On deafness, giddiness, and noises in the head / by Edward Woakes.

  • Woakes, Edward, 1837-1912.
Date:
1880
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On deafness, giddiness, and noises in the head / by Edward Woakes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The field of incLuii-y thus opened possesses interests far beyond those which appertain to the ear as an organ of special sense. Even from this narrower point of view,—the possible loss of hearing as the result of de- structive processes in the ear occurring as comphca- tions of infantile ailments,—the issue is one of grave anxiety. For a child who thus becomes deaf before it has learnt to talk will be dumb also, producing the pitiable object of an intelligent being deprived of two channels of communication with the outside world. As already intimated it is on the very thi-eshold of life that these sympatlaetic ear symptoms are brought into prominence. A child is cutting its teeth, and while the gums are yet swollen it suffers acutely fii'om earache. How do we know this, seeing the child can- not speak ? Anyone accustomed to watch carefully the symptoms of these httle patients will scarcely fail to discern in the troubled face, the resting of the head on the nurse, the thrill of agony which passes across its features accompanied with j)iteous cries or shi-ieks when its position is moved, especiallj'^ if this be done suddenly, and more than all the constant raising of the httle hand to the side of the head,—no one who has watched these symptoms will fail to connect them with the most agonising of all the sufferings of early life, earache. Now the j)oiiit which I wish to emphasise is this: the pain thus experienced, is not what we vaguely caU neuralgia; it is a definite trophic change, an inflamma- tion taking place in the deeper-seated tissues of the ear, beginning with congestion and stretching of an acutely