A set of 19th century silver ear tubes with flesh tint camouflage in their original housing.

The tubes, each engraved “Silver”, are designed to increase the bore of the external auditory meatus. Sound is collected in the curved hollow receptacle which fits in the tragus and enlarges it. Housed in their original velvet lined box which has done a good job of protecting the flesh coloured paintwork intended to disguise the presence of the aid.

In 1884 Adam Politzer developed a hearing aid in the form of a small tube, one end of which was fixed in the concha by a piece of rubber, the other went deep into the auditory canal conducting sound directly to the tympanic membrane. Politzer’s tube was the forerunner the intra-canal hearing aids. (Adam Politzer: A Life for Otology and Neurotology by A Mudry).

Historic Devices for Hearing, the CID-Goldstein collection (p.57) show a picture of a similar instrument described as “Politzer device to enlarge the tragus backwards”

• From the Phisick collection