ons 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.

Fle