EVIDENCE FOR HARVEY AND LEE (Please debate the specifics right here. Don't just claim someone else has debunked it!)

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Tracy Parnell writes:

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they themselves just ignore those pesky unanswerable questions that destroy H&L. Like why did the forensic examination of the body of "Harvey" have signs of the mastoid operation that "Lee" had?

Good observation. But it isn't just Armstrong's handful of followers who ignore uncomfortable evidence. It's worth looking at how the master himself dealt with the evidence from the exhumation autopsy report.

Let's start with the relevant parts of his two characters' biographies. Harvey and Lee, p.23:

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On February 8, 1946 Lee Oswald ... was admitted to the Harris Hospital in Fort Worth where he was diagnosed with "acute mastoiditis, left." ... A mastoidectomy was performed on Lee Oswald's left ear.

p.897:

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Lee Oswald had ... a mastoidectomy operation in 1946.

(N.B. The bold-face in these quotations is part of the original text's bizarre typography.)

p.946:

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It was Lee Oswald who had the mastoidectomy operation in 1945 [sic]. ... After Dr Rose completed the autopsy [in 1963] Harvey Oswald's body ... was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth.

pp.946-7:

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On October 4, 1981 Oswald's remains were removed from his grave ... and taken to the pathology laboratory at Baylor Medical Center in Dallas. ... the examination team announce that based upon forensic scientific examination, that consisted of matching the teeth with Marine Corps dental records, "The remains in the grave marked as Lee Harvey Oswald are indeed Lee Harvey Oswald."

NOTE: The remains examined by Dr Norton were of Harvey Oswald. ... This man was not Lee Oswald.

In these passages from his holy text, the prophet Armstrong has revealed unto us a central, eternal truth of 'Harvey and Lee' doctrine: it was 'Lee' who had undergone the mastoidectomy operation, and it was 'Harvey' who was buried in the grave.

Unfortunately, the official report of the exhumation autopsy (see http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/parnell/norton1.htm), which was published in January 1984, mentioned that the body in the grave was that of someone who had in fact undergone a mastoidectomy operation:

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The mastoid prominence of the left temporal bone revealed an irregularly ovoid 1.0 by 0.5 cm defect pene­trating to the interior of the mastoid bone with the defect edges rounded and smooth. ... The left mastoidec­tomy defect also correlated with the antemortem medical records.

Armstrong must have been aware of the evidence of a mastoidectomy defect, because he cited the scientists' report in his book (in note 37 on page 963), and he quoted part of it. When he wrote Harvey and Lee, which was published in 2003, he must have known that this evidence flatly contradicted his claim that the doppelganger buried in the grave was not the doppelganger who had undergone the mastoidectomy operation. If the scientists' report was true, Armstrong's theory was false.

Armstrong had the best part of two decades to deal with the problematic information about the mastoidectomy defect. How did he respond? He ignored it. There is no mention in Harvey and Lee (at least, none that I can find, and none that is referred to in the index) of the fact that the exhumed body in the grave was of someone who had undergone a mastoidectomy operation, let alone an acknowledgement that the fact demolished his theory.

All we get is the assertion that "The remains examined by Dr Norton were of Harvey Oswald." No evidence or argument is given to support this assertion. No clue is given by Armstrong to anyone who might have struggled through to page 947 that the central part of his theory had been conclusively debunked by professional scientists in a reputable scientific journal two decades earlier.

You might think that Armstrong would have felt obliged to make some sort of effort to deal with the evidence in the scientists' report. But he didn't even try. He could easily have done so, because there are several obvious alternative explanations for the apparent existence of a mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave:

(a) The scientists could have been bribed or threatened.

(b) Their report could have been faked, like every other piece of evidence that contradicts the 'Harvey and Lee' theory.

(c) The undertakers in 1963 could have been forced by bribery or threats to bury the wrong doppelganger. Of course, this wrong doppelganger would have needed to be killed first, and the body of the other deceased doppelganger would have needed to be disposed of somehow without the general public finding out, but anyone powerful enough to run a top-secret long-term doppelganger project, especially a project involving two unrelated boys from different parts of the world who magically grew up to look identical more than a decade later, wouldn't have had any trouble getting around these trivial obstacles.

