THE LARYNGOSCOPE AND RHINOSCOPE. 173 



of the head. In the latter proceeding it is not the back of the head 

 which we see, but, as is hardly necessary to add, merely its reflec- 

 tion in the mirror. 



And at this point we should remark that, while the laryngeal 

 examination to one versed in the art is comparatively easy, the 

 rhinoscopic examination, on the other hand, is a very difficult matter, 

 and calls into play no small amount of skill and ingenuity. The rea- 

 sons for this are mainly because of the unruliness of most palates, 

 which have a tendency to bob up and down in a very provoking 

 manner. We shall not dwell further upon this point, but briefly add 

 a few remarks as to what this instrument has clone for us. Where 

 we can apply it we are no longer in the dark as to whether a case of 

 disease is that of a chronic catarrh, nasal tumor, simple inflammation, 

 swelling, or ulceration. In our climate, in which diseases of the nasal 

 cavities, and particularly catarrh, are so prevalent that it has been 

 estimated that 10,000,000 of our people have the disease called 

 catarrh to a greater or less degree, every advance by which we are 

 enabled the more successfully to combat these complaints is of gen- 

 eral interest and importance. How potent our climate is in causing 

 catarrh is illustrated in the case of Charles Dickens, who contracted 

 it so rapidly and severely as to necessitate his abandoning many en- 

 gagements and compel his flight from this country. Interesting is 

 the fact, which Darwin records in his " Descent of Man," that the 

 Cebus azarce, a species of Paraguayan monkey, is liable to catarrh 

 with all of the symptoms found in his more human relatives, and 

 which when often recurrent leads in them to consumption. 



The higher animals, like man, are endowed with an organ of voice 

 and sound, but man alone has the supreme gift and faculty of express- 

 ing!; the ideas and thoughts which his intellectual endowments aud 

 powers give rise to, or, plainly speaking, he alone has an articulate 

 language equal to the expression of most of his feelings and senti- 

 ments. How wonderful, then, it becomes to us when we study the 

 little organ which has the great task of placing man in direct com- 

 munication with his fellow-beings ! And how wonderfully this little 

 organ modulates its tones in accordance with the varying degrees of 

 emotion and earnestness ! And when we consider that each voice has 

 its own peculiarities and characteristics which distinguish it from all 

 others, our interest deepens. And yet there is little or in fact no dif- 

 ference in the mechanism of the various kinds of voice, the variations 

 in pitch being due chiefly to the greater length of the vocal cords 

 in the low-pitched voices and to their shortness in the high voices. 

 Tone, whether in speech or song, is simply a result of the action of a 

 volume of air in a quantity which is regulated by the will of the speaker 

 or singer, which, coming up from the lungs through the windpipe, 

 passes up through the larynx, where it causes the elastic vocal cords 

 to be put upon the stretch to a greater or less degree according as 



