Jasper County Democrat, Volume 2, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 January 1900 — Mind Your Ears. [ARTICLE]

Mind Your Ears.

Men and Women have much to do to keep straight. A hundred nerves and muscles are at work all through the waking hours, giving or receiving orders that the body, with its many joints and natural instability, shall preserve its equilibrium, shall not stagger or double up in a hopeless heap. These nerves and muscles are a highly organized signal service, the chief officers of which are in the semi-circular canals buried in the “stony” bone work that protects the inner ear. Were it hot for these canals a human being would find It difficult, often impossible, to maintain a proper balance either while walking or standing still. So long as these canals are in healthy working order their reports are trustworthy; but when any undue force has shocked them, or any agency, such as sickness, has interfered with their workings, their messages are incoherent, and the brain, like the engineer of a battle ship in action when the men above are blinded and bewildered, has nothing to do but let things go.