(d) Armstrong's fictional character, 'Harvey', could have been given an unnecessary mastoidectomy operation at the age of six just in case his body might need to be dug up nearly four decades later.

(e) Little green men could have swapped the bodies of 'Harvey' and 'Lee' during the exhumation in 1981 by beaming one of the bodies up to their spaceship and beaming down the other. No-one would have noticed because ... um, because ... the spaceship was invisible. Yes, that's it! They arrived on earth in an invisible spaceship.

Armstrong failed to mention any of these alternative explanations, each of which is more plausible than the 'Harvey and Lee' theory. Armstrong simply had no answer to the scientists' report. By not mentioning the issue, he misled his readers. The sort of gullible people at whom the 'Harvey and Lee' theory is aimed probably wouldn't be aware of this part of the scientists' report, and Armstrong clearly preferred that they remain in ignorance.

The important point is that Armstrong, who must have been aware that very strong evidence existed which was absolutely fatal to his theory, simply didn't bother to mention the problem. It's the behaviour of a snake-oil salesman, not of someone with a credible theory to promote.

[Jim Hargrove]

On 9/23/2019 at 6:04 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

Thanks for responding to this post.  In all honesty, I was hoping to lure Jeremy Bojczuk here to debate some of the issues I’ve listed above.  I’m still hoping he’s just working on some lengthy post about the mastoidectomy--his usual method to avoid the other issues--and will soon appear here.

AT LAST!  As I predicted, Mr. B. finally plays what he considers to be his ace in the hole, the mastoidectomy.

I’ll admit that for many years this confused me, but my bet now is that it was Russian-speaking Harvey Oswald all along who had the procedure done, and not American-born Lee (although it was a far more common procedure in the early to mid 20th century than it is now).  Hoover found out about it (if memory serves, there’s a reference to the mastoidectomy in the English translation of a Moscow medical document published by the Warren Commission) and he faked an entry into a U.S. medical record or two to make the histories match.

Anyone who has spent some time reviewing the old FBI “Series 2” microfilm set from EMI knows that the FBI processed documents from all over the place, not just its own reports. As far as I could tell by just browsing through one of the many rolls with a microfilm reader, just about all printed documentation went through the Bureau, regardless of who allegedly produced it.

Many o us here have demonstrated for years how the FBI faked so many documents, including reports of eyewitnesses, docs about the rifle purchase, tax forms, payroll records and so on.  I think we can add an old medical report or two to the list.

And, as always, let me offer the following exhibits to anyone who thinks such FBI treachery didn’t happen.

 

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 LIES OF THE FBI

The FBI’s malfeasance in this case was legion and is well known by most members of this forum.  The short (3 minute) YouTube video below demonstrates quite clearly how the FBI altered the observations of three critical Dealey Plaza witnesses who believed shots may have been taken at JFK from outside of the Texas School Book Depository, thus contradicting the official story.

 

 

The FBI went to extraordinary lengths to suppress evidence of what CIA accountant James Wilcott called the “Oswald Project,” including sending out agents within hours of the assassination to confiscate original school and teen-aged employment records of “Lee Harvey Oswald.” In the wee hours of the night of Nov 22-23, 1963, the FBI secretly took “Oswald's Possessions” from the Dallas Police Department, transported them to Washington, D.C. altered them, and then secretly returned them to Dallas, only to publicly send them to Washington. D.C. a few days later. Among a great many other alterations, a Minox “spy camera” became a Minox “light meter.” Tax records, not found by Dallas police who said they initialed each scrap of paper, magically appeared without DPD initials.  FBI agent James Cadigan inadvertently spilled the bean about the secret transfer during his sworn WC testimony, which was altered by the WC.

 

The FBI falsified so much testimony that it even had a process in place for routinely doing so, including over the objections of Warren Commission attorneys.  

 

For more about how the FBI altered evidence, see this link:

Manipulated, Fabricated, and Disappearing Evidence

It is clear that the FBI was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to hide the truth about the Kennedy Assassination and “Lee Harvey Oswald.”  

 

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

As usual, Jim avoids the question, which is: why did Armstrong ignore the evidence from the autopsy report?

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The important point is that Armstrong, who must have been aware that very strong evidence existed which was absolutely fatal to his theory, simply didn't bother to mention the problem. It's the behaviour of a snake-oil salesman, not of someone with a credible theory to promote.

