A historical vignette (21). A tribute to noise.

A tribute to noise. Noise is not only the harmful waste of the world of sounds. Some noises have contributed, or continue to contribute, an added value in three fields at least: Internal Medicine, Audiology and Music. Moreover, they are perceived naturally by the ear (Figure 1).

Analysis and psychotherapy by telephone: twenty years of clinical experience.

Psychoanalysis via telephone is becoming increasingly prevalent while remaining an area of comparatively little study. The author's early telephone treatment of a series of patients living some distance away or engaged in business travel, and his subsequent telephone treatment of nine analytic and five psychotherapy patients following his own geographic move, are discussed in detail. The mechanics of beginning and carrying out such treatment are examined. The theoretical implications of the shift to the telephone and the ambivalence with which it is often met by clinicians are also explored. The role of nonverbal communication in both in-person and telephone analysis is considered, as is the concept of the analytic office as a literal space and a psychological container. Suggestions for future research are advanced.

The changing nature of office work: effects on repetitive strain injuries.

This historical perspective underscores that there is rarely a simple connection between the demands of a particular technology and the risk of occupational disease.

On call and online: sociohistorical, legal, and ethical implications of e-mail for the patient-physician relationship.

Increased use of e-mail by physicians, patients, and other health care organizations and staff has the potential to reshape the current boundaries of relationships in medical practice. By comparing reception of e-mail technology in medical practice with its historical analogue, reception of the telephone, this article suggests that new expectations, practice standards, and potential liabilities emerge with the introduction of this new communication technology. Physicians using e-mail should be aware of these considerations and construct their e-mail communications accordingly, recognizing that e-mail may be included in the patient's medical record. Likewise, physicians should discuss the ramifications of communicating electronically with patients and obtain documented informed consent before using e-mail. Physicians must keep patient information confidential, which will require taking precautions (including encryption to prevent interception) to preserve patient information, trust, and the integrity of the patient-physician relationship.

Harvey Fletcher's role in the creation of communication acoustics.

As the reader might appreciate after reading Fletcher's 1953 views, in 1918 Fletcher had taken on the toughest problem of all: to quantify and model how we hear and understand speech. This understanding allowed AT&T Bell Labs engineers to develop the necessary specifications of what was to become the largest telephone network in the world. The problems that Fletcher and his colleagues studied were so complicated, and took so many years, that it has been difficult to appreciate the magnitude of their accomplishments. It is therefore understandable why his work has had such a great impact on our lives. Almost single-handedly he created the fields of communication acoustics and speech and hearing as we know them today. Everyone who has ever used the telephone has reaped the benefit provided by this man and his genius. von Békésy, Davis, Stevens, and Zwicker are some of the names that come to mind when we think of hearing. Bell invented the telephone, and Edison made it into a practical device. Harvey Fletcher may not be as well known as these men today, but his scientific contributions to the fields of telephony, hearing, and human communication are absolutely unsurpassed. Given this present opportunity to reflect back on this great man, I would describe Harvey Fletcher as the singular intellectual force in the development of present-day communication acoustics and telephony.

[The telephone accident--a contribution to the history of traumatic neuroses]. / Der Telephonunfall--ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der traumatischen Neurosen.

In the decades after the introduction of the Bell telephone in 1876, a variety of otological and neurological disorders were described as an effect of the sustained use of the telephone. Telephone accidents giving rise to symptoms of traumatic neurosis were conceived of as being caused by electric current, by acoustical trauma or by an emotional shock, reflecting the general discussions concerning the aetiology of traumatic neurosis. With regard to the evidence documenting the anxiety aroused by the experience of the new telecommunicative medium, the disappearance of the phenomena of telephone trauma can be attributed to the habituation to this experience in the process of civilization.