History of ENT archive for 2026
The (Ancient Egyptian) ear that hears badly: otology in Ancient Egypt 1500 BC
The Ebers Papyrus was written around 1500 years before the birth of Christ, and is arguably the most complete and most beautiful of the medical texts to have survived from ancient Egypt. It was purchased from a Coptic antiquarian in...
GP Field and the holes in his book: a British bestseller in otology
The fact that the cradle of modern otology lies in Britain and Ireland was long unrecognised in continental Europe. Yet it was the Teutonic forefathers of the ‘Vienna School’ who drew their knowledge from such British luminaries as Toynbee and...
Jacobsen’s organ
The vomeronasal organ (VNO) was not, in fact, first described by Jacobsen in 1809, but by Frederik Ruysch (1638–1731), the noted Dutch anatomist. He had an absolute passion for embalming, and his ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’ in Amsterdam was acknowledged as...
