HEREDITARY factors play an important role in the cause of nerve deafness. A thorough knowledge of their mode of action and their clinical and anatomic manifestations is essential for the proper recognition, management and prevention of many forms of hearing loss. The question of prevention is of particular importance, since hereditary deafness has not been and is not likely to be amenable to any kind of therapy.
In the last twenty years knowledge in this field has greatly increased, particularly because of the extensive research done by animal geneticists. The published material is, however, scattered throughout a large number of journals, monographs and dissertations, some of which are hardly accessible for the average reader. Only very few of the reports have appeared in the American otolaryngologic literature, and a comprehensive up-to-date review of the findings is entirely missing.
In this paper it has been attempted not only to report the