A treatise on the diseases and injuries of the larynx and trachea : founded on the essay to which was adjudged the Jacksonian prize for 1835 / by Frederick Ryland.

  • Ryland, Frederick (Surgeon)
Date:
1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the diseases and injuries of the larynx and trachea : founded on the essay to which was adjudged the Jacksonian prize for 1835 / by Frederick Ryland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

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    PHYSIOLOGY OF THE LARYNX. The larynx combines within itself the execution of two very important functions of the animal economy; one of which is inti- mately connected with our physical condition, the other with our moral and intellectual state. The former of these—^the most momentous by far—consists in the admission of air into the lungs, the regulation in some degree of its quantity, and in the resistance afforded to the ingression of foreign bodies which, by their presence within the lungs or larger air tubes, would be injurious or even destructive to life. The latter function is the production of the voice, and it is this which chiefly demands that complicated structure, that combina- tion of cartilages, articulations, and muscles, into the description of which I have previously entered. During the performance of ordinary silent respiration, the larynx is quite in a passive state, the rima glottidis is widely open- ed by the retraction of the arytajnoid cartilages from one another, and the air passes into the lungs and back again without encoun- tering any opposition. If any gas possessing irritating qualities, if much smoke or dust, be mingled with the air, the vigilance of the larynx is speedily aroused, and a frequent short cough is the answer that the lungs return to the call made upon them by the irritated larynx to expel from their interior the offending particles. That this cough is more the eflect of the irritation of the larynx than of the bronchial membrane, appears from these circum- stances : 1st, that, on such occasions, an uneasiness and sense of heat are felt at the situation of the riina glottidis; and, 2ndly, that the same effect can be produced by mechanically tickling the