DEAFNESS.

Dr T E T Weston describes his research into the effect of noise on hearing acuity and of deafness in the aged. He found that presbyacusis is associated with a multiplicity of factors, e.g. smoking, circulatory disturbance, urban domicile, heredity and occupational acoustic trauma.Miss W Galbraith describes the social implications of various degrees of deafness and the ways in which they can be overcome by such measures as lipreading, hearing aids and rehabilitation.Sir Terence Cawthorne discusses otosclerosis, nearly 1% of the population being affected by this type of deafness. He describes the modern operation of insertion of an artificial piston through the stapes and states that 90% of cases submitted to this operation will show immediate improvement, whilst 85% should still have retained this improvement at the end of two years.