“…Among otologists (Alexander, 1943;Palmer, 1943;Silcox and Schenck, 1944;Wilson, 1944) the sulphonamides soon found a place in the therapeutic armamentarium for topical treatment of a ruptured TM, and early insufflation of microcrystalline sulphathiazole or sulphanilamide was advocated to be of value in preventing complicating infection. However, this local prophylactic treatment was soon abandoned (Craig, 1944;Collins, 1944;Bettington, 1945;Henry, 1945;Ireland, 1946;Hugh, 1946;Folbre, 1947;Baron, 1948;Friedman, 1948) because of unfavourable results and is now only used by a few (Rybak and Johnson, 1983). Systemic prophylactic antibiotics (sulphadiazine or penicillin) have often been administered in patients with severe surgical injuries and traumatic TM perforations (Hugh, 1946;McReynolds et al, 1949), but the treatment has never been proved to facilitate or promote spontaneous myringeal healing (Hepskind, 1957;Pulec and Kinney, 1973;Kerr and Byrne, 1975;Seifi, 1976;Mawson and Ludman, 1979;Kerr and Smyth, 1979;Lindeman et al, 1987).…”