Numerous attempts have been made to determine the physical facts underlying auditory function in man and in animals. So far, none of the theories suggested have succeeded in explaining satisfactorily all clinical and experimental observations.
The perplexities surrounding this problem were increased when Wever and Bray1 advanced the frequency theory of sound transmission. Their demonstration of electrical phenomena by leading off action currents from the eighth nerve and from the cochlea was corroborated by Saul and Davis,2 Hallpike and Rawden-Smith3 and many others. In fact, for a certain time the evidence adduced by Wever and Bray seemed to have doomed the Helmholtz theory as well as every other theory based on a consideration of place. However, even such effective promoters of the frequency theory as Davis and his co-workers4 had to admit that various physiologic and clinical observations could not be understood except by a theory