What Causes Deafness.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 10473, 31 December 1927, Page 5

What Causes Deafness.

C \T\BRH IX THE “MIDDLE EAR." WHY \DENOiDSARE BP. K V ALFA TiN XT'AY ZEALAND. (From Sir W. Arhuthnor Lane. Ban. C. 8.)

One of the most eminent ear _specialists in London has very kindly furnished, at mv request, the following 'article on the prevention of deafness : — Deafness is still one of tne great problems of medicine and we have not made much advance in its treatment since the 'sixties. when .the greet atirist. Sir 'William Wilde, caid in an aphorism worthy of his son. the ill-fated dramatist. ‘There are two kinds of deafness —the one is due to wax and is curable: the other is not due .to wax and is not curable.” It was only the other day that a well-known aural specialist, when asked what he did for cases of otosclerosis (an intractable form of deafness). said that he sent them to his enemies. Deafness may lie due to an affection of the outer ear passage to the so-called ••middle ear' (behind the ear drum and in communication with the throat by the eustachian tube), and the inner ear (the nerve of hearing and its terminations the delicate, organ of hearing, buried in the temporal bone ot the skull). Of these, wax is the usual cause of deafness, from obstruction in the (.uter ear passage, and is easily removed : catarrh and inflammation are the usual causes of middle-ear deafness and will bp discussed at length later: and certain drugs (especially large doses of quinine and tobacco) and . certain disease (influenza, syphilis and mumps, which have a special effect- on the nerve of hearing) are the usual causes of inner-ear deafness. Of all cases of deafness, however, about 95 per cent, are due to mid-dle-ear causes (catarrh and inflammation) and there is no doubt.that.• most cases of chronic deafness in adult life begin as adenoids in childhood.

To prevent deafness. therefore, adenoids must be recognised and properly Treated in childhood. In the general recognition of this fact lies tin 1 great Hope for the prevention of deafness in the future._ . A child with adenoids is easily known ; the open mouth, thick lower lip, and stupid look are characteristic: on looking into the mouth one sees the palate has a high Gothic arch, and tlie teeth are irregular and crowded together; the child is a mouth-breather, snores at- night, often cat (dies cold, often wets the bed, is flat-chested and sometimes has enlarged glands in the neck. Adenoids may be present at any age in childhood ajid' usually begin to disappear after puberty. But a child may he born with adenoids present, though they are usually observed about the ages of three to six or seven years.

The best informed opinion to-da.y is that most cases of adenoids are related to rickets, and are due, above all other causes, to deficiencies in feeding. Blit, one may object, how then can a child tie born with adenoids present, when the cause Is a deficiency in feeding? The answer is that tlie deficiency is not only in the feeding of the child who has the adenoids, bub also in the feeding of the mother and father who produced that child. In New Zealand, perhaps the most .generally prosperous middle-class community in.the world, the infantile mortality As lower than in any other country, the children are wellknown to he well ’’cured for and healthy in other respects, yet adenoids are extremely common. The reason is that’ in New Zealand, as in Great Britain, America and the other Eng-lish-speaking countries, starch (carbohydrates) has been the foundation of the food of the children of the present and of past generations.