Short contributions to aural surgery / by Sir William B. Dalby.

  • William Bartlett Dalby
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Short contributions to aural surgery / by Sir William B. Dalby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    tympanic cavity as free as possible from secretion ; and the means to bring this about consisted in the occasional use of the air douche through the catheter twice a week, and the injection (on Gruber's plan) of a few drops of warm solution of soda into the tym- panum.* In the course of a month the perforation had healed, but the hearing, although very much improved to what it was in June, was far from per- fect. No further change in this respect took place. If the impaired hearing in this case had been due to the loss of continuity of the membrane, it would have immediately succeeded the accident, and the same would hold good if it had been due to shock. An interval of good hearing, however, followed the accident, and inflammation having been excited in the tympanic cavity, the inflammatory products effused in this situation interfered with the conduction of sound; and this is still further conclusively shown by the fact before alluded to—viz., that vibrations of sound from the tuning-fork placed on the head met with an obstruction on their passage outwards through the tympanum, and so were heard more loudly by the affected ear than by the healthy one. Case 2.—In August, 1874, I saw a young gentle- man, aged twenty, in reference to an attack of in- flammation in the left tympanum, from which he had suffered for five days. He told me that up to three years before he had never had anything wrong with * A few drops of the solution are placed in the lower naris, and then the patient, with the mouth and nose closed, and head in- clined to the affected side, by attempting to make an expiration, forces the fluid up the Eustachian tube into the tympanum.
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