Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin.

  • George Catlin
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Shut your mouth and save your life / by George Catlin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/114 (page 27)
    The mouth of man, as well as that of the brutes, was made for the reception and mastication of food for the stomach, and other purposes; but the nostrils, with their delicate and fibrous linings for purifying and warming the air in its passage, have been mysteriously constructed, and designed to stand guard over the lungs—to measure the air and equalize its draughts, during the hours of repose. The atmosphere is nowhere pure enough for man’s breathing until it has passed this mysterious refining process; and therefore the imprudence and danger of admitting it an unnatural way, in double quantities, upon the lungs, and charged with the surrounding epidemic or contagious infections of the moment. The impurities of the air which are arrested by the intricate organizations and mucus in the nose are thrown out again from its interior barriers by the returning breath ; and the tingling excitements of the few which pass them, cause the muscular involitions of sneezing, by which they are violently and successfully resisted. The air which enters the lungs is as different from that which enters the nostrils as distilled water is dif- ferent from the water in an ordinary cistern or a frog- pond. The arresting and purifying process of the nose upon the atmosphere, with its poisonous ingredients, passing through it, though less perceptible, is not less distinct, nor less important, than that of the mouth