A FOE BY DAY AND NIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 165, 14 July 1928, Page 8

A FOE BY DAY AND NIGHT.

An appeal to the House of Commons to consider whether something could not be done to lessen the incessant nerve-racking strain of the noise of modern city life was made a few days ago bv Captain lan Fraser, the blind M.P. (says "A Bhysician" in the London "Daily Mail"). Any competent nerve specialist will agree that he is right. If our law-makers only realised how delicate a structure the hearing 'mechanism is, and how intimate ifs connection with the nervous system, they might well consider the problem at least as important to our well-being as the selling of certain commodities after eight o'clock. There is a jazz band in every human ear—three little clattering bones and a drum. And, like other places that maintain jazz bands, the ear stays open all night. The eyes, like decent, sober citizens, can pull down their blinds. The nose is, as far as civilised man goes, a derelict organ. The ears, however, remain the unsleeping sentinels. It was once their duty to keep watch while the rest of the garrison slept, and they still do so.

Every tiniest vibration (or "noise") is communicated by them to the brain. The slightest quiver of the delicate membrane of the drum, or tympanum, makes the tiny "hammer" bone (malleus) strike on the "anvil" (incus) and set rocking the fluid that fills the twisting, spiral tube of the internal ear. From this a message to the brain is telegraphed automatically along the delicate filaments of the nerve of hearing. Living things grow tired—it is at once one of the penalties and one of the distinctive marks of vitality* Small wonder, then, that the brain cannot endure the maddening iteration of unresting stimuli that reach it every minute.

Nature gave us our outer ears as funnels, or conductors of dangerous, warning sounds, tittle thinking that a day would come when sounds of all kinds would become so incessant that, short of a plug of cotton wool, the brain could have 110 rest. We are paying the penalty now in a world of shattered nerves, for as daily work becomes more and more a matter, not of brawn, but of brains, so does the strain increase. Professor Spooner has proved conclusively that continuous noise is really fatiguing, even though not noticed.