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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    8, Applying tlie calculation of this per centage to the popu- lation of Great Britain^ which, by the last census, was deter- mined to be 28,887,519, eleven per cent, gives the number of 3,177,627 persons who have not a vertical or erect epiglottis. Or, if the population of Europe be taken, which is estimated at 272.000. 000, eleven per cent, gives the number of pendencies as 24,727,273. I think I am safe in saying that other Euro- pean nations would resemble our own in the comparative frequency of pendency. But if the test is applied to the natives of Asia and Africa, the results are startling. 9. I have submitted some 280 natives of India and China and various parts of Africa, with the adjacent islands, to ex- amination, and what does the reader suppose was discovered ? It was this :—every single person, of both sexes—I may say without any real exception—had the epiglottis pendent. This startled me at first; but to test the matter fairly, through the kindness of my friend Mr. F. M. Corner, surgeon to the Insti- tution, I was permitted to examine all the inmates of the Home for Asiatics at Poplar, as late as the 25th of July last, and without any single exception, the epiglottis was found completely pendent in all. There were several fine, young, and lively negroes from the River Congo in Africa, in whom we might have expected to find the cartilage in a vertical position. But no ; it was completely pendent. Finding, therefore, that in the 280 natives of hot climates, such as exist in Asia and Africa, the epiglottis was pendent in all, or nearly all, we are driven to the conclusion that it must be a common peculiarity to the races of those great continents. There is this to be said, however, regarding these pendencies: the examination was made exclusively in this country, and it is just possible that the cartilage may have become pendent in a tolerable number on their change from a hot climate to our more temperate one. Nevertheless, I am not disposed to attach too much importance to this, because I have been satisfied on several occasions of the fact, that Europeans acquire pendency by a lengthened stay in hot climates. The estimated population of Asia is 750.000. 000, and of Africa, 200,000,000; whilst Oceana is set down at 2,000,000. All these together amount to 1,150,000,000