ves an account of two instances of living larvae of the
musca sarcophaga in the ears of children. In one of the cases the
larvae entered the drum-cavity through a rupture in the tympanic
membrane. In both cases the maggots were removed by forceps. Haug has
observed a tic (ixodes ricinus) in the ear of a lad of seventeen. The
creature was killed by a mercuric-chlorid solution, and removed with a
probe.

There is a common superstition that centipedes have the faculty of
entering the ear and penetrating the brain, causing death. The authors
have knowledge of an instance in which three small centipedes were
taken from the ear of a policeman after remaining there three days;
during this time they caused excruciating pain, but there was no
permanent injury. The Ephemerides contains instances in which, while
yet living, worms, crickets, ants, and beetles have all been taken from
the ear. In one case the entrance of a cricket in the auditory canal
was the cause of death. Martin gives an instance in which larvae were
deposited in the ear. Stalpart van der Wiel relates an instance of the
lodgment of a living spider in the ear.

Far more common than insects are inanimate objects as foreign bodies in
the ear, and numerous examples are to be found in literature. Fabricius
Hildanus tells of a glass ball introduced into the auditory canal of a
girl of ten, followed by headache, numbness on the left side, and after
four or five years epileptic seizures, and atrophy of the arm. He
extracted it and the symptoms immediately ceased. Sabatier speaks of an
abscess of the brain caused by a ball of paper in the ear; and it is
quite common for persons in the habit of using a tampon of cotton in
the meatus to mistake the deep entrance of this substance for
functional derangement, and many cases of temporary deafness are simply
due to forgetfulness of the cause. A strange case is reported in a girl
of fourteen, who lost her tympanum from a profuse otorrhea, and who
substituted an artificial tympanum which was, in its turn, lost by deep
penetration, causing augmentation of the symptoms, of the cause of
which the patient herself seemed unaware. Sometimes artificial otoliths
are produced by the insufflation of various powders which become
agglutinated, and are veritable foreign bodies. Holman tells of a
negro, aged thirty-five, whose wife poured molten pewter in his ear
while asleep. It was removed, but total deafness was the result.

Alley menti