Bacteriologic examination of material from the middle ears following paracentesis of the ear drum has always been more or less unsatisfactory. The difficulty has been due to contaminations encountered along the wall of the external auditory canal. This has been particularly true in dealing with infants and small children, in whom the canal is small. The ordinary wooden applicator tipped with a piece of cotton is so large that it is practically impossible to pass it through the canal without contaminating it with organisms which have nothing to do with the pathologic condition within the middle ear. These organisms are usually in considerable numbers and grow so freely on culture mediums that they have a tendency to overgrow or to inhibit entirely the growth of the pathogenic organisms in the exudate from the middle ear. Not infrequently the otologist is convinced that he is dealing with an infection due to