Opening address to the students attending the Aural Clinique in the Glasgow Western Infirmary, delivered November 30th, 1878 / by Thomas Barr, M.D.

  • Barr, Thomas, 1846-1916.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Opening address to the students attending the Aural Clinique in the Glasgow Western Infirmary, delivered November 30th, 1878 / by Thomas Barr, M.D. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

    16/28 (page 18)
    their answers often not being to the point. An experienced observing physician can thus, in many cases, after a short conversation, even from the speech and manner of a patient, discover that most probably he had in youth defective hearing. Even blindness at this period of life is not a more dire misfortune than the loss of hearing.^with the attendant loss of speech. There is a very important and numerous class of cases in which children suffer from a condition of chronic catarrh of the nasal and pharyngeal mucous membranes, with thickening and increased secre- tion. By continuity of surface, this condition extends along the course of the Eustachian tubes leading to their closure, and generally the mucous membrane of the tym- panum also shares in the catarrhal process. Previous to the date mentioned, such children remained untreated in the majority of cases, as the Eustachian catheter was an instrument which few children could tolerate. They con- tinued deaf at an age when acute hearing is indispensable to a healthy mental development. Now, by the brilliant discovery of Adam Politzer of Vienna, in 1863, all this has been changed. By a method tolerated even by the youngest children, the Eustachian tubes and the tympana c^n be most effectually inflated. This proceeding, which is prac- tised every day by those engaged in the treatment of ear diseases, consists in this :-After the patient has taken a small quantity of water into his mouth, the nasal piece of a tube connected with an air bag is placed about one-third part of an inch into the nose ; the nasal passage being