The obstinacy with which chronic otitis media resists treatments is discouraging to the general practitioner, as well as to the specialist. Many therapeutic measures have been suggested for this disease, but the large number of them is proof enough of their inadequacy. On the other hand, the patient, not realizing the obdurate chronicity of the condition, usually blames the physician for incompetency to cure his ear, and starts to make a round of various specialists, without giving any of them time to study the case thoroughly. This difficulty in systematically following up cases of chronic otitis media over a long period must be taken into consideration before one passes judgment as to which of the therapeutic applications is more efficacious. In tuberculosis institutions, cases of chronic otitis media can be followed more or less systematically, as the patients remain for a long period, because of the pulmonary condition.
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