Recently I heard about ear candling [March 10] from a friend and, ever on the prowl for novel ways to rid myself of earwax, decided to investigate. My friend’s mother and sister had tried ear candling and were enthusiastic about its virtues. One ecstatic earwax remover reported that a “gumball-sized” glob of earwax was recovered after the procedure. That was incentive enough for me. Sure enough, inserting and burning an ear candle produced yellow, stinky wax in the stub of the candle tube. However, I was suspicious of the source of said wax and demanded that a “control candle” be burned in free air, with no ear attached. Ear-candling devotees worldwide cried out in sorrow when we cut the stub open to reveal…another glob of stinky yellow wax!
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Cecil, it’s all a sham, a ruse, a hoax. Would that it were otherwise. –Bill Gribble, Tina Gessler, Austin, Texas
The medical team consisted of Keith Block, a family practitioner with an interest in alternative medicine, and Cecil’s good friend Clark Federer. Clark was a surgeon rather than an ear-nose-throat guy, but I meant to be prepared for any eventuality. Our subject was Pat, a 30-year-old male who’d had earwax removed via conventional medical treatment some years earlier.
