5. Hearing aid evaluation research data, 1936-1944

File — Box: 3, Folder: 7-11

Scope and Contents

From the Collection: This collection of Walter Hughson's papers, 1921-1945, including his correspondence, records of research and work on special projects, writings, and lectures, documents his professional work in otology, particularly the aural rehabilitation of soldiers deafened in war and hearing aid development.

The collection is divided into four series. Series 1 contains Hughson's correspondence with colleagues on various otological or surgical matters, including the treatment of headaches with sodium chloride and the relationship of mumps to deafness. Notable items in the series are correspondence with the American Hearing Aid Association and the American Society for the Hard of Hearing; a letter, 7 November 1928, from J. F. Baldwin discussing pre operative and post operative surgical care; and six folders of correspondence with Antonio Ciocco of the U.S. Public Health Service concerning the prevention of deafness in children and clinical studies of children at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Philadelphia.

Records of Hughson's work on certain projects and research programs, 1935-1945, are contained in Series 2. The series includes Hughson's speech sound analysis research at Abington Memorial Hospital; correspondence with the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, its Committee on the Conservation of Hearing, and Pennsylvania Subcommittee concerning the rehabilitation of soldiers deafened in war; correspondence, particularly with Howard A. Carter, reports, and research data from Hughson's evaluations of hearing aids for the American Medical Association's Council on Physical Therapy; correspondence and a manual concerning the prevention of deafness in children from the Committee on Deafness Prevention and Amelioration of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania; and a hearing survey performed at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. Due to Hughson's sudden demise in 1944, the information on many of these projects, although extensive, is incomplete.

An assortment of Walter Hughson's manuscripts, 1922-1944, generally on otological subjects, such as audiometry and ear examination, is preserved in Series 3; some related correspondence is included. The series also contains bibliographies, a book review, and Hughson's discussions of papers by Edmund Prince Fowler and K. M. Day.

Series 4 contains notes, outlines, lists of slides, and abstracts of individual lectures delivered by Hughson on otological subjects, 1936-1944; several of these lectures were given to the Section on Otolaryngology of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The series also containsjoutlines and general information on lecture courses on audiometry, hearing aids, and the teaching of deaf children, 1936-1944, given by Hughson at Abington Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University, the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, and the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Medicine.