NO. 6 EAR EXOSTOSES HRDLICKA 75 



Whitney (1895) believed "these exostoses must be considered as 

 formed from remnants of fetal cartilage." 



NO PATHOLOGY 



For Le Double and Lebourg (1903), finally, who examined the ear 

 exostoses in a series of American Indian skulls, the growths were 

 " evidently not of pathological origin." 



GENERAL DISCUSSION 



Including the records presented in this work, there are few if any 

 pathological conditions of the human skeleton that could command as 

 vast an amount of material as that of ear exostoses, not only clinically, 

 but also, and in much larger measure, racially. This ampleness of 

 material enables the student to see the subject in a much more com- 

 plete and satisfactory manner than has hitherto been possible. Let 

 us survey briefly what the facts, as far as revealed, indicate. 



UNITY OF COMPLEX 



About the most important result of the studies is the realization 

 that the subject of ear exostoses, notwithstanding its many variations, 

 represents not a mixture of diverse conditions, but in substance a 

 large unit, a special unit-complex, in the field of human derangements. 



While there is a possibility that some of the smaller growths from 

 the deep portion of the roof of the ear, and now and then perhaps 

 an ossification in a polyp, or a hypertrophy following a serious injury, 

 may be formations apart, the great bulk of exostoses in the external 

 meatus constitutes a single human pathological complex-entity. Re- 

 gardless of any secondary subdivisions of the growths, some of which 

 may be useful, the overwhelming testimony of the evidence is that 

 there is involved but one process — a realization that should facilitate 

 the eventual comprehension of its causes. 



RESTRICTION TO MAN 



According to all indications the afffiction of ear exostoses is purely 

 human — no such growth has ever been observed in the anthropoid 

 apes, any other primates, or any other living forms provided with 

 an external bony meatus. It is apparently one of the penalties of the 

 human estate. 



