Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/182

170 The rhinoscope also enables us to examine the nasal or pharyngeal orifices of the Eustachian tubes. These latter are passages leading from the inner side of the drum of the ear, and opening, as already indicated, at a point situated in the posterior nasal parts. It is not the province of this article to enter into minute or precise detail, and therefore we shall merely add that these tubes bear a very important relation to the faculty of hearing. If the nasal orifices of these tubes become swollen by disease, or choked with diseased mucus, greater or less impairment of the hearing-power results. Consequently, the rhinoscope has rendered no small service to us for determining causes of deafness, and of curing them, which formerly were but guessed at or remained unknown.

But to make the laryngeal and rhinal mirrors available, the artificial illumination of these parts is necessary. To depend upon the sun's rays, as was the case with the original experiments, was too uncertain. Czermak, as we have seen, substituted artificial light, and thus enabled an examination to be made at any hour of the day or night. Tobold, of Berlin, after a time, brought forward an apparatus which is depicted in the following cut, and which embodied the most perfect apparatus of the time. The cut also shows us the position of the patient and of the examiner.

As introduced by him, it consisted of a common study-lamp: a



is a brass tube, or light-condenser, in which are convex lenses, c, d, g. The lenses c and d, it will be observed, are close together, while the third, g, is at the distal extremity of this brass tube. At f this brass tube can be unscrewed, thus enabling the cleansing of the lenses.