[The Galton whistle and discovery of presbycusis. Images from the history of otorhinolaryngology, exemplified by equipment from the collection of the Ingolstadt German Medical History Museum]

One of the many interests of Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), a singularly versatile English research worker, was anthropometry, i.e. measuring and comparing physical attributes in men. Here he introduced the concept of eugenics. He thought that the upper hearing threshold for high-pitched tones might be an attribute specific to each species, and in order to prove this he devised a whistle which was later named after him. Using this instrument he found that the upper hearing threshold in animals actually differs very much with the species and that in humans it is regularly depressed with age. The relevant passages of his book Inquiries into Human Faculty of 1883 are quoted in translation. Burckhardt-Merian from Basel, Switzerland, introduced Galton's whistle into otology in 1885. Appropriate instruments were soon developed by König in Paris and Edelmann in Munich and became commercially available. Zwaardemaker in Utrecht, the Netherlands, was the first to systematically investigate hearing in the elderly using Galton's whistle, and he derived from these studies what he called the "prebyacusial law." Technical details of Galton's whistle are described with reference to Edelmann's final refined version of the instrument of 1900. During the first 30 years of this century, Galton's whistle was in wide use, but due to unavoidable inherent flaws it later gave way to the monochord and eventually to tone audiometry.

Charles Dickens and the ear, nose, and throat

Charles Dickens is known as a novelist, humorist, humanist, and a social reformist. One of his many abilities was an astute power of observation, and some of his writings included descriptions considered as original medical knowledge. Among the hundreds of characters portrayed by Dickens, many had depictions or diseases of interest to the otolaryngologist. Dickens described deaf children and was interested in the methods used in their teaching. He had a keen interest in children and their welfare and described his visits to the Childrens Hospital in London and to Parkins Institute at Boston. He described both temporary and permanent deafness following exposure to loud noise. Dickens was a medical critic and most of his writings on the subject were humorous, though mixed at times with a spicy element of satire.