Diseases of the nose and its accessory cavities.

  • Watson, W. Spencer (William Spencer), 1836-1906.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Diseases of the nose and its accessory cavities. 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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    (especially in those gifted with highly-organized olfactory organs, e.g., the dog, and other hunting carnivora) the nostrils, when raised and expanded, indicate attention and vigilance. So, too, in man, the connection between the respiratory function and the nostrils leads to a habitual movement of the latter, asso- ciated with a mental condition primarily affecting the thoracic viscera, but finding its expression partly in the face. Anxiety and expectation quicken the breathing and the heart's action, the nostrils rapidly expand and contract, for the purpose of admit- ting as full a stream of air as possible. Thus an expression of anxiety and expectation is depicted on the countenance, involun- tarily, automatically, and as a consequence of the associated movements of the nostrils, as part of the respiratory appa- ratus, with those of the more essential parts of the same apparatus. Fourthly. The nasal fossse and sinuses have an important effect on the tone (timhre) of the voice. If the voice passes unob- structed through the nasal cavities it has the ordinary or normal tone, but if the posterior nares are cut off from the pharynx by voluntary raising, firm closing of the soft palate, or by swelling of the parts, a peculiar modification of the voice is produced, and M. Lespagnol* seems to have proved that ventriloquists produce their peculiar effects by a forcible closing of the pos- terior nares by elevating and fixing the soft palate against the back of the pharynx. The reverberation of the vocal sounds in the sinuses seems to have a somewhat analogous effect to that produced by the fossae of the os hyoides in the howling monkeys (Cebus Seniculus and Cebus Beelzebut). The effect on the voice of partial obstructions of the posterior nares is well known in ordinary catarrh, in which there is a peculiar thickness in the articulation ; and the sounds of m and n are specially altered into the sounds h and cl: thus, nose is cloze and music is converted into hoozic. The same kind of thickness and indistinctness of utterance is observed in a certain affection of the naso-pharyngeal cavity, described as adenoid vegetations by * Lespagnol, Dissortation sur rEngastrinisme, Paris, 181]. C 2