He uttered a cry, fell
senseless, and so continued until the fourth day when he died.
The whole auditory meatus was destroyed by suppuration. Gamgee
tells of a constable who was stabbed in the left ear, severing
the middle meningeal artery, death ensuing. In this instance,
after digital compression, ligature of the common carotid was
practiced as a last resort. There is an account of a
provision-dealer's agent who fell asleep at a public house at
Tottenham. In sport an attendant tickled his ear with a wooden
article used as a pipe light. A quick, unconscious movement
forced the wooden point through the tympanum, causing cerebral
inflammation and subsequent death. There is a record of death, in
a child of nine, caused by the passage of a knitting-needle into
the auditory meatus.
Kauffmann reports a case of what he calls objective tinnitus
aurium, in which the noise originating in the patient's ears was
distinctly audible by others. The patient was a boy of fourteen,
who had fallen on the back of his head and had remained
unconscious for nearly two weeks. The noises were bilateral, but
more distinct on the left than on the right side. The sounds were
described as crackling, and seemed to depend on movements of the
arch of the palate.
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