Audiology and phoniatrics: Vision from Mexico of its origins, relationships, fields and boundaries

Abstract

A long time ago, a French Professor (Sebileau or Terracol) wrote that otorhinolaryngology (ORL) was like a nebula of unsteady origin and imprecise trajectory. At the very beginning of this speciality, general surgeons practised tracheotomy or laryngectomy, and it is impossible to forget the wide tracks opened by a non-medical doctor, Manuel Garcia, not only to the larynx but also to other anatomical areas. Nevertheless, somebody suddenly said “ ear, nose and throat ” and someone else, more ambitious, added “ eye, ear, nose and throat ” . The organ based criteria include some related areas and one odd addition and, only many years later, was it realized that the only relationship between the eyes and nose was a pair of small ducts by which infection travels up or tears go down. In Mexico, the separation of the specialities involved in the Mexican Society of Ophthalmology and ORL took place in 1947. After that, the evolution of ENT was dynamic and generated new specialties: 1) bronchoesophagology, with Killian and Jackson and, as a natural consequence, anaesthesiology; 2) plastic surgery, to treat outer ear, nose and lip abnormalities; 3) maxillofacial surgery; 4) oncology surgery linked with laryngeal carcinoma; and 5) allergy, born after the awareness that the nose must not be the object of mutilating surgery. It is not irrelevant to remember that George Laurens, speaking against the very frequent nasal septum surgery at the time described “ the septum that must be vertical but is terrifi ed by the vertical ” . In ORL evolution, Lempert in 1938 and then Rosen, Shea and other ENT specialists developed several surgical techniques to treat some types of