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When I and a few other people in my country started this surgery of reconstruction of defects of the middle ear, we were really astonished that nobody in your country had yet begun to occupy himself with this very interesting kind of surgery. As I told you yesterday, it was in 1881 and 1884, after Berthold, that Ely and Tangeman made the first attempt, but never again have you touched the problem. I believe it is partly because you were so occupied with the problem of otosclerosis and with the fear of infection. Maybe at that time, just after the use of antibiotics had started, the ear surgeon was still very glad that he could do some surgery in an uninfected case but was afraid to start in an infected case.
Please understand that I am proceeding slowly with the fundamentals at first because if the introduction is well done,