I just finished teaching a course on History of Medicine from Antiquity to 1500 at Ryerson University, a job I started two days after I returned from a 3-week research trip to London. Having very little time to prepare, I was incredibly nervous at first, especially as medicine in antiquity wasn’t exactly my strongest subject.… Continue Reading
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Brief Chronology of the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb
Check out Dominic Stiles’s brief chronology with a short list of some deaf pupils who were at the asylum.
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What do you think? John Cunningham Saunders’ An Anatomy of the Human Ear (1806): The first disease of the middle part of the Ear which I shall endeavor to investigate, is the puriform discharge from the Tympanum. The disease is ichorous, sometimes tinged with blood, and imparts a yellow color to a silver instrument. This… Continue Reading
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William Wright lists a few common folk remedies for deafens in vol.3 of ‘The Aurist’ (1825), among some, which should be inserted into the ear: -oil of large earthworms -fat of eel -cast skin of serpent boiled in wine -wood lice, bruised and heated with rose oil -ant’s eggs, bruised and strained -fat of cow’s… Continue Reading
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We have seen a young gentleman lately, whose ear was swelled so much that the whole of the auditory passage was obliterated, and the ear resembled a mass of tumified flesh; this had arisen through an older brother having caught the younger by the ear, in mere play, to retain him from outstripping him in… Continue Reading
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[D]raw sparks from the tympanum, by introducing a wire, coated with sealing wax, into the meatus auditorius externus. William Wright commenting on other aurists’ professed cures (‘The Aurist,’ 1825)
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[I]f forceps or syringing will not bring out any extraneous body, the patient is to sit down quietly, and let it remain where it is, till the accumulating wax forces it out: this is surely not the way to treat such a case; it is, however quite as proper as the method recommended, as we… Continue Reading
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On 29 October 1839 the Bankruptcy Register listed John Harrison Curtis as a “bookseller.” By 1841, Curtis lost his patrons and his career was pretty much in shambles and his Dispensary was sold to the aurist William Harvey. The invention of the cephaloscope and the publication of his treatise on the instrument were aimed as… Continue Reading
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everyday, all day, the poor desk is neglected
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AURIST! no sinecure in thine, Millions on thee their hopes recline In anxious expectations. For if thy skill (and may it thrive!) The R____’s patriot ear revive Thou sav’st a sinking nation. And wond’rous will thy nostrum prove, If it the Royal ill remove— All others have miscarried: Address oblique, remonstrance plain, petition urgent–but in… Continue Reading
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During the 1830s, Alexander Turnbull (c.1794-1881), advertised a remedy he conjured, which he professed was capable of curing any cases of deafness not arising from organic disease. In particular, he advocated the use of veratria, a poisonous alkaloid obtained from the hellebore root, as an ointment applied to the external ear; the same treatment, along… Continue Reading
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I’ve pretty much been chained to my desk these days, struggling to write the most difficult chapter of my dissertation, which broadly focuses on the historiography of medical specialties and professionalization. The chapter also provides an analysis of how diagnostic instruments (and other medical technologies) served as a nexus for the crystallization of specialist medical… Continue Reading
From the Hands of Quacks 