Progress in Otolaryngology is found not to show a curve rising progressively. To one who has made the survey each year from the time these summaries were first begun an unevenness in progress is apparent. The literature for 1936 reveals little that is new. However, progress is not always made by the presentation of new ideas or discoveries but depends much more on newer comprehensions of established facts and particularly on the coordination and interpretation of old ideas. During the year under survey much was written, but this was new neither in the originality of the material concerned nor in the observations presented. The foreign otolaryngologists have taken and accepted the outstanding American contributions toward the study and understanding of suppurative lesions of the petrosal pyramid, and their literature is now rich in contributions, all of which in a large measure are corroborative of the American point of view.
PURULENT