The External Ear as a Means of Identification

Abstract

By this short address, illustrated by lantern slides, I hope to bring before our Society a subject worthy of discussion, inasmuch as it adds another aid in criminal identification which has for many years attracted the attention of criminologists at home and abroad. At the outset I must confess that my interest in the configuration of the ear has not been born of a criminological quest; but owing to frequent uncorroborated assertions that tumours and cancer are hereditary, I have paid for years close attention to the study of the ear-not as an aural surgeon-to the configuration of the external ear, being under the impression that an organ of such multiplex units and complex development, in relation with which defects are common but cancer rare, would afford valuable information along these lines. By some scientists certain shapes of ear are viewed as peculiar to certain types of physiognomy; by others the form of the ear is taken to be a gauge of intelligence or as an indicator of some special talent: for example, the ear of Mozart was of phenomenal extent. Now, it may be true that it is advantageous for a musician to possess a large receiver of sound, but the tuning of the auditory fibres and cells is of far greater importance. The several types of ear vary in shape (irregular, quadrilateral, triangular, oval, round, or pyriform), in thickness, and in orienta-