TONGUELESS SPEECH. 629 



mind. Surgeons are agreed, however, that, for the purposes of talking, 

 the more there is left of the " unruly member " the better. 



But, even after total extirpation of the tongue, persons have been 

 known to retain the faculty of speech without serious impairment. A 

 case of this character is related by Roland, surgeon to the French court 

 in 1630. It is that of a boy who lost his tongue, when six years old, 

 from gangrene, the result of an attack of small-pox. At the time he 

 came under observation, three years later, all that remained of the 

 organ was a slight, double prominence, flattened and attached to the 

 floor of the mouth, extending from the inside of the chin to the oval 

 aperture of the throat. This was composed of muscular tissue, divided 

 by a line, and was like two little muscles, with a furrow between them. 

 When it was pressed, or when the child spoke or swallowed, it swelled, 

 gathered itself up, and retracted from side to side toward its middle, 

 or from one side of the mouth to the other, like two leeches joined to- 

 gether. Roland believed these small bodies to be the remains of some 

 of the muscles ordinarily employed in the movements of the tongue. 

 This child's mouth was anomalous in other respects. The palate was 

 considerably flattened, and the teeth were in a double row, the outer 

 row being the milk-teeth, which had not been shed, and the inner row 

 the permanent teeth, which had come up behind, and pointed inward. 

 Both these conditions the French surgeon attributed to the absence of 

 the tongue, which, by its upward pressure, tends to produce the con- 

 cavity of the palate, and, by its forward pressure, to force the teeth 

 into a vertical position. The entrance to the pharynx was of an oval 

 shape, and unusually small. The uvula was long and thin, descending 

 almost to the epiglottis, and the tonsils were as large as chestnuts. 

 Notwithstanding the almost complete absence of any thing answering 

 to a tongue, and the additional defects enumerated, the child was able 

 to speak intelligibly. Bonami and Aurran have recorded similar cases 

 in the " Memoirs of the French Academy of Chirurgery." 



A still more remarkable example of the retention of the powers of 

 utterance, after loss of the tongue, is that of Margaret Cutting, whose 

 case was brought before the Royal Society of England in 1742, and 

 again in 1747. This girl lost her tongue by what was supposed to be 

 a cancer, when four years old. The disease first appeared in the shape 

 of a small black speck on the upper surface of the tongue, and rapidly 

 eat its way quite back to the root. One day, while the surgeon who 

 had the case in charge was syringing the parts, the tongue dropped 

 out, the girl immediately thereafter, to the great astonishment of those 

 present, saying to her mother : " Don't be frightened, mamma ; it will 

 grow again." Three months afterward it was completely healed, with 

 not a vestige of the tongue remaining. At the age of twenty this 

 girl was carefully examined by several competent gentlemen, who 

 report in the 44th volume of the " Philosophical Transactions " as fol- 

 lows, regarding her condition : " We proceeded to examine her mouth 



