The irony of being Oscar: The legendary life and death of Oscar Wilde

In this second in a series of famous historic personages who suffered from ear disease (see Yardley M, Rutka J. Troy, Mycenae, and the Otologic Demise of Herr Heinrich Schliemann. J Otolaryngol 1998; 27:217-221), we review th e life and otology-related death of the legendary playwright Oscar Wilde. I n his time, Wilde ridiculed the social hypocrisy of the Victorian age, cham pioned the individual, and pleaded for a more tolerant and forgiving societ y in his many books, plays, and letters. Very much the acerbic and iconocla stic wit, Wilde's private and later very public affair de coeur with Lord A lfred Douglas, the son of the Marquis of Queensberry, still continues to in terest and paradoxically shock our sensitivities. Wilde's ultimate demise f rom an otogenic bacterial meningitis appears all the more ironic when one c onsiders the role his father, Sir William Wilde, played as one of the found ing fathers of modern otology.