly Magazine, Nos. 248-9 & 50.
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