Each morning after my session in the gym, I have a coffee and a chat with two friends. Recently, we talked about professional vocabularies – as a doctor I spent years learning new terms, many derived from Latin or Greek. By way of an illustration, I mentioned the ‘tragus’, the small protuberance that forms a flap just in front of the earhole (see illustration). I would have learned this word when studying anatomy, but it was years later that I discovered its circuitous origin that involved both languages plus a knowledge of goats – the male goat has a similar appendage! This blog is not about word origins but about an incident in which the tragus played a central part. I had been reminded of the event as we talked.

As a student, I was interested in ears, and Indian ones at that. Indeed, before graduating I published an article in the Lancet about a man with an essentially Indian condition called Hypertrichosis pinnae auris or “hairy ears”!

My research at the time led me to read widely and in so doing I learned about a very odd custom involving the ears of British officers stationed in India in the nineteenth century. It appears that each morning these senior soldiers woke clean shaven thanks to an ingenious practice in which Indian barbers used a razor to ‘wet’ shave them while they were still asleep. With the lightest of touches these barbers would start by shaving the upper, exposed side of the officer’s face. Next, by gently massaging the officer’s tragus, the barber would ‘half’ wake his customer and coax him to turn over so exposing the other side of the face and allowing that also to be shaved. And in all this the officer remained oblivious. Importantly, a way of waking someone without their being startled was exactly what I would need around ten years later.

After graduation, apart from looking after patients, I did research. I particularly wanted to understand how blood vessels control the flow of the blood that passes through them. To do this I studied the behaviour of the large veins on the back of the hand. For these studies I was helped by healthy volunteers – usually medical students – who, during experiments were asked to stay very still and to remain awake. Twitching is common when asleep and if this occurs the study risked being abandoned, something to be avoided if at all possible. Planning each study would sometimes take days so successful studies were precious commodities.

One afternoon midway through a study, the volunteer – a male student in his early twenties –  began to ‘drift off’ and despite reminding him several times to keep awake his eyes finally closed and for all intents and purposes he was, indeed, asleep. To salvage the study something had to be done. 

My memory of the Indian barber’s trick suddenly came to mind. Talking had failed and not wanting to wake him with a jolt I decided to give this hearsay system a try. I leaned forward and massaged his accessible tragus – the one on the right. Nothing happened the first time but during my second massage he opened his eyes and with a bemused expression asked:  “Excuse me, what exactly are you doing?” 

I immediately realised that explaining my behaviour was not going to be easy;  massaging a student’s ear – or anyone else’s for that matter – to wake him or her up was not exactly standard practice and, in reality, basing my action on unproven historical observations was indefensible. Not surprisingly, it was soon obvious that my attempt to justify my action was not working. 

However, I had one thing on my side – the scene was actually the stuff of comedy even pantomime, and luckily the student saw the funny side of it too. But it all could have been so very different – what would have happened if he had claimed assault? What if he had spread rumours about my intent? In fact, there were no repercussions and I was able to complete the study successfully with no further problems. 

Now, when I tell this story, its audacity and its quirkiness never fail to make me laugh, as it did my two coffee friends that morning. However, the ‘what ifs’ also come to mind and, privately, these make me shudder! I wonder what the student told his friends! By the way, my behaviour then would now be seen as totally unacceptable.

For helping me write this blog I would like to thank Julian, Terry, Sasha, George, Rohan and Vivien.

The illustration is a photo of a young man’s ear showing, at the centre, his earhole half-covered to the right by the tragus, a prominence which is part of the cheek.