THE REPAIR of central perforations of the tympanic membrane has received practically no mention in current textbooks of otolaryngology and had received relatively scant attention in the literature prior to World War II. However, rupture of the tympanic membrane as a wartime injury focused much more interest on the closing of perforations, and a review of the literature during and after World War II is much more rewarding on this subject. Although Marcus Banzer1is generally mentioned as the first, in 1640, to propose a prosthesis treatment, Yearsley2was the first to seal over eardrum perforations with cotton-wool pledgets. Afterward came Toynbee's3rubber disc as a patch prosthesis. The principle of patch therapy is much in use currently, and the present favorites seem to be various thin papers or Cargile's membrane. The other important principle in eardrum repair, acid cautery of the perforation margins, was introduced by