A Gruesome Case of Ear Trouble
A logger near Ladysmith undergoes a painful ordeal when a fly turns his ear into a nursery.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
John Mikina, a rancher and logger residing near Ladysmith, is the subject of a queer affliction. While driving home from town one evening last week, he felt a bug or fly of some kind strike his ear and crawl in. He endeavored to remove it and supposed he had done so. A few days later, his ear began to pain him, and he thought he could feel something crawling within. It became unbearably painful, so he prevailed on a friend to pour the ear full of turpentine. The effect was magical: twenty maggots came from the ear. A number of persons witnessed the exit of the maggots. Dr. Greene was called and concluded that the fly had remained in the ear long enough to 'blow,' possibly in a small, unnoticed sore. The patient is recovering.
“The effect was magical. Twenty maggots came from the ear.”
This stomach-turning report was typical of the 'wonders' category in the 1890s, where small, grotesque health mishaps were treated as bizarre local entertainment. While we might classify this as a medical disaster today, it serves as a reminder of the isolation and lack of immediate medical access experienced by laborers in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the century.
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