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Show Preserving The Hearing As we think of the great number of hard of hearing individuals who are now wearing satisfactory hearing hear-ing aids we are apt to think that we have reached the point where all the hard of hearing accept this condition con-dition and are willing to wear hearing hear-ing aids. But this is not so. Dr. C. C. Bunch, Northwestern university school of speech, in an article on the conservation or preservation pres-ervation of hearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association Associa-tion says: "Recently an employer was asked what his reaction would be if someone some-one asked permission to test the hearing of his employees. He replied re-plied that he preferred to let sleeping sleep-ing dogs lie. A locomotive engineer was asked if he would invite some members of his union to come to the laboratory for hearing tests. No charge was to be made and the results re-sults were to be confidential. None appeared for the tests." Why do employers and employees avoid these tests? Employers are afraid that additional legal regulations regula-tions and questions of compensation compensa-tion will arise. Employees are afraid that it will bring about loss of employment. em-ployment. It is likely that most of us, whether we were employers or employees would do just as this employer em-ployer and employee did. However, just a little thought should convince all of us that as most cases of hard of hearing are not in an advanced condition but still have considerable hearing ability, abil-ity, the common sense thing to do would be to find out how much hearing hear-ing was lost, what was causing the loss, what could be done to prevent further loss and what could be done in the way of treatment or a hearing aid to bring the hearing up to or nearly up to normal. Dr. Bunch recounts the measures being used in factories, tunnels, airplanes air-planes and other places and occupations, occu-pations, to preserve, not restore, the hearing. One of the simple methods used to preserve hearing by shutting out noise is use of absorbent cotton ear plugs, covered with vaseline. |