All we got was the standard 'Harvey and Lee' excuse: the evidence was faked. Yesterday, the medical records were genuine. Today, they are fakes. You see, in 'Harvey and Lee' world, if a piece of evidence can be made to fit the theory, that means the evidence must be authentic. But if it contradicts the theory, that means the evidence must have been faked. This sophistry makes the theory unfalsifiable, and hence worthless. Jim, just like his revered master, is using the techniques of a snake-oil salesman.

Let's get back to the point I raised. Why did Armstrong refuse to even mention that the autopsy report contradicted the carefully assembled biographies of his two fictional characters? He knew about the mastoidectomy defect. He knew that it destroyed his theory. Why didn't he mention this? Hmm ... let me think ... I wonder what the reason could be ...

If Armstrong had anticipated Jim's reply and had written that "J. Edgar Hoover's dog ate the medical records", he would at least have acknowleged the fact that evidence existed which contradicted a central part of his theory. But not mentioning the fact of the mastoidectomy defect at all seems thoroughly dishonest.

Is there a credible reason for Armstrong's behaviour that doesn't make him look like a cheap con artist?

[Jim Hargrove]

On 9/23/2019 at 6:04 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

Thanks for responding to this post.  In all honesty, I was hoping to lure Jeremy Bojczuk here to debate some of the issues I’ve listed above.  I’m still hoping he’s just working on some lengthy post about the mastoidectomy--his usual method to avoid the other issues--and will soon appear here.

Readers may note that, exactly as I predicted, Mr. B continues to use the mastoidectomy as an excuse to ignore all the evidence for two Oswalds, including what has already been presented in this very thread.  He does so because he believes his analysis, in his view, is “fatal” to the Harvey and Lee analysis.

But that simply isn’t true.  I have suggested a simple and entirely possible explanation—that it was the Russian-speaking Oswald all along who had the mastoidectomy, not the American-born Oswald.  And I have shown that the minor evidence alterations required very much fit the pattern of FBI treachery that John A. and so many others have documented for decades

Mr. B clearly just wants to discuss what he thinks are the deficiencies in John’s writing on the single topic of the mastoidectomy, rather than examine ALL the evidence for two Oswalds, or even just the biological evidence for two Oswalds.  So....

Let me add another bit of biological evidence for Mr. B to ignore.  One Oswald was 5’9’ tall and the other was 5’11” and quite a bit heavier.

Although there are scattered references to “Oswald’s” height at 5’5”, 5’6” 5’8”, and two at 5’10”, the vast majority of documents list his height at either 5’9” or 5’11”.

To take just three examples: The autopsy report of “Lee Harvey Oswald” lists his height as 5’9”, exactly matching the height listed on many other documents.  But the 9/3/59 USMC medical exam and the 10/12/59 Armed Forces Report of Transfer or Discharge both list his height at 5’11”.  None of these measurements are self-reported.

And then there is the issue of American-born Oswald’s missing tooth or teeth.  I really should bring this up every time Mr. B attempts to use the mastoidectomy to avoid all the other evidence.  So....

Here is the evidence John first noted many years ago..

In the fall of 1954, LEE Oswald was in the 9th grade at Beauregard JHS, where he became friends with a kid named Ed Voebel after Voebel witnessed him in a protracted fight with the Neumeyer brothers, Johnny and Mike.  Voebel and a couple of other kids attempted to patch Lee up.  This was in November. Voebel told the Warren Commission that Oswald lost a tooth in the fight.

Mr. JENNER. But you do remember that you attempted to help him when he was struck in the mouth on that occasion; is that right?
Mr. VOEBEL. Yes; I think he even lost a tooth from that. I think he was cut on the lip, and a tooth was knocked out.

Soon after the fight, Voebel took a famous photograph of Oswald that he eventually sold to LIFE magazine after the assassination.  It appears to show LEE Oswald with a missing tooth.

About a half century later, after one of a number of meetings John Armstrong had with Marina (Oswald) Porter, she handed him all the original photos of the 1981 exhumation.  Here is one of them.

 

As you can see, there is no missing front tooth.

