Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 April 1885 — Deaf Left Ears. [ARTICLE]

Deaf Left Ears.

“Will you be good enough to let me walk at your other side ?” said a gentleman to a companion with whom he was crossing the City Hall Park. “I am deaf in my left ear, and I have been trying for five minutes to get on your left'side, so that I might hear what you say; but you seem to have been endeavoring to prevent me. ” “Why, of course I have,” was the reply. “I, too, am deaf in the left ear, and if we change sides I could not hear a word you said.” Both gentlemen looked astonished, and went on their way laughing. “There is nothing unusual in such an experience,” said a New York aurist. “The left ear is peculiarly liable tp deafness or partial loss of hearing. An immense number of persons rely wholly, or in a great measure, upon the right ear to do the duty of two, and it very soon becomes trained to fully bear the pressure placed upon it. Persons who have been long deprived of the hearing of the left ear can usually hear sounds at a distance far more distinctly than those whose hearing is divided between two ears, owing to the peculiar sharpness, acquired by the solitary organ, which is seldom sympathetically affected. “The only inconvenience I know of in the loss of hearing by the left ear is when one is walking with a lady, or driving a friend in a buggy, or otherwise so situated that you can not easily .get your sound ear toward them. But for a constant traveler, such as a drummer, such an affliction is invaluable. No noise in a hotel can keep him awake at night. He has only to press bis good ear to the pillow, and what can disturb him?”— New York Sun.