Records of the Section on Otolaryngology II

The Section on Otology and Laryngology (later Otolaryngology) was established December 12, 1893, under Section 1 of the Rules Governing Sections. The original Executive Committee of the Section included J. Solis Cohen, Charles Burnett, and B. Alexander Randall. Its first meeting was held December 20, 1893, where Harrison Allen was elected as Chairman and Charles Burnett as Clerk. The Section continued to meet on the first Tuesday of every month. In late 2005 or 2006, nearly all College sections were discontinued, including the Section on Otolaryngology. This collection contains material related to the Alfonso Corti centenary celebration, held November 21, 1951. It was collected and compiled by Douglas Macfarlan. Alfonso (1822-1876) Corti received his medical degree at Vienna in 1847 under the supervision of professor Josef Hyrtl, with a thesis on the bloodstream system of a reptile. Later, at the Kölliker Laboratory, Corti began to work on the mammalian auditory system. Corti spent a short time in Utrecht, where he visited Professors Jacobus Schroeder van der Kolk and Pieter Harting. During his stay he learned to use methods to preserve several preparations of the cochlea. From Utrecht he returned to Würzburg to complete his study of at least 200 cochleas of man and different animals. His famous paper, "Recherches sur l'organe de l'ouïe des mammiferes", appeared in 1851 in Kölliker's journal "Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie".