"Audible Tinnitus"

Army doctors in Oklahoma City were puzzled. When Jack Husband, a healthy strapping, 20-year-old sophomore from Southwestern State College, presented himself for his pre-induction physical, they could hear a faint, metallic ticking that seemed to come from inside Jack's head. It was clearly audible four inches from his left ear; it could be heard, but more faintly, on the other side. When Jack insisted that the ticking had never bothered or pained him, the doctors passed him, and he now expects to be called for limited duty at the end of his college year.*

When Jack was nine years old, he was wrestling with a playmate who got his ear up close to Jack's head and heard the ticking. "What's that?" quavered the other boy. Up to that time, Jack had assumed that everybody ticked-- but he told his parents about it. In 1946, his parents took him to a medical convention, where he was examined by a score or more of ear-nose-throat specialists; they found out what made Jack tick.

He has a periodic (and apparently harmless) muscle spasm in the soft palate, at the top of his throat. The sound of the muscle twitch is carried along the Eustachian tube, as along a speaking tube, and is heard as a clocklike tick outside. The specialists assured themselves that the muscle twitch in Jack's throat, which they could see, was perfectly synchronized with the tick, which they could hear.

Jack's "audible tinnitus," as it is scientifically called, is rare but not unique; several other cases have been recorded in medical annals. Twice, at high altitudes, the ticking has stopped; the unaccustomed .silence, Jack says, almost drove him .crazy. Columbia Broadcasting System scouts were so fascinated by his tinnitus that they broadcast it last week over a national network.

* For news of the college student draft see NATIONAL AFFAIRS.

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