Obituary : Victor Goodhill; Ear Surgeon, Medical Writer

Victor Goodhill, an internationally recognized eye, ear, nose and throat surgeon best known as the otologist whose interests ranged from establishing clinics for hard-of-hearing children to Ludwig von Beethoven’s deafness, has died.

A spokeswoman for UCLA, where he was a professor emeritus and chairman of the board of the school’s Hope for Hearing Research Foundation, said Goodhill was 83 when he died Monday.

Goodhill, who worked with Louise Tracy to establish the John Tracy Clinic (named for Spencer and Louise Tracy’s deaf son), was also an accomplished violinist, intrigued with how musicians, Beethoven in particular, overcame their handicaps. For many years he was a regular participant in monthly meetings at UCLA in which physicians and lay people studied disabled artists of the past.

In 1983 Goodhill helped produce “Beethoven: Triumph Over Silence,” which has been shown throughout the United States. In the film Goodhill demonstrates how the 18th-Century German actually could hear some of his music despite a hearing loss that began in the composer’s 20s and had become severe by the time of his death in 1827 at age 57. Goodhill also dismissed a centuries-old report that the composer lost his hearing because of syphilis, blaming instead Paget’s disease.

Goodhill, a 1936 graduate of USC Medical School, was involved in some of the earliest procedures to correct otosclerosis, a calcium buildup on the bones of the stapes, which in the early 1940s was treated by boring through the skull to create a sound window. Later he placed sophisticated cochlear implants where his crude tools had once been.

There were no antibiotics for infections when he started to practice and ear surgeries often were life threatening, he told The Times in 1985 as another unit--the Victor Goodhill Ear Center--was preparing to open.

He was USC School of Medicine alumnus of the year in 1972 and in 1976 received the fifth Joseph Toynbee Memorial Lectureship at the Royal College of Surgeons in England.

He was a prolific author as well, publishing the first text on stapes surgery in 1960, a text in 1980 entitled “Ear Diseases, Deafness and Dizziness” (now being revised) and more than 150 journal articles and 25 chapters in other medical books.

He also was active in the Jewish community, as chairman of the Board of Overseers at the University of Judaism, as a member of the Board of Governors at Sinai Temple and as a board overseer for the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

And music--which he studied at the New England Conservatory in Boston--remained a passion. He was concertmaster of the USC Symphony Orchestra and a board member of the Music Guild of Los Angeles.

But not necessarily all music.

And especially not loud music.

“There’s a certain sickness in wanting to be vibrated by loud noises,” he said scornfully.

Goodhill suffered a minor hearing loss himself in his later years.

But it did not affect his playing.

The only thing that affected his music, he said, “is that I don’t practice.”

Survivors include his wife, Ruth; a son, Dean; a daughter, Barbara; a sister, and four grandchildren.