War-Damaged Ears

On leave from Yale University, Col. Norton Canfield '25 will head the Veterans Administration plan to rehabilitate the ears of some 40,000 service men whose hearing was damaged by the noise of war. In looking ahead twenty years, Army and Navy officials expect around 300,000 more veterans to be hard of hearing. Colonel Canfield, who was senior consultant in otolarnygology in the European Theater, and before the war was associate professor of otolaryngology in the Yale Medical School, has been assigned to the Army Surgeon General's Office, where he will shape up this important long-range Veterans program. Patients are given tests which determine how much of their deafness is psychological, and how much is physical damage. Some are taught all over again the psychological process of hearing. Others will receive hearing aids and be taught lip reading, as an aid in making the eyes help the ears.

In 1937, Colonel Canfield went to Stockholm, Sweden, to study special phases of deafness. He is the author of many articles which have appeared in scientific journals.