#aural surgery

[fromthehandsofquacks]

Monday Series: “In the guise of a friend:” The Eugenics Gaze of “Alexander the Aggressor”

Monday Series: “In the guise of a friend:” The Eugenics Gaze of “Alexander the Aggressor”

In this new Monday Series, I focus on Alexander Graham Bell as an example for examining the complexities and conflicts within the eugenics movement in the United States during the early 19th century. Bell was opposed to legal measures for negative eugenics aimed at the deaf, yet at the same time, he supported “voluntary” checks on marriage and procreation–i.e. positive eugenics. In particular, I…

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[fromthehandsofquacks]

The Surgeon’s Plan: Tympanic Membrane Perforation

The Surgeon’s Plan: Tympanic Membrane Perforation

By the nineteenth century, Sir Astley Paston Cooper (1768-1841), surgeon to Guy’s Hospital, outlined his observation that puncture of the tympanic membrane could be effective in draining out collections of fluid in the middle ear, and hence, improve a particular type of deafness.

Sir Astley Cooper

Cooper’s work was inspired in part by his friend Sir Everard Home (1756-1832), surgeon to St.…

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[fromthehandsofquacks]

The 20 Minute Surgery that Cured a Prince’s Deafness

NEW BLOG POST! The 20 minute treatment that cured a Prince's deafness in 1923 #histSTM

In 1923, the New York Times and Time Magazine reported that King Alfonso of Spain summoned a famous New York osteopath to treat his fifteen-year-old son, Infante Don Jaime (1908-1975). Deaf and mute following a severe case of mastoiditis (middle-ear infection) and possibly tuberculosis at a young age, Don Jaime was adjudged “incurable” by Spanish specialists, though many attempted to restore the…

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[fromthehandsofquacks]

[My Guest Post] The Window Operation: Hope Through Surgery This fall, REMEDIA  a collaborative blog on the history of medicine, launched a special series exploring the histories of surgery.

[fromthehandsofquacks]

Experiences of a Deaf Man

NEW POST: Experiences of a Deaf Man #histmed #histtech #histSTM #quackmedicine

From The Albion Magazine (1907):

When a man suddenly becomes deaf there is little or nothing he would shrink from if it afforded, or seemed to afford, the smallest chance that he would recover the enjoyment of a sense which he never properly valued until he lost it. About sixteen years ago, when well advanced in life, I suddenly lost my hearing, first in one ear and after a few days in the other;…

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[fromthehandsofquacks]

A Chamber of the Stillness of Death: Phyllis M.T. Kerridge’s Experiments in the Silence Room

NEW POST: A Chamber of the Stillness of Death: On Phyllis M.T. Kerridge’s Experiments with Hearing #histmed #histsci

I’m beginning a new project on the historical contributions of women to otology, many of whom have been overlooked in scholarship. My current article investigates the physiological work of Dr. Phyllis Margaret Tookey Kerridge, who died on June 22, 1940, the only daughter of Mr. William Alfred Tookey of Bromley, Kent. She was educated at the City of London School of Girls and at University College…

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