> On Nov 12, 2017, at 5:41 AM, Christopher Wilke <chriswi...@cs.dartmouth.edu> > wrote: > > Just curious - How do we know the exact cause of Beethoven's deafness > today?
We don't > I assume doctors of the time didn't possess enough knowledge of > the causes of deafness to make a diagnosis. Nobody did, but there is some raw data in the form of observations by the doctor who did an autopsy (this is from the web, and I don’t know who translated it into English): "The external ear was large and irregularly formed, the scaphold fossa but more especially the concha was very spacious and half as large again as usual…the external auditory canal was covered with shining scales… The Eustachian tube was much thickened, its mucous lining swollen and somewhat contratced about the osseous portion of the tube… The facial nerves were of unusual thickness, the auditory nerves, on the contrary, were shiveled and destitute… The convolutions of the brain were full of water and remarkably white; they appeared very much deeper, wider and more numerous than ordinary." To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
