Labyrinthine Way

To the sufferer, sidewalks sag, buildings wag. These are some of the symptoms that signal the onslaught of Meniere's disease, a recurring disorder of the inner ear that can in acute cases destroy the sense of balance and cause violent nausea, severe vertigo and progressive deafness. First recorded in detail by a 19th century French ear doctor, Prosper Meniere, the disease has been attributed to a variety of causes--cysts, tumors, allergy, arterial spasms, bacterial or viral infections, even psychological factors--and tends to disappear with the passage of time.

The worst victims are subject to terrifying sensations. Their arms and legs, like reflections in an amusement park's crazy mirror, seem to change size and shape continually. The ground rolls like an ocean swell. The simplest tasks become all but impossible. Victims are unable to sew without making their hand a pin cushion, to peel a potato without cutting it in half, to crack an egg without smashing it. The ears ring and hum.

In the past, some of the treatments for Meniere's disease have been almost as bad as the disease. Surgery to destroy the diseased part of one labyrinth ends the vertigo but leaves the whole job of balancing to the other ear and the eyes. It also deafens the ear involved. Another supposed cure has been the injection of alcohol into the nerves leading from the ear to the brain, but this sometimes causes facial paralysis. Now, in Edinburgh, the electrical engineering firm of Bruce Peebles & Co., Ltd. is perfecting an ultrasonic gun that doctors hope will cure crippling cases of Meniere's disease with less disastrous aftereffects.

The gun's rays are created by a quartz crystal, which converts electrical energy from an oscillator into mechanical vibrations in the air at a frequency of 1,000,000 cycles per second. A cone-shaped concentrator mechanically coupled to the crystal intensifies these vibrations and produces a sharply defined beam. The surgeon removes a small portion of the bone behind the ear, acoustically irradiates the exposed canal with the gun's waves. Much as a soprano's high note can shatter a wineglass, the beams shot from the gun are supposed to shake the diseased cell structure and destroy it. In preliminary tests on a group of 22 sufferers treated with the ultrasonic waves, 15 were relieved of further at tacks of the disease, and four showed marked improvement. In some cases, patients have even been able to hear better after treatment. But because of the inter mittent nature of Meniere's disease, it is difficult to prove whether the gun cured the victims or the disease cured itself.

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