Harold Frederick Schuknecht. 1917-1996.

Harold Frederick Schuknecht, MD, Professor Emeritus of the Department of Otology and Laryngology at Harvard Medical School and Chief Emeritus of the Department of Otolaryngology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, who has died, at the age of 79, on October 19, 1996, was a world renowned clinical otologist, otopathologist, teacher and scholar. Harold Schuknecht was born in South Dakota in 1917. He received his undergraduate training at the University of South Dakota and graduated from the Rush Medical College at the University of Chicago in 1940. He completed his residency training in otolaryngology at the University of Chicago Clinics in 1949. It was there that he came under the tutelage and influence of John Lindsay, Henry Perlman, Heinz Kobrak, and William Neff, who profoundly influenced his subsequent scientific career. Harold Schuknecht was an accomplished and innovative otologic surgeon. He started his career as a member of the full-time faculty at the University of Chicago School of Medicine. At that time, his clinical activities were largely confined to head and neck surgery and endoscopy. In 1953 he accepted a position as Associate Surgeon at the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit where he concentrated his clinical work in otologic surgery and pursued basic scientific investigations into the pathophysi-ology of deafness. He was recruited as the Walter Augustus LeCompte Professor and Chair of the Department of Otology and Laryngology at the Harvard Medical School and Chief of Otolaryngology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in 1961, a position he held until retiring from his administrative and clinical activities in 1987. He was among the first surgeons in the United States to perform the modern stapedectomy procedure. He developed and introduced several pros-theses for stapes surgery, many of which are still in use worldwide. His innovations and equipment which he designed for mastoid tympanoplasty are still in wide clinical use. In 1956 he simplified and perfected transcanal labyrinthectomy for ablating vestibular function in Ménière’s disease, and also described the use of intratympanic aminoglycoside therapy for this disorder. He expanded the use of streptomycin by describing its use by the intramuscular route for individuals with bilateral Ménière’s disease in 1957 and later in 1970. In addition to his clinical expertise. Harold Schuknecht was an accomplished and world-