[Test over the "Hearing through the openings of the skull after trepanation" in the General Hospital in Hamburg in the year of 1835].
Investigations of the French physician Perier on patients after a trepanation of their skulls have shown that talking can be understood in the case of hermetically closed ears by means of the trepanation scar. If the ears were closed and if the trepanation scars were covered by the hand, the patient would hear nothing. Due to these observations, Perier had suggested to treat deafness by trepanation. Johann Carl George Fricke, the first "dirigating surgeon" of the newly erected General Hospital in Hamburg (1823) has taken up these suggestions and carried out similar investigations on two patients. He had a relative great number of patients with head injuries on hand who required a trepanation in many cases. His investigations have shown that any hearing through a trepanation scar has been most likely caused by an illusion and he did see in the observations of Perier and his investigation results only a confirmation of the generally known experience that a perception of a sound will also be caused by a vibration of the skull bone. An attempt to cure deafness by trepanation was rejected as an irrational and not to be approved undertaking
D003638:Deafness / Q000266:history; D005858:Germany; D006309:Hearing; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D010036:Otolaryngology / Q000266:history*; D014207:Trephining / Q000266:history*
Versuche über das "Hören durch Schädelöffnungen nach der Trepanation" am Allgemeinen Krankenhaus zu Hamburg im Jahre 1835