Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/153

Rh reflect, again, that the passage of the ear is closed by a delicate membrane to show the reason for this rule. When no severe pain follows, no alarm need be felt. It is important that the substance should be removed as speedily as is quite safe, but there need never be impatience; nor should disappointment be felt if syringing needs to be repeated on many days before it effects its end. It will almost invariably succeed at last in the hands of a medical man, and is most effective if the ear is turned downward and syringed from below.

Now and then an insect gets into the ear and causes great pain; the way to get rid of it is to pour oil into the ear. This suffocates the insect.

There is another danger arising from boyish sports. Snowballs sometimes strike the ear, and the snow remaining in it sets up inflammation. This danger is increased by a practice which should be inadmissible, of mixing small stones with the snow, which thus effect a lodgment in the ear.

Among the causes of injury to the ear must unfortunately be reckoned bathing. Not that this most healthful and important pleasure need, therefore, be in the least discouraged; but it should be wisely regulated. Staying too long in the water certainly tends to produce deafness as well as other evils; and it is a practice against which young persons of both sexes should be carefully on their guard. But, independently of this, swimming and floating are attended with a certain danger from the difficulty of preventing the entrance of water into the ear in those positions. Now, no cold fluid should ever enter the ear; cold water is always more or less irritating, and, if used for syringing, rapidly produces extreme giddiness. In the case of warm water its entrance into the ear is less objectionable, but even this is not free from disadvantage. Often the water lodges in the ears and produces an uncomfortable sensation till it is removed: this should always be taken as a sign of danger. That the risk to hearing from unwise bathing is not a fancy, is proved by the fact, well known to lovers of dogs, that those animals, if in the habit of jumping or being thrown into the water, so that their heads are covered, frequently become deaf. A knowledge of the danger is a sufficient guard. To be safe it is only necessary to keep the water from entering the ear. If this cannot be accomplished otherwise, the head may be covered. It should be added, however, that wet hair, whether from bathing or washing, may be a cause of deafness, if it be suffered to dry by itself. Whenever wetted, the hair should be wiped till it is fairly dry. Nor ought the practice of moistening the hair with water, to make it curl, to pass without remonstrance. To leave wet hair about the ears is to run great risk of injuring them. In the washing of children, too, care should be taken that all the little folds of the outer ear are carefully and gently dried with a soft towel.

But I come now to what is probably the most frequent way in which