• Powell’s Electro-Vibratory Cure for Deafness

    In 1905, Dr. Guy Clifford Powell, of Peoria, Illinois invented and marketed a device he called the “Electro-Vibratory Cure for Deafness.” The apparatus apparently cured a patient of deafness by pumping air through the ears via cotton-covered electrodes soaked in salt water. After pumping in air, a jolt of electricity generated by the solenoid coils… Continue Reading

  • 10 Extreme 19th Century “Cures” for Deafness

    The nineteenth-century introduced a tremendous number of treatments boasting cures for irremediable deafness. Some of these cures were advised by aurists (specialists of the ear); others were tested home remedies or marketed as proprietary nostrums. Below is a list of some of the most extreme measures that were once popular treatments: 1. MERCURY The use… Continue Reading

  • 19th Century Indian Women in U.S. Medical School

     Since I’ve finished my dissertation (whoop!), I’ve been researching and collecting records related to my next project, on the material history of hearing aids. It’s so easy to get side tracked in the digital collections, especially since there are thousands of wonderful historical materials just waiting for some attention. One incredible distraction for me has… Continue Reading

  • Galvanism & Deafness

    Galvanism is a medical treatment that involves the application of electric currents to body tissues in order to stimulate the contraction of muscles. First experimented in the late eighteenth-century by Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) who investigated frog legs twitching once sparked by an electric current, galvanism was believed to be a miraculous application of scientific prowess… Continue Reading

  • Boastful Pretensions

    In 1908, V. Walbram Chapnnam wrote to John McKinna, secretary for the Metropolitan Ear, Nose, and Throat Hospital on 64 Grafton St., London. In his correspondence, Chapnnam encloses a copy of a letter dated 6th April, from a person calling himself Herbert Clifton who styled himself as a “Aural Specialist.” The copy included an advertisement… Continue Reading

  • Institution for Curing Diseases of the Ear

    In 1838, James Yearsley established the Institution for Curing Diseases of the Ear on 32 Sackville St., London. The institution would eventually be renamed the Metropolitan Ear Institute, and later the Metropolitan Ear, Nose, and Throat Hospital, moving to Fitzroy Square in 1911. The 1839 Annual Report of the Institution outlined Yearsley’s fundamental agenda: (1)… Continue Reading

  • The Audiphone

    I wrote a new entry over at Nineteenth-Century Disability: A Digital Reader: On September 1879, Richard Silas Rhodes (1842-1902), president of a publishing company in Chicago, received a patent for his “Audiphone for the Deaf” his various improvements to the device. (U.S. Patent No. 319,828). Rhodes had conductive hearing loss[1] for twenty years following a bout of… Continue Reading

  • A Census of the Deaf

    Sir William Robert Wilde (1815-1876) was one of the most notable aural surgeons during the second half of the nineteenth-century. He made numerous to aural surgery, including tables on the hereditary basis of deafness and newer hearing tests to determine degrees of hearing loss. Wilde also made extensive use of statistics in his writing, using… Continue Reading

  • Webster’s Otaphone

    I wrote a new entry over at Nineteenth-Century Disability: A Digital Reader: UK patent #7033, dated 17 March 1836, is the earliest British patent for a hearing aid device, granted to the aurist (19th century term for ear specialist) Alphonso William Webster, for his “curious” invention, the Otaphone (sometimes spelled “Otophone”). In his publication, A New and Familiar Treatise on… Continue Reading

  • The Aurist and the American

    From the Pall Mall Gazette, Friday 22 February 1889: A distinguished “aurist” was once rather amusingly “done” by an enterprising American, who bounced into his room one morning, exclaiming, in stentorian through nasal tones, “Say, before we do bus’ness, guess I should like to know the price of fixing me up.” “Two guineas for the first… Continue Reading

  • Friday Evening Discourse

    18 Savile Row. Burlington Gardens. W | 10 Feb 1860 Dear Mr. Faraday, Having been unsuccessful in my attempts to obtain a ticket for Mr. Huxley’s lecture* tonight I shall esteem it a favour if you can give me one. Believe me yours sincerely & obliged, Joseph Toynbee *Thomas Henry Huxley’s Friday Evening Discourse of… Continue Reading