Joseph Toynbee

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Joseph Toynbee

Joseph Toynbee (born December 30, 1815 in Heckington ( Lincolnshire ), † June 7, 1866 in London ) was an English doctor and otologist .

family

He was the second son of a total of fifteen children of the wealthy landowner and farmer George Toynbee (1783-1865). His first wife and mother of Joseph Toynbee was Elizabeth Cullen (1785-1829). Joseph Toynbee was the father of the economist and economic historian Arnold Toynbee , his nephew was the history philosopher Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975), with whom the penultimate is often confused because of the similarity of names.

In August 1846 he married Harriet Holmes (1822-1897), daughter of Nathaniel Holmes. The couple ultimately had nine children: Gertrude (* 1848), William (* 1849), Lucy (* 1850), Arnold (1852–1883), Rachel (* 1853), Paget Jackson (1855–1932), Mary H. ( * 1856), Grace Poleridge (* 1856) and Harry Valpy Toynbee (1861–1941).

Live and act

After several years of private tuition, he attended King's Lynn Grammar School in Norfolk . Toynbee began studying medicine at the age of seventeen. He then began his medical training under William Wade at the Westminster General Dispensary on Gerrard Street in Soho . He also heard from Benjamin Collins Brodie , among others . He made his anatomical studies under the guidance of George Derby Dermott (1802-1847) at the Hunterian Medical School , Great Windmill Street , where he was also authorized to work as a prosector .

He later moved to St George's and University College Hospitals, where his interest in ear pathology was aroused. In 1838 he was accepted as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. In the same year he was appointed assistant curator at the Hunterian Museum , which was under the direction of Richard Owen .

In 1850 he described under the name molluscous tumor and later also sebeaceous tumor neoplasms in the ear, which Toynbee saw as primary follicle tumors (tumors from epidermal scales bounded by a bellows) of the ear canal, but which were more like a cholesteatoma . He in turn saw their origin in the sebum glands.

In 1857 Toynbee became a surgeon and lecturer at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London . Toynbee lived on Argyll Place in London while serving as a surgeon at St James's and St George's Dispensary. It was the phase in his life when he developed as a pioneer in the field of otology .

He studied the tuba eustachii and the eardrum and tried to restore the tympanoplasty .

Perforated eardrum, membrana tympani . Outside view of the external auditory canal.

Toynbee had observed that patients with a perforated tympanic membrane could subjectively hear completely or almost normally again for a short period of time if, for example, fluid had filled the opening in the affected eardrum. If this "liquid seal" disappeared, the improvement in hearing was also over. This observation led Toynbee to develop something that would seal the eardrum defect more permanently. His considerations were based on experimental therapies that other colleagues had already carried out.

In 1853, instead of a small cotton ball , as James Yearsley (1805-1869) had previously used, a round gutta-percha plate attached in the middle to a silver wire for insertion through the external auditory canal . The silver wire ended in a ring so that the entire device could be removed more easily. Although the patient often found the silver wire annoying, the Toynbee model ( artificial tympanic membrane ) was adopted and further developed, for example August Lucae in Berlin.

The patient had to practice using this Toynbee prosthesis; he learned to use the gutta-percha plate correctly and thus gradually increase the wearing time. The prosthesis was removed during the night.

Eardrum prosthesis according to Joseph Toynbee made of gutta-percha with a silver retaining wire for insertion through the external auditory canal.

Toynbee dealt intensively with the individual symptoms of the various ear diseases and looked for connections through changes in their pathological substrate. He autopsied a large number - around 2000 sections of the ear - of auditory organs. For Toynbee it was always astonishing how many changes were found in the autopsies on the ears of the deceased who did not experience any signs of illness or functional disorders during their lifetime.

One of his students was Ádám Politzer , who was personally in London around 1861. August Lucae from Berlin also practiced and studied with him and can be regarded as his student, and Anton Friedrich von Tröltsch also worked with Toynbee on his study trip to Dublin, Glasgow and London in 1855.

In 1841 he devoted himself entirely to otology, a previously hardly recognized subject in medicine. In 1864 he was finally appointed to a chair in ear diseases at St Mary's Hospital in London.

Toynbee tried the hearing loss of the Regent Queen Victoria through injections to cure the ear.

Joseph Toynbee died on July 7, 1866 from accidental inhalation of chloroform or hydrogen cyanide in his consulting room . Apparently he was conducting a self-experiment in which he accidentally inhaled the two substances in order to try a cure for tinnitus .

Toynbee was buried in St Mary's cemetery at Wimbledon .

Memorial plaque on the memorial fountain for Joseph Toynbee

Toynbee maneuvers

In medical practice, the “Toynbee maneuver” is a method of tube function or eardrum mobility test that goes back to the namesake. In a sense, it is the reverse of the Valsalva maneuver ; while the Toynbee maneuver lowers middle ear pressure, the Valsalva maneuver increases it. In the Toynbee maneuver, the patient is instructed to create a negative pressure in the nasopharynx in such a way that the patient swallows with his nose closed . As a result, an inward movement of the eardrum can be observed physiologically. If there is a tube ventilation disorder , the eardrum movement is missing when viewed directly with an otoscope or the tympanogram ( tympanometry ) shows corresponding deviations.

Publications (selection)

  • On the structure of the membrana tympani in the human ear. Richard Taylor, London 1851
  • On the use of an artificial membrana tympani in cases of deafness: dependent upon perforation or destruction of the natural organ. J. Churchill, London 1857
  • A Descriptive Catalog of Preparations illustrative of the Diseases of the Ear in the Museum of Joseph Toynbee. J. Churchill, London 1857
  • The Diseases of the Ear: Their Nature, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Blanchard and Lea, 1860
  • Hints on the Formation of Local Museums. Robert Hardwicke, 1863

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stanislaw Betlejewski; Andrzej Betlejewski: "Joseph Toynbee - otologist, scientist, philanthropist". Otolaryngologia polska. [in Polish] (August 2009) 63 (2): 199-203. doi : 10.1016 / S0030-6657 (09) 70106-4 . ISSN  0030-6657 . PMID 1968149
  2. ↑ The Toynbee convector, online
  3. ↑ Biography at Oxford University Press 2004-14, online
  4. ↑ The London Medical Gazette, 1850, November and Medico-Surgical Transactions. Vol. 45. VII. Series
  5. ↑ Hermann Schwartze: Historical note on cholesteatoma of the temporal bone. Archive for Ear Medicine, December 5, 1901, Volume 54, Issue 1–2, p. 141
  6. ↑ Wolf Lübbers: hearing improvement on time. The artificial eardrum. ENT News 2, 2011 (PDF; 621.87 kB)
  7. ↑ EA Chu; RK Jackler: The artificial tympanic membrane (1840-1910): from brilliant innovation to quack device. Otol Neurotol. 2003 May; 24 (3): 507-18.
  8. ^ Rudolf Probst; Gerhard Grevers; Heinrich Ivo: ear, nose and throat medicine. Georg Thieme, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-13-119031-0 , p. 232
personal data
SURNAME Toynbee, Joseph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English ear, nose and throat specialist
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1815
PLACE OF BIRTH Heckington ( Lincolnshire )
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1866
Place of death London