A brief history of otolaryngology in the United States from 1847 to 1947.

SPECIALIZATION was beginning in American medicine a hundred years ago; the ancient schism between surgeons and those who relied on medicines became much involved as men elected to follow special lines of investigation. All,however, began with similar training: two years of identical lecture courses, followed by preceptorships under leaders of varying enthusiasms. For a generation after the Mexican War, otolaryngology and ophthalmology grew up together, and the "eye-ear-nose-throat specialist" secured such knowledge as he might from leaders in Boston, New York or Philadelphia who had themselves sought experience in the clinics of Paris, France, or London, England. Interrupted by the war between the states, development of teaching centers for otolaryngology was relatively rapid after 1866. Ether anesthesia, started at Boston in 1846, made extensive operative procedures possible, but antiseptic and aseptic technic were far in the future. Hence mastoid disease often was permitted to go on to "brain fever," unless