This article appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1889. Mr Bell patented his perfidious device in 1876.

The British Medical Journal says: "As civilisation advances new diseases are not only discovered but are actually introduced by the novel agencies which are brought to bear on man's body and mind. The increase of insanity throughout the world is unquestionably due to the 'storm and stress' of our crowded modern life, and almost every addition which science makes to the convenience of the majority seems to bring with it some new form of suffering to the few. Railway travelling has its amari aliquid [something bitter] in the shape of slight, but possibly not unimportant, jolting of the nervous centres; the electric light has already created a special form of ophthalmia; and now we have the telephone indicted as a cause of ear troubles, which react on the spirits, and indirectly on the general health.

"M. Gellé has observed, not in women only, but in strong-minded and able-bodied men, symptoms of what we may call 'aural over-pressure', caused by the condition of almost constant strain of the auditory apparatus, in which persons who use the telephone must have to spend a considerable portion of each working day. In some cases also the ear seems to be irritated by the constantly recurring sharp tinkle of the bell, or by the nearness of the sounds conveyed through the tube, into a state of over-sensitiveness which made it intolerant of sound, as the eye, when inflamed or irritable, becomes unable to bear the light. The patients suffered from nervous excitability, with buzzing noises in the ear, giddiness, and neuralgic pains. In addition to these subjective symptoms, M. Gellé in some cases found objective lesions, such as a sub-inflammatory condition of the membrana tympani.

"The victims of 'telephone tinnitus', if we may so baptise this latest addition to the ills that flesh is heir to, seem all to be of markedly nervous organisation, and the moral may be drawn that such persons should not use the telephone."