Tinnitus aurium, or, noises in the ears / by Laurence Turnbull.

  • Turnbull, Laurence, 1821-1900.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Tinnitus aurium, or, noises in the ears / by Laurence Turnbull. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    18/52 (page 12)
    with the action of the heart, and may be caused by ancemia or a diseased condition of the blood, or enlargement or narrowing of some of the numerous arteries or their branches in the vicinity of the ear. This narrowing occurs generally in a branch of the temporal, posterior auricular, or carotid arteries, and we can determine by pressure whether it depends upon them, after finding no physical cause in the ear itself. A sixth class comprises a large number of doubt- ful cases, under the head of nervous tinnitus, in which it is conjectured that there is inflammation, irritation, extravasation, or disturbed circulation of blood in the labyrinth, cochlea, semicircular canals, auditory nerve, or reflected lesions of the brain. The diagnosis in this class of cases is made by excluding all causes which would be at all possible to produce the sound in the external or middle ear. The seventh cause is immoderate contraction of the tensor tympani muscle, which contraction not only moves the malleus and with it the mem- brana tympani, but also, if the contraction is excess- ive, draws the whole chain of ossicles inwards, and, as a consequence, the plate of the stirrup is pressed deeply into the oval window (fenestra ovalis), caus- ing violent subjective noises from the intra-laby- rinthal pressure. “ Dr. Gruber* observes that the tensor tympani muscle arises from the cartilaginous portion of the Eustachian tube, but is connected with the tensor veli palati muscle by a tendinous prolongation in such a way that the intimate con- nection between the two is completed; and L. Meyer even asserts that he considers the two mus- cles as a single digastric muscle. It is well known how often this muscle suffers in the frequent diseases of the naso-pharyngeal structures. If we notice * Tenotomy of the Tensor Tympani, by Prof. Joseph Gruber, M.D. Translated by Charles S. Turnbull, M.D., Phila., 1873, p. 23.