Vocal and other influences upon mankind, from pendency of the epiglottis / by Sir George Duncan Gibb.

  • Gibb, Sir George Duncan, 1821-1876.
Date:
1868
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vocal and other influences upon mankind, from pendency of the epiglottis / by Sir George Duncan Gibb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    voice for declamatory reading whicli is remarkably powerful and beautiful; nevertheless, such persons are liable at all times to colds, from the necessarily impaired power of breathing. Young girls with this condition can never expect to become singers of any importance unless it is remedied; and in them, and in boys too, but especially in girls, the voice, in speaking, is not clear and silvery as it ought to be. In young people the tonsils are often enlarged when the epiglottis is pendent, for the natural circulation is not free and easy through the blood vessels of the throat. 11. Although the general health is apparently good, in a certain number of persons there is a disposition to sluggishness of body and general languor, the result of impeded respiration. In certain states of the atmosphere this renders them liable to attacks of disease to which they may be constitutionally pre- disposed. 12. During the prevalence of the ordinary exanthemata, such as scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, and diphtheria, or of epidemics of throat and chest affections, persons with a pendent epiglottis, particularly children and young people, are more liable to become affected than others whose iuind]piiie door, as I may call it, is wide open, and this for the reasons already given. 13. I am not going too far in saying, that in grown-up per- sons with a pendent epiglottis there is a greater risk towards the contraction of prevailing epidemic diseases than in those otherwise circumstanced ; and perhaps it may help to explain why, sometimes, comparatively healthy persons are struck down, while others, seemingly more delicate, escape. For it must be remembered, that when the breathing is not free, the general health indirectly suffers, through deficient arteilali- sation of the blood, and its effects upon the entire system. A great many grown up persons breathe with discomfort in their beds with a pendent epiglottis; and not a few become asthmatic and subject to chronic bronchitis as they advance in life. I am satisfied that few, very few, or perhaps none, in this country, at least, ever reach extreme old age with a pendent epiglottis. 14. Heretofore no person, with the exception of myself, has dwelt upon the importance of such a peculiarity as that I have
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