The study and practice of aural-surgery : being the introductory address to a course of lectures on aural-surgery, and of practical instruction in the diagnosis and treatment of the diseases of the ear, given during the summer session of 1878 in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and its medical school / by Jas. Patterson Cassells.

  • Cassells, James Patterson, 1837-1884.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The study and practice of aural-surgery : being the introductory address to a course of lectures on aural-surgery, and of practical instruction in the diagnosis and treatment of the diseases of the ear, given during the summer session of 1878 in the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and its medical school / by Jas. Patterson Cassells. 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.

    4/14 (page 4)
    To those who are familiar with the history of the progress which has been made during the last twenty-five or thirty years in general medical science, and who recall to memory the great and permanent acquisitions that have been gained in these years in our knowledge of the diseases of the human body generally, not only in regard to their surer diagnosis, but in regard also to their better and°more successful treatment, it cannot be a matter of surprise for such persons to hear, that the special department of aural-surgery has participated also in the benefits of this very remarkable progress; a brief reference to which may serve to show you what I mean l)y saying, that the student of to-day has superior advantages over his fellow of former years. Not to go farther back than the time of my own student days, it may occasion some astonishment to most of you to be told, that in this country in those times, there were no facilities offered to the student to acquire a knowledge of the diseases of the ear, and that even the speciality of aural-surgery itself, as a scientific pursuit, hardly existed. Then it was, also, that the diseases of the ear were known simply as deafness, the treatment of which savoured so strongly of quackery as to be shunned by all medical men who had the smallest regard for their own good name or fame. It was in those days that the ear-picker held sway as an instrument to be used both for the prevention and the cure of deafness; when irritating fluids of all kinds were freely poured into the external auditory canal; and when this same canal was wont to be washed out on every occurrence of dull hearing by the free use of syringefuls of water, which was hot or cold according to the whim of the operator. This was the time, also, in which the wool from between the ears of a blaclt sheep, because of its supposed curative powers in cases of deafness, was esteemed by those who were deaf as of great value, and even more precious to them than an Indian pearl; and when, not only among the laity, but also among the profession generally, the opinion was held, and consistently acted upon, tlmt an ear-discharge was salutary, and that it was dangerous to dry it up. Nor is there a single statement of this brief narrative exaggerated, as I can readily show you in a few words. Toynbee, the celebrated Aural-surgeon of those days, who was afterwards to become the founder of Aural-pathology, had just made his first public communication in regard to tlie structure and function of the membrana tympani, when I was a first-year's student. True, Yearsley had, in 1848, published a work on the Causes and Treatment of the Diseases of the Ear; but this and similar previous works were without purpose, so far as the conveyance of real practical information was concerned, to students desirous of such knowledge. Toynbee, to whose labours I have referred, and Avhich, lasting