From this starting point, Sandy Larsen developed substantially more evidence.  John Butler also discovered recently that the 1955 Civil Air Patrol photo (which also depicts David Ferrie) seems to show American-born LEE Oswald with a missing tooth that is clearly present in the exhumation photo.   Here is a link to Sandy's thread on the missing teeth:

Sandy Larsen’s Study of “Oswald” Dental Records

I personally have the Feb. 21, 1964 edition of LIFE magazine which contains the big halftone reproduction of Voebel's photo that fills up all of page 70 and extends onto page 71. The images above (except Marina's exhumation graphic) were taken by me, or processed from my copies, and I did my best to make the most accurate reproductions possible.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

3 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

 I have suggested a simple and entirely possible explanation—that it was the Russian-speaking Oswald all along who had the mastoidectomy, not the American-born Oswald.

The burning question is will Armstrong be endorsing your new explanation and have it added into the official H&L literature (via the H&L website) or are you going out on your own ala David Josephs? Armstrong apparently has not endorsed Sandy's theories and as far as I know has never endorsed any changes to his work by others at all.

[Jim Hargrove]

That's what you consider to be a "burning question?"

Several parts of Sandy Larsen's original dental discoveries were added to HarveyandLee.net at roughly the same time Sandy first published them here.   Last time I discussed the mastoidectomy with John, he wasn't convinced by my analysis.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

6 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

That's what you consider to be a "burning question?"

Several parts of Sandy Larsen's original dental discoveries were added to HarveyandLee.net at roughly the same time Sandy first published them here.   Last time I discussed the mastoidectomy with John, he wasn't convinced by my analysis.

Thanks for the reply. I stand corrected on Sandy then.

[Cory Santos]

So researcher Michael Eddowes brought up the two Oswald theory a long time ago.  His work led to Oswald's body being exhumed.  As a kid, I watched an episode of "In Search Of" from 1980 on Oswald.  Therein Eddowes brought up the two Oswalds and the mastoidectomy among many other things.   

So my question is who was the first to bring up the two Oswald theory.  It seems it was Eddowes and the Harvey and Lee work grew out of Eddowes work.  If I am wrong please correct me.  I never see Eddowes receive any credit which seems strange.

[W. Tracy Parnell]

29 minutes ago, Cory Santos said:

So researcher Michael Eddowes brought up the two Oswald theory a long time ago.  His work led to Oswald's body being exhumed.  As a kid, I watched an episode of "In Search Of" from 1980 on Oswald.  Therein Eddowes brought up the two Oswalds and the mastoidectomy among many other things.   

So my question is who was the first to bring up the two Oswald theory.  It seems it was Eddowes and the Harvey and Lee work grew out of Eddowes work.  If I am wrong please correct me.  I never see Eddowes receive any credit which seems strange.

I believe the first was Richard Popkin who published "The Second Oswald" back in 1966. "Alias Oswald" by Cutler and Morris also predated Armstrong. But you are right, each theory built on previous work.

Edited October 6, 2019 by W. Tracy Parnell

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Jim Hargrove writes:

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Mr. B continues to use the mastoidectomy as an excuse to ignore all the evidence for two Oswalds

Actually, Mr B continues to use the mastoidectomy to show that Armstrong's treatment of the exhumation autopsy report appears to be dishonest.

Jim has now failed, twice, to answer a simple question. Let's see if we can prise a straight answer from Jim at the third attempt. Here goes:

Armstrong was aware of the report which showed that the body in the grave had undergone a mastoidectomy. Armstrong must also have been aware that this evidence contradicted his own assertion that the fictional doppelganger who had been buried in the grave was not the one who had undergone the operation:

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It was Lee Oswald who had the mastoidectomy operation ... Harvey Oswald's body ... was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery ... The remains examined by Dr Norton were of Harvey Oswald. ... This man was not Lee Oswald.

(Harvey and Lee, pp.946-7; bold-face in the original)

If the autopsy report was true, a central element of the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy was false, and Armstrong knew it.

Armstrong's book was published 19 years after the autopsy report. He had almost two decades to come up with an explanation for the existence of a mastoidectomy defect on the body in the grave, a fact which, if true, demolished his theory. How did he deal with this problem?

