Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1885 — Blistered Ears and Seasickness. [ARTICLE]

Blistered Ears and Seasickness.

The semi-circular canals of the internal ears are nowadays pretty well understood not to be organs of hearing but of equilibrium. The sensation they normally give us is that of change of direction and speed in the movements of,QUf head through space. When over-eicited they gave rise to vertigo and nausea. A large percentage of deaf mutes, in whom the canals are presumably thrown out of function, are insusceptibly of being made dizzy. Of a considerable number of such deaf mutes who had been exposed to seasickness, none, with the exception of two doleful cases, had ever suffered. All these facts lead to the hypothesis that seasickness may arise, in the first instance, from the over-excitement of these sensitive organs, and, finally, they the practical suggestion that such over-excitement might be warded off or allayed by “counter irritation” which consists in blistering or otherwise reddening the skin above and behind the ears. The experiment is so simple, and would be, if successful, so pregnant of relief that it seems a shame it should not be tested by a large number of persons. I have tried it myself twice. The first time was on the British Channel, on a very rough day, when every one around me was violently sick. I simply rubbed the skin behind my ears tillw was slightly excoriated. An incipient nausea, which I felt at the end of the first half hour, completely vanished as the sensation of cutaneous burning became strong. In crossing the Atlantic I was less successful but my seasickness was rather anomalous, its principal symptoms be-

ing a high fever and no nausea, and I do not consider the failure to be a refutation of the method. It may be that the latter will serve for short-el-posures, like channel voyages, but not for long ones. At any rate the scientific presumption in favor ot its utility is certainly large enough to warrant experimentation by any one who dreads the direst of all forms of misery.— Dr. William Jones, Cambridge, Mass.