Ear-trumpet

In middle-age, the novelist Evelyn Waugh became increasingly deaf in his right ear: here he puts his ear-trumpet to unusual use. He loved his ear-trumpet, which, though uselessly antiquated in appearance, was a highly refined and effective instrument of amplification.

After another attempt to open a conversation with the old lady, I roared into her ear-trumpet that she had not got colitis, but that I was sure she would get it if she did not give up her pâté de foie gras.

She is the most continual talker I ever heard; it is really like the babbling of a brook, and very lively and sensible too; and all the while she talks she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ of intelligence and sympathy between her and yourself.