Word: cochlea
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...transmitted through the three delicate lever-bones of the middle ear-the "hammer, anvil and stirrup"-into the inner ear. There the main sound-wave receiver is sunk deep in a massive bone at the base of the skull. This receiver is a winding snail of bone, the cochlea, filled with fluid, lined with feathery nerve endings. These nerve endings pick up incoming sound waves, relay them to the auditory nerve, which carries them to the brain...
True deafness can be caused only by injury to the inner ear, or to the auditory nerve. Inherited structural defects account for a large proportion of these cases; syphilis, scarlet fever, meningitis, measles, for many others. Skull fractures and the force of violent explosions may injure the cochlea or the auditory nerve...
...mechanism is a simple one. In the ear of the cat is thrust a silver wire with a damp thread on its end. Slipping past the eardrum, the thread drops into the "round window" of the cochlea. This makes one contact. The other is made by a silver plate at the base of the skull. The two wires are hooked to an amplifier and thence to a loud-speaker...