He didn't claim that the scientists were lying, or that their report had been faked, or (like Jim) that medical records which had been genuine for well over half a century suddenly became fakes in October 2019, or that some aliens who were hovering over the exhumation in their invisible spaceship happened to beam up the body in the grave ('Harvey') and replace it with that of 'Lee'. Instead, Armstrong decided that the best thing to do was simply to ignore this inconvenient piece of evidence, pretend it didn't exist, and hope that no-one noticed.

Armstrong was faced with a problem that's fatal to his theory, and rather than dealing with it he neglected even to mention it, thereby misleading his readers. Why did he choose to mislead his readers in this way?

Is Jim able to explain this apparently dishonest behaviour in a way that doesn't make Armstrong look like a con man?

Edited October 7, 2019 by Jeremy Bojczuk
Added a link

[Jim Hargrove]

How typical that Mr. B calls John A a “con man” when, in fact, he knows perfectly well that John gave up an income that, based on past performance, would surely have amounted to millions of dollars to pursue JFK assassination research exclusively for more than a decade.  How fair minded of Mr B to say that this kind of behavior makes “Armstrong look like a con man”!

I would be happy to discuss more freely the mastoidectomy evidence and analysis presented in Harvey and Lee, but since Mr. B’s partner Greg Parker clearly has nothing better to do than record my every online keystroke and react with feigned outrage, so that Mr. B himself can be outraged and post a link to it here, I’m not going to do it.

Mr. B continues to demonstrate that his only interest here is attempting to criticize Harvey and Lee.  He clearly has no interest whatsoever in exploring the significance of the trainload of evidence John A and others have brought to this case about multiple Oswalds.  Not a bit of that has any interest to him.  Just like the con man who isn't interested in the mark's money.

EDIT: Interesting that just minutes ago the Ed Forum's "Online Users" list indicated that "Greg Parker" was reading this very thread (at around 4:20 pm PDT).    No doubt he'll work up his latest tirades and send them to Mr. B so that they can both express their outrage about Harvey and Lee here.  KEEP IT COMING, BOYS!  I LOVE POSTING EVIDENCE!  AND THERE IS SO MUCH MORE....

Edited October 8, 2019 by Jim Hargrove

[Jim Hargrove]

13 hours ago, Cory Santos said:

So my question is who was the first to bring up the two Oswald theory.  It seems it was Eddowes and the Harvey and Lee work grew out of Eddowes work.  If I am wrong please correct me.  I never see Eddowes receive any credit which seems strange.

Cory,

J. Edgar Hoover brought up the possibility nearly three and a half years before the assassination of JFK.  In a post he sent to the State Department and others, Hoover wrote, “there is a possibility that an imposter is using Oswald’s birth certificate….”  See the last paragraph below.  The funny thing is, Hoover was entirely correct.  The "Oswald" who was trying to "defect" to the Soviet Union was indeed an imposter, though an unusually long-tern one.

John describes the work of Michael Eddowes starting on page 946 of Harvey and Lee, but the important error that Mr. Eddowes made was that he assumed a Russian agent was substituted in the Soviet Union for American-born Lee Harvey Oswald.  He didn't realize that the Russian-speaking Oswald had been living in the United States for more than a decade. When Linda Norton's exhumation panel declared that the corpse was indeed that of "Lee Harvey Oswald," they were entirely correct.  But they didn't realize that two different "Lee Harvey Oswald's" were sharing the same identity, including in the USMC. 

[Jim Hargrove]

On 9/23/2019 at 6:04 AM, Jim Hargrove said:

In all honesty, I was hoping to lure Jeremy Bojczuk here to debate some of the issues I’ve listed above.  I’m still hoping he’s just working on some lengthy post about the mastoidectomy--his usual method to avoid the other issues--and will soon appear here.

I’ve stated before that I think it was always the Russian-speaking Oswald who had the mastoidectomy, that Hoover found out about it, and that Hoover did what he always did in this case: fake the evidence.

Mr. B will no doubt state for the umpteenth time how outraged he is by the mastoidectomy coverage in Harvey and Lee, adding that he is so horrified that he simply can’t consider anything else.  But when he’s done....

Will Mr. B ever answer this simple question?  

How did “Lee Harvey Oswald” serve in Atsugi, Japan, and in Ping-Tung, Formosa (Taiwan) at the very same time? Why, day after day, are two "Lee Harvey Oswalds," both serving in the U.S. Marines, in two widely separated places?  

