Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: An introduction to the use of the laryngoscope. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.
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![are now entirely superseded, for although they possessed an advantage in being readily and thoroughly cleansed, this was more than compensated by the loss of reflecting power of the steel or silver surface, due to scratching or to the action of reagents. In the same way the rhombic, oval, and D shapes have been almost entirely given up in favour of the circle, which possesses the advantage of being easily rotated in the mouth cavity and of being equally efficient whether introduced with the right hand or the left. Only in those cases in which the tonsils are so greatly enlarged as to present an obstacle to the intro- duction of the round mirror is the oval form to be preferred. Since the available space varies greatly in different patients, it is necessary to employ throat mirrors of various sizes. In Germany and Austria they are numbered from the smallest upwards, the numbers corresponding to the following diameters : No. 1 . . . . T7J inch ] 6 > J 1 „ Nos. 1 and 2 are chiefly used for posterior rhinoscopy and for the examination of very young children, while Nos. 3 and 4 are those most generally useful for adults, and it is to these sizes that the mirrors supplied with English instruments usually correspond. The wire stem should be fairly stout, so as not to bend too easily, and should be from 2J to 3J inches in length, and fastened at an angle of 125° to the surface](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21221455_0014.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
