A pair of silver ear tubes with flesh coloured receivers in their velvet lined leather case by Wocher of Cincinnati

Ear tubes were designed to help the hearing in cases where there was a narrow or obstructed external auditory meatus. The receiver of this device sits in the pinna and is flesh coloured by way of camouflage. Max Wocher & Son Co were based in Cincinnati Ohio at this address from 1897 to 1900.

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