"The hearing of even the best endowed of us is not nearly so ood as was that of our fore- athers. The constant use >f the telephone, the blast of the motor horn, the thousand and one noises of civilized life have brought on a blunting of the hearing sense. There has fol- lowed a degeneration of the amazingly. delicate mechanism of the ear." Experiments on Rabbits Shut Up in Iron Kettles and Guinea Pigs' Ears Battered by the. Pound- ECENT scientific experiments have made certain the dis? tressing fact that the. men and women of the present day who live In the great modern cities are steadily losing their acuteness of hearing. It cannot precisely' he sald that & man must hear to live. It is cer- tainly true, however, that deafness 18 a dreadful handicap in the battle of life--hard enough as that battle i8 In general for those of us who ¥ haye no physical 'or mental impair. ment. We are all very Bympathetic with the maimed, the halt and the blind; but we have comparatively little sympathy for the many thousands among us who are becoming deaf-- and this so insidiously, so grad- ually, that the affliction is hardly, realized until it has reached stage -where relief is possible, but full restoration of this precious sense absolutely Impossible, for those among ts whose efliclan®y is lessened in proportion ag their hearing loses its acuteness The ' most serious and pathetic cases of all are those whose men tal activity becomes diminshed by reason that they come to hear the voices of their fellows less and less until they cannot hear the cofnforting human voice at all. Hence the progressive inability 'of the deaf to engage in business, the trades and in human affairs gener: ally, so that they bé ome either wholly "undesirable" or have their earning capacity reduced, in pro- portion to the extént of their af- fliction. To keep up in the twentieth cen. tury struggle for existence, one has to be active and in full' pos- session of one's facultfes. The strain on the nervous system is constant, especially on the organs of special sense, the eve and the ear. The overstrained eye gets at- tended to promptly enough; the proper glasses are usually the ade- quate remedy. . But for deafness once estab lished there is alleviation of the affliction possible, but no such rem- edy as glasses afford the strained .eyes. And yet most people pay no attention to their defective hear- ing until they find, usually by ac. cident, that théy cannot hear the tick of the watch, or of the family clock, or until there is a sensation of roaring in the ears; or unti} dizzzy spells send them to the doe: tor for an examination, not for their hearing, but of their "constitution." The hearing of even the hest en. dowed of us is not nearly so good as was that of our forefathers, who needed. this sense to be acute in or. 4 . a» Done by the Noises of Life in Our Great Cities der to enable them to hunt, and to detect the prowling Indian. But to-day the constant use of the tele- phone bell, the strain of hearing so _constantly that maddening "the line is busy" call; the demoniac blast of the miotor horn; the thou- sand and one horrendous noises of civilized -life; have, by the nervous fatigue they induce, brought on a blunting of the hearing sense. There has followed a dégeneration and a hardening (fibrosis) of the amaz- ingly delicate mechanism in the middle and Internal ear, an which acute hearing depends. There is also thus caused an atrophy, a wasting away of the auditory nerve, the office of which is to transmit to the brain the im. pressions of the world outside us which we get by our hearing sense. Once these delicate and labyrin- thine tissues are destroyed, once their adjustment to one.another is broken, the damage is beyond rem- edy; it is not possible, as in other machinery, to take out the broken down material and put in new works Such facts as these were actual- ly demonstrated by 'Dr. mann of Berlin, who gathered to- gether a number of perfect ears of healthy rabbits, placed those ears in Kettles and then subjected them to different noises, after which he f-und extensive destruction of the cells composing the ti§sues experi mented on. Dr, Siebermann found especially that the "Organ of Corti," and the terminal filaments of the auditory 'nerve 'In the labyrinth cf the in- ternal ear, suffered most in these experiments. Corti's organ is an extraordinarily delicate mechanism in which are some 3,000 pairs of microscopic pillars, Corti leaning as it were against these pillars are minute cells which end in hairlike processes, In close relation with these rods and cells and hairs are the fila ments of the auditory nerve, to which the strands of a spider's web are about as the hawser of an ocean greyhound would compare with--well, with the strand of a spider's web, The organ of Corti shows a remarkable resemblance to the