Papers on deaf-mutism / by James Kerr Love.

  • Love, James Kerr, 1858-1942
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Papers on deaf-mutism / by James Kerr Love. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of infectious diseases amongst the children before their ad- mission to the Institution : Measles in 91 of the cases Whooping cough . . . 81 Scarlet fever . . . . « u u « Small-pox . . . . u ^ u u u Diphtheria . . . . ^ j u u u Typhoid fever . . . ^ j u ^ u This statement of the occurrence of infectious diseases amongst young deaf-mutes is incomplete, as the schedules sometimes give no information at all, but measles appear to attack them about three times as often as scarlet fever, and it also accounts, as is shown in the previous list, for fully three times the number of deaf-mutes. How these diseases act in producing the higher degrees of deafness it is not always easy to say, but there is very decided evidence to show that the labyrinthine affection in measles is in many cases secondary to the middle-ear affec- tion. Mygind ' of Copenhagen has described a case in which this was almost certainly the order of events. Moos^ has described a similar case and has shown the part played by the micro-organisms in the invasion of the labyrinth. On the other hand, some of my cases point to the invasion of the labyrinth without the intervention of disease of the middle ear. Four of the ten cases in the above list show normal membrana tympani. Hartmann appears to consider that the deaf-mutism which follows scarlet fever is always caused by a primary affection of the labyrinth, and he states that in nearly all cases of deaf-mutism where this disease has been the cause, he has found normal membranes. In six of my ten cases of measles the membrane was either perforated or otherwise distinctly abnormal, and in only one of the three cases of scarlet fever was it normal. Further, cases have just been published which show that the inflammation in scarlet fever may spread from the middle ear to the labyrinth and may totally oblit- erate and destroy that organ. It may be true that when ^ These Archives, vol. xx., p. 310. * These Archives, vol. xviii., p. 49. 2 Mygind, These Archives, vol. xxii., p. 17 ; Moos, p. 64.
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