Later and numerous references to his deafness scattered throughout his letters and recorded by his friends and associates all point, with one exception, to the steady, pitiless progress of a disease, at that time unamenable to treatment, which finally totally deprived him of the sense most important to the musician; the one exception in question is that recorded by Charles Neate as heard from Beethoven's own lips in 1815, and is to the effect that in a fit of anger Beethoven threw himself upon the floor, and on arising found himself practically deaf in his right ear. There was no explanation of this occurrence offered, but, taken in connection with the report of the autopsy, it is apparent that the sudden loss of hearing in the right ear was the result either of a form of apoplexy of the labyrinth such as occurs in connection with the more advanced stages of chronic catarrh of the middle ear, or was due to a peculiar affection of that portion of the internal ear devoted to sound perception and consequent upon constitutional disease. Setting aside this incident, it may be noted that, while himself aware of the gradual increase of his deafness, it was not until eight years later, in 1806, that it became especially appreciable to others, after which time its increase was so rapid that it could no longer be kept secret; the degree of the disability varying with his general condition, but its progress being always downward, in 1815 it had so increased that he abandoned his proposed visit to England, and before his death the hearing had become so much affected that his playing ceased to charm, he would play so loudly at times as to break the strings or drown soft passages of the right hand by striking the keys accidentally with the left, while the hearing for his own voice even had become so imperfect that he spoke with unnatural loudness and deficient modulation.