keyboard of a piano, and the observer finds himself likening the rods of Corti to the piano keys, and the filaments of the auditory nerve to the piano wires. When we bear in mind that ail hearing is by means of sound con- duction and that the sense of sound is convéyed to the brain entirely by the auditory nerve, we can readily understand how injurious to the hearing faculty is the dis. Tuption of thése most. gossamer like strictures. Dr. Siebermapn, in his experiments on gumea pigs, found the most serious destruction Sieber- the rods pf ing on Tin Boilers Reveal Damage to follow a single blank cartridze shot close to the ear. Corti's or- gan and the auditory nerve fila- ments were thus severely injured at one stroke. Conditions resem- bling those in boiler making were realized by automatic hammering on the outside of a big iron tube, with a guinea pig inside. Siebermann found; and here is a very practical point, that in order to ward off harm from long-con- tinued loud noises the air waves can be kept from striking upon the mechanism of the internal ear. The experimented animals whose ears were plugged with oil-soaked cotton or other free mass, did not suffer injury of the internal ear from long-continued exposure to recurring loud noises. > Thetransmission of sound by other routes than by the external and mid- dle ear, has slight, If any. injurious action on the labyrinthine struc- tures, and in human beings practi- caily all harm can be averted by protecting the auditory mechan- fsm against excessive sound waves, by an air-free,tight-fitting, olating plug in the external ear. Such a plug must absolutely not be used, however,by sufferers from ear ab- scess or catarrh, because then the discharges resulting from the in- flammation would be dangerously pent up. Such discharges, thus pent up; have been known to bur- row their way even to the brain, Such substances as thick felt have been used under foot by work- men to deaden sound. Dr. Sieber mann could however find in his experiments no preventive or at tenuating 'or beneficent influence in this procedure. " Dr. Siebermann intended to have presented his valuable researches on protection against injury of the hearing before the contemplated international congress for occupa- tional affections. It is an odd com ment on how widespread and world pervading is the baneful in- fluence of the present European conflict, that his humane intention was by this fact of war frustrated And the information here set forth is derived from his contribution to a Swiss journal. Another very important cause of deafness, haps the most impor- tant of all, lies in inflammations; colds, catarrhs, not only of the ear, but also of the nose and throat. Any such trouble ix bound to bring on . swelling, congestion of the mucous membrane; and any such congee- tion in the course of time and through constant neglect, resmits in a thickened mucous membrane. These incentives to deafness did not operate so strongly with our fathers and grandfathers. Observe in culagram how the Eustachian tube Copyright, 1915, by the Star Company. ak ah si ART WELT ene 3 CET the accompanying How the Tonails and Adenoid Growths Breed Germs Which Spread Into the Tube That Extends Into the Ear From the Back of the Nose. passes from the throat to the mid- dle ear. Catarrh-in this tube, re- sulting from catching colds one after another many times, eventu- ally thickens this tube so that it becomes closed up. The result is increased tension in the ear drum, often to the bursting. point. For good hearing the Bustachian tube has to be open, in order that equilib- rium may be maintained between the air within the ear drum and the air outside the drum, in the ex- ternal ear. Besides, the vpen tube renders sounds clearer, just as those f-shapea openings in violins do. Adenoids and enlarged ton- sils, obstructions in the nose and chronic catarrhs;- have the effect gradually to clog up this Eustach- ian tube. Worse still, the many germs that lodge in unhealthy throats -- the germs of grippe, pneumonia, tuber culosis, quinsy, mumps, scarlet fever," meningitis and many an- other dreadful infection--are lively to travel along the Eustachian tube to the middle ear: all of which leads not only to deafness, but also to the development of such diseases in the body, possibly . indeed to meningitis and brain abscess. The fact 18, most cases of deafness are brought about by chronic catarrh, or habitual cold in the head or other irritation of the nose and throat; and the trouble all lies in that by the time people conclude to get these rose and throat troubles - attended to, the ear condition has become so. far advanced that no improvement in the hearing is pos- sible. Practically, then, people with chronic deafness have got to be te] ge content, as philosophically as they may, with the motto, that ."what