On the treatment of deafness : connected with enlargement of the tonsils and other diseases of the throat, and on the consequences arising from the removal of those glands / by William Harvey.

  • Harvey, William, 1807-1876.
Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the treatment of deafness : connected with enlargement of the tonsils and other diseases of the throat, and on the consequences arising from the removal of those glands / by William Harvey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    28/148 (page 8)
    ON EXCISION OF Description of the State of the Palate and Pha- rynx—The whole of the throat must have been in a state of complete ulceration; but it had affected more the membranous parts than the glands; for the tonsils are entire and perfect, while the soft palate and pharynx have so adhered, that you can hardly imagine they ever had been separate, or that the appearance is anything but a mal-conformation. The whole circle of the fleshy palate adheres to the back part of the pharynx: and it is not an adhesion, slight or superficial, of the edge merely, but the very substances of the velum pendulum and of the pharynx are so mixed and incorporated, that you could not believe them ever to have been otherwise. If there be any distinction of substances, it is only that which is marked by a firmer and whiter line, running in a semicircular form: the much-thickened and ulcerated flesh of the palate seems by swelling to have been pressed as close upon the back of the pharynx, as if it had been held firm by stitches. There is not the slightest vestige of the openings towards the nostrils; one flat curtain of firm flesh, hard as cartilage, extends from the posterior arch of the palate bones, and declines insensibly into that part of the tube which we call the back of the pharynx, and by its inclination, like a pent-house, makes a perfect and imperforated arch. In the middle of this arch there is a whiter spot, which marks the place where the uvula had been, which