Will Mr. B finally answer this question, or will he just continue to hide behind his mastoidectomy outrage?  Answer: He won’t respond to the question because he can’t.  Perhaps he will say the answer is somewhere else.

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3. The Marine Corps records are a gold mine: my favorite chronicles Harvey Oswald's trip to Formosa (Taiwan) while Lee was being treated for VD in Japan.

HARVEY Oswald Departed for Taiwan Aboard the USS Skagit (AKA 105) on Sept. 14, 1958. Note "AKA 105" Under "Record of Events" near top left of this document:

The Unit Diary below shows that HARVEY Oswald was in Ping Tung, Taiwan, on Oct. 6, 1958.

Here’s a 1953 image of the ship Harvey Oswald took .  Note the “K.A. 105” lettering by the bow.

 

During this very same time Harvey was aboard the USS Skagit and stationed in Taiwan, LEE  Oswald was being treated for V.D in Atsugi, Japan.  From September 14 through October 6 HARVEY Oswald was in Taiwan. At the same time, from September 16 through October 6, LEE Oswald was in Japan. Medical records for NAS Navy 3835 (Naval Hospital), located in Atsugi, Japan, show numerous medical entries for LEE Oswald recorded on Sept 16, 20, 22, 23, 29, and Oct 6.. HARVEY Oswald's assignment in Taiwan, while LEE Oswald made numerous visits to the Naval Hospital in Japan, are an obvious "smoking gun."

 

 

[Jeremy Bojczuk]

Jim Hargrove writes:

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Mr B ... knows perfectly well that John gave up an income that, based on past performance, would surely have amounted to millions of dollars to pursue JFK assassination research exclusively for more than a decade

No, Mr B did not know that, although he had read somewhere that Armstrong wasn't short of money. Mr B took it for granted that the prospect of financial reward wasn't what motivated Armstrong to write Harvey and Lee. But none of that has anything to do with the point Mr B raised.

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to say that this kind of behavior makes “Armstrong look like a con man”

That wasn't what Mr B said. Mr B's point, which Jim has now avoided answering three times, was that it is Armstrong's treatment of the mastoidectomy evidence that makes him look like a con man.

Note the phrase "look like". Perhaps there's an alternative explanation for Armstrong's apparently dishonest behaviour. Mr B has invited Jim three times (without success, so far) to provide an explanation other than the obvious one: Armstrong was deliberately ignoring evidence that seriously undermined his theory.

The point is that the mastoidectomy defect contradicted the central element of the 'Harvey and Lee' fantasy: the carefully detailed biographies of his two fictional characters. The wrong doppelganger was buried in the grave. Scientific evidence proved that Armstrong's theory was wrong. Armstrong must have known this. Yet he failed to even mention the problem. By doing so, he misled his readers.

For the fourth time: is there a plausible, respectable reason why Armstrong did not even mention the mastoidectomy defect in his book?

[Sandy Larsen]

20 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

J. Edgar Hoover brought up the possibility [of an Oswald imposter] nearly three and a half years before the assassination of JFK.  In a post he sent to the State Department and others, Hoover wrote, “there is a possibility that an imposter is using Oswald’s birth certificate….”  See the last paragraph below.  The funny thing is, Hoover was entirely correct.  The "Oswald" who was trying to "defect" to the Soviet Union was indeed an imposter, though an unusually long-tern one.

 

And right there we have another solid piece of evidence for the Harvey & Lee hypothesis. A hypothesis which I believe to be factual because of its overwhelming evidence.

In contrast, Jeremy has virtually nothing in his arsenal of arguments and has to resort to the weak mastoidectomy question. Jim has just given a perfectly reasonable explanation for both Oswalds appearing to have had a mastoidectomy. Including proof that authorities suspected an Oswald imposter when he was still very young (only 20 years old), a fact that supports the idea of a young-Oswald double.

Another reasonable explanation is simply that BOTH Oswalds may have had mastoidectomies as children. I did some research on this a few years ago and found that mastoidectomies were fairly common back then. I performed some rough calculations which indicated that about one in 40 children at the time underwent the surgical procedure. The procedure was readily performed at any sign of mastoid infection because the complications of mastoiditis -- including death -- were rather dire. It was then the number one killer of children.