cannot be cured must be endured." Dr. D. Harold Walker, of Boston, makes a very good point with re- gard to the rather fashionablé and up-to-date belief that our ehildren canuot live too much in the open air. This would be well enough it The Delicate Mechanism of the Human Ear Exposed to View Under the Anatomist's Knife. our. human race, as it exists in civilization, had -been accustomed, as the savage is, to living out-doors in all weathers; but in children sleaping exposed to the raw winds of Winter, and then spending thei? waking hours in generally over- heated rooms, favorable conditions develop for future ear troubles. Such children are like to suffer in time from obstructive adenoids and enlarged tonsils, which are bound in turn to affect the ear and the hearing. As to chronic deafness in the adult, although something may be done in the way of rellef, there is, as stated, little or cure to be hoped for. What must be done is to pre- vent 'comparative deafness from becoming absolute. And not only the ear, but the nose and throat also must be looked after, and the general constitution as well. Es- pecially must constipation be avoided, as this tends to conges- tion; besides, the absorption of toxins from the intestinal tract is sure by transmission of these tox- ins in the blood and .lymph chan. nels, to affect grievously the ear mechanism and the auditory nerve. Another cause of congestion lead. ing to deafness is the inordinate use of tobacco--not only from the absorption of the tobacco toxins, but also by reason of the irritation the smoke occasions, Alcohol also should be 'cut out, It is of course hard to persuade the average man to give up the habits of years; but the facts should be explained fully to him, and then the problem is up to him, The. deaf should .be encouraged to go among their fellow men and to use their ears as well as they can. The tendency of these suffer- ers is to hibernate, to "go by them. selves alone"; they get to iigagine themselves a nuisance to thelr fam flies and their friends. Just How Hair Turns 'Whi HE sudden turning gray of hair under the influence of great emotion isa phenome- non so remarkable that {t has al ways aroused curiosity, The well known historical instance, such as the case of Marie Antoinette, who is sald to have become gray in the night befoie her execution, are open to some doubt, but several well authenticated cases have been noted by medical observers. At a recent meeting of a Parisian medi- cal society doctor, Lebar reported the casé of a soldier, aged twenty- three years, who was in a trench in Argonne which was blown up by a mine. He was projected into the air and fell, covered by a mass of earth, from which he-had difficulty in extricating himself. The detonation was such that he immediately. became deaf. The fizshing of the powder produced gu- peérficial burns of the face, and there wera several bruises on the head, which were greatest om the left side. He was taken to the English Great Britain Rights Reserved. rh o pn Hospital at Afc-en-Barrois, where on the following day he noticed, to his surprise, tufts of white hair on the left side of the head. Those formed four "islets," separated from one another by normal hairs. The loss of color was complete from the roots to the ends of the hairs, and the longest hairs were just as white as the shortest. There was not a brown hair among them. The gray hairs were solidly im- planted and could be pulled out ofily by strong force. The rest of the hair of the"head was dark brown, and there was not a white hair in his beard or mustache. The patient was an intelligent man, and the truth of his story was confirmed by the fact that his hair was described in the description of him made when he enlisted as deep chestaut. Just how the hair can lose its color #0 suddenly is not yet clear. It might be suggested that in this case it was due to' bleaching by &hses generated by the explosior, but this was negatived by the fact the parts of the hair under- neath the skin turned gray like Ae rest, mmm =.= The studies of Professor Metch- nikoff ¢ir the whitening of the hair due to age throw light on the ques- tion, says a writer in the Lancet. According to him, when a hair be-, &ins to whiten there appesr in it roumd"or oval cells with prolonga- tions which gradually come into relation with the cells containing the pigment granules and absorb them. These "pigmentophages," as he calls them, then descend toward the root of the hair to Scatter in the skin, of which they are, according to him, the pig- es, rn orig: 4 lentop! , W in Hatin ar. hy pear com, ¥ when finatly loses its color. "This theory explains the slow and progressive whitening of the hair in old age, and also applies to the rapid loss of color in cases liks that of this French The idler. bilization of ral mol 1 a calls in marron ou oh