On exuberant growths of the tonsils as a fertile source of delicate health and arrest of development in young persons : with the treatment to be adopted for their removal / by James Yearsley.

  • Yearsley, James, 1805-1869.
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On exuberant growths of the tonsils as a fertile source of delicate health and arrest of development in young persons : with the treatment to be adopted for their removal / by James Yearsley. 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.

    14/70 (page 10)
    the elementaiy sounds, so as to make them indicative of various passions, and in singing birds of modulating them to most melodious music. Speech, on the other hand, is that power possessed by man alone, of so combining and altering the primitive sounds, after they have issued fi-om the larynx, as to form articulate language. Taken by themselves, the soimds of the larynx, even from the highest to the lowest note of the gamut, would go but a short way towards interpreting to his fellows the intellect, moral affections, and propensities of man. The sounds of the larynx may be considered the simple, and those of the organs of speech the compound, elements of language devised by the mind. Different classifications of articulate speech have been made by various physiologists; by far the most perfect is that which divides it into guttural, nasal, lingual, dental and labial. I may illustrate what I have here said by likening the instrument of the human voice to an organ, with which it most readily admits of comparison. The AA'ind-cbest may be considered in the place of the lungs ; the notes the chords of the larynx possess, as the holes of the instrument; the throat, the cavity of the mouth, and nasal tubes, being analogous to the pipes. But we cannot proceed further with the simile, if we confine ourselves to the organ alone. The power of articulation possessed by the tongue, palate, lips, and other parts under the direction of the mind, is not comparable to any parts of the organ itself, but rather with the hand and intellect of the perforaier on the instrument. Even in the present day, many persons look for the cause of stammering and other impediments of speech, to the larynx glottis, while they are undoubtedly disoiders of the power of artioulation alone. Aphonia, or loss of voice, generally coines on after one