Casserio provided in his 1601 book a classic illustration of the incisions and instruments used in the tracheotomy. He even illustrated a tracheotomy tube that has not changed since then. Shown here is a later tracheotomy tube from the Alabama Museum…
Casserio provided in his 1601 a class illustration of the incisions and instruments used in the tracheotomy. He even illustrated a tracheotomy tube that has not changed since then. Shown here is a later tracheotomy tube from the Alabama Museum of the…
Silver nitrate was the medicine used by American physician, Horace Green, in the treatment of throat diseases. Green used a probang made of whale bone with a sponge or cotton ball on the end dipped in silver nitrate which he stuck down the throat to…
In this book, Sir William Wilde (1815-1876) presents the procedure for the "Wilde incision" used in treating mastoiditis. The procedure involved an incision in the swelling behind the ear, and it became the chosen care for three decades.
This is the brilliant anatomical text of Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), which revolutionized the study of gross anatomy. Within, he identified and named structures heretofore unknown, including the malleus and incus, which he referred to as the hammer…
Valsalva's De aure humana tractatus (Treatise of the human ear), was published in 1704, twenty-one years after Du Verney's Traite de l'organ de l'ouie (1683), and thus was the second book published solely on the ear. But Valsalva included minute…
Turck's "Practical introduction to laryngoscopy" was published the same year, but after Czermak's work, despite his argument for priority in the field of laryngoscopy for having originated use of, and having introduced Czermak to the laryngeal…
John Cunningham Saunders (1773-1810) was an assistant to Cooper in the myringotomy study. In this work, Saunders said observed that the most common indication for doing a myringotomy is an acute otitis medium, or acute inflammation of the middle ear.…
Jacob Henle (1809-1885) gave a detailed and complete description of the temporal bone and was the first to describe the suprameatal spine, though he did not show the structure as a landmark to the antrum. Henle's name was attached to it later by…
Jean-Louis Petit (1674-1750) performed the first successful operations for mastoiditis. His works were published in three small volumes 25 years after his death, and provided an overview of French surgery and every instrument used in the 18th…
Dr. Pappas created this shadow box displaying and identifying the temporal bones and structures. A magnified portion of this box shows the mastoid cellular system.
In 1884, after four years of experimentation, Joseph O'Dwyer devised a hard rubber tube and instruments for inserting it into the obstructed larynx for the treatment of diphtheria, a problematic disease often affecting children with recurring…
Sir William Macewan (1848-1924) was among the earliest surgeons to attach otitis abscesses through the ear. He learned from his teacher, Joseph Lister, to discard those aesthetic handle instruments made of ivory, ebony, bone and tortoise because they…
In his "The theory of hearing: supplement to the article on the treatise on sense," Claude-Nicolas Le Cat introduces the hearing horns he invented for hearing aids, which mimic the shape of the inner ear.
Jean Marc Gaspard Itard did not have formal medical training; he faked being a medical man to avoid the army and was assigned to a military hospital. But he mastered his new profession and showed remarkable abilities in the fields of otology, …
In retrospect, scholars have given credit to John Huxham's A dissertation on the malignant, ulcerous sore-throat (1757), as an early, true description of diphtheria, though the disease had not been identified and named at that time.
Fabricius, the brilliant pupil of Fallopius, succeeded his master as teacher of anatomy and surgery at Padua, and Casserio was his servant and student. In comparing the two anatomical works, Fabricius gives the best description of tracheotomy, wheras…