THE TREATMENT OF ADVANCED TYMPANIC DEAFNESS: CLINICAL OBSERVATIONS BEARING ON THE PROBLEMS INVOLVED

The title of this paper is clearly open to criticism. Deafness is a symptom and not a disease. To the patient, however, the symptom is the disease, and our treatment is of value to him only in proportion to its influence on audition. Applying the same test, are we as aurists satisfied with our results? Taking as a standard the treatment as outlined in text-books and as practiced in most aural clinics, can we claim as the net result the actual relief of a reasonably large percentage of cases?While this paper is concerned chiefly with one type of deafness—that is, the deafness of ossicular rigidity —it may not be amiss to mention briefly some of the commoner forms of deafness from other conditions:Deafness due primarily to a lesion of the labyrinth or auditory nerve. Such lesions are fortunately rare as compared with those of tympanic origin. They are