Alley mentions a New Orleans wharf laborer, in whose ear was poured some molten lead; seventeen months afterward the lead was still occupying the external auditory meatus. It is quite remarkable that the lead should have remained such a length of time without causing meningeal inflammation. There was deafness and palsy of that side of the face. A fungous growth occupied the external portion of the ear; the man suffered pain and discharge from the ear, and had also great difficulty in closing his right eyelid. Morrison mentions an alcoholic patient of forty who, on June 6, 1833, had nitric acid poured in her right ear. There were no headache, febrile symptoms, stupor, or vertigo. Debility alone was present. Two weeks after the injury paralysis began on the right side, and six weeks from the injury the patient died. This case is interesting from the novel mode of death, the perfect paralysis of the arm, paralysis agitans of the body (occurring as hemorrhage from the ear came on, and subsiding with it), and extensive caries of the petrous bone, without sensation of pain or any indicative symptoms.
There is an instance in a young girl in which a piece of pencil remained in the right ear for seven years. Haug speaks of two beads lying in the auditory canal for twenty-eight years without causing any harm.
A boy of six introduced a carob-nut kernel into each ear. On the next day incompetent persons attempted to extract the kernel from the left side, but only caused pain and hemorrhage. The nut issued spontaneously from the right side. In the afternoon the auditory canal was found excoriated and red, and deep in the meatus the kernel was found, covered with blood. The patient had been so excited and pained by the bungling attempts at extraction that the employment of instruments was impossible; prolonged employment of injections was substituted. Discharge from the ear commenced, intense fever and delirium ensued, and the patient had to be chloroformed to facilitate the operation of extraction. The nut, when taken out, was found to have a consistency much larger than originally, caused by the agglutination of wax and blood.
Unfortunately the symptoms of meningitis increased; three days after the operation coma followed, and on the next day death ensued. In 75 cases collected by Mayer, and cited by Poulet (whose work on "Foreign Bodies" is the most extensive in existence), death as a consequence of meningitis was found in three.
Fleury de Clermont mentions a woman of twenty-five who consulted him for removal of a pin which was in her right ear. Vain attempts by some of her lay-friends to extract the pin had only made matters worse. The pin was directed transversely, and its middle part touched the membrane tympanum. The mere touching of the pin caused the woman intense pain; even after etherization it was necessary to construct a special instrument to extract it.
She suffered intense cephalalgia and other signs of meningitis;despite vigorous treatment she lost consciousness and died shortly after the operation.
Winterbotham reports an instance in which a cherry-stone was removed from the meatus auditorius after lodgment of upward of sixty years. Marchal de Calvi mentions intermittent deafness for forty years, caused by the lodgment of a small foreign body in the auditory canal. There is an instance in which a carious molar tooth has been tolerated in the same location for forty years.
Albucasius, Fabricius Hildanus, Pare, and others, have mentioned the fact that seeds and beans have been frequently seen to increase in volume while lodged in the auditory canal. Tulpius speaks of an infant, playing with his comrades, who put a cherry-seed in his ear which he was not able to extract. The seed increased in volume to such an extent that it was only by surgical interference that it could be extracted, and then such serious consequences followed that death resulted. Albers reports an instance in which a pin introduced into the ear issued from the pharynx.
Confusion of diagnosis is occasionally noticed in terrified or hysteric persons. Lowenberg was called to see a child of five who had introduced a button into his left ear. When he saw the child it complained of all the pain in the right ear, and he naturally examined this ear first but found nothing to indicate the presence of a foreign body. He examined the ear supposed to be healthy and there found the button lying against the tympanum.
This was explained by the fact that the child was so pained and terrified by the previous explorations of the affected ear that rather than undergo them again he presented the well ear for examination. In the British Medical Journal for 1877 is an account of an unjustified exploration of an ear for a foreign body by an incompetent physician, who spent a half hour in exploration and manipulation, and whose efforts resulted in the extraction of several pieces of bone. The child died in one and a half hours afterward from extreme hemorrhage, and the medical bungler was compelled to appear before a coroner's jury in explanation of his ignorance.
In the external ear of a child Tansley observed a diamond which he removed under chloroform. The mother of the child had pushed the body further inward in her endeavors to remove it and had wounded the canal. Schmiegelow reports a foreign body forced into the drum-cavity, followed by rough extraction, great irritation, tetanus, and death; and there are on record several cases of fatal meningitis, induced by rough endeavors to extract a body from the external ear.
In the Therapeutic Gazette, August 15, 1896, there is a translation of the report of a case by Voss, in which a child of five pushed a dry pea in his ear. Four doctors spent several days endeavoring to extract it, but only succeeded in pushing it in further. It was removed by operation on the fifth day, but suppuration of the tympanic cavity caused death on the ninth day.