ENDOGENOUS AIR VERSUS ATMOSPHERIC AIR IN MIDDLE EAR VENTILATION. ARISTOTLE VERSUS JOSEPH GUICHARD DUVERNEY
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the collective illusion otologists live first and then all who accept without reservation that the origin of the so-called ‹‹middle ear air›› is from the ambient air and arrives here simply through the Eustachian tube (ET). The instrument used to achieve this goal is to analyze the concept of air and the analysis of experimental measurements published in the literature. The last shows that ‹‹air in the middle ear›› is not at all similar to, in regard to its composition, atmospheric air, as it was expected to be, according to the current acceptance about the ET function. Instead, the composition of air middle ear is identical to that of mixed venous blood respiratory gases. Therefore, the latter are at the origin of gas in the Middle Ear (ME). In the final analysis, the middle ear gas mixture comes from the internal environment of the body. More precisely, they come from physically dissolved gases in total body water. This endogenous origin was intuited brilliantly and surprisingly by Aristotle of Stagira when he supposed the existence of endogenous air – aerus innatus – which exists per se (by itself) in the ear, isolated from exterior air and from external ear. Eustachian tube is just a valve through which gas masses pass in both directions with the aim of quickly equalising the pressure on both sides of the tympanic membrane. This valve enters in action only when the above mentioned pressures vary in the opposite directions with a speed which overcomes the processes speed which are the real base of ME ventilation.
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