410 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[2'>d S. V. 125., May 22. '58. 



facts are as stated, and I had them from the very best 

 authority, old Zal Khan himself." 



On considering the above passage, it was deemed 

 advisable to write to Sir John M'Neill, late 

 British Ambassador in Persia, to inquire if his 

 experience in that country enabled him to give 

 any information on the subject. The following 

 letter was received in answer, bearing date Jan. 

 8, 1857: — 



" In answer to your inquiries about the powers of speech 

 retained by persons who have had their tongues cut out, 

 I can state from personal observation that several persons 

 whom I knew in Persia, and who had been subjected to 

 that punishment, spoke so intelligibly as to be able to 

 transact important business. More than one of them, 

 finding that my curiosity and interest were excited, 

 showed me the stump, and one of them stated that he 

 owed the power of speech to the friendship of the execu- 

 tioner, who, instead of merely cutting off the tip as he 

 was ordered, had cut off all that was loose in the mouth — 

 that is, all that could be amputated by a single cut from 

 below. The conviction in Persia is universal that the 

 power of speech is destroyed by merely cutting off the tip 

 of the tongue, and is to a useful extent restored bj' cutting 

 off another portion as far back as a perpendicular section 

 can be made of the portion that is free from attachment 

 at the lower surface. 



" Persons so circumstanced appeared to me to use the 

 arched portion of the tongue which is behind the point of 

 section, as a substitute for the whole tongue, or rather for 

 the tip. This precluded the articulation of certain conso- 

 nants, but guttural substitutes came to be used, which 

 after a little intercourse, when one had found out the key 

 — as in the case of persons with defective palates — became 

 quite intelligible. 



" I never happened to meet with a person who had 

 suffered this punishment, who could not speak so as to be 

 quite intelligible to his familiar associates. I have met 

 with several of them. 



" The mode in which the operation is performed as a 

 punishment will pretty nearly determine how much of 

 the tongue is removed in those cases in which it is said to 

 be cut out by the root. It was described to me as follows, 

 both by persons who had suffered and by others who had 

 witnessed it. A hook was fixed in the tongue near the 

 point, by means'of which it was drawn out as far as pos- 

 sible, and then cut off on a line with the front teeth — one 

 man said, within the mouth, just behind the front teeth." 



The letter of Sir John M'Neill, with the 

 statements of Sir John Malcolm and Colonel 

 Churchill, was subsequently communicated to 

 Sir Benjamin Brodie, who made the following ob- 

 servations on the subject in a letter dated Jan. 

 16, 1857: — 



" There seems to me to be nothing very mysterious in 

 the histories of the excision of the tongue. 



" The modification of the voice forming articulate 

 speech is effected especially by the motions of the soft 

 palate, the tongue, and the lips ; and parth' by the teeth 

 and cheeks. The mutilation of any one of these organs 

 will affect the speech as far as that organ is concerned, 

 but no farther : the effect being, therefore, to render the 

 speech more or less imperfect, but not to destroy it alto- 

 gether. 



" There is no analogy in the higher orders of animals 

 justifj-ing the opinion that the tongue grows again after 

 it has been removed. The facts which have been men- 

 tioned bearing upon this question are thus easily ex- 

 plained. 



" The excision of the whole tongue, the base of which 

 is nearly as low down as the windpipe, is an impossible 

 operation. The Eastern executioner, however freely he 

 may excise the tongue, always leaves a much larger por- 

 tion of it than he takes away. In the healing of the 

 wound, the tongue necessarily contracts from side to side, 

 it being a rule that the cicatrix of any wound is always 

 smaller than the wound itself. If the tongue be thus 

 contracted in its transverse diameter, it must be elongated 

 in the longitudinal diameter, and hence it would appear, 

 when the healing is completed, to project farther forwards 

 than it did immediately after the wound was inflicted." 



The general result of the above documents is as 

 follows: — 1st. We have the direct evidence of 

 Sir John Malcolm, Colonel Churchill, and Sir 

 John M'Neill, as eye-witnesses and ear-wit- 

 nesses, that the cutting out of all that part of 

 the tongue which is loose in the mouth does not 

 deprive the sufferer of the power of speech. 



2ndly. We have the high authority of Sir Ben- 

 jamin Brodie, not only for regarding such power 

 of speech as in accordance with known laws, but 

 likewise for the physical fact that the excision of 

 the whole tongue is an impossible operation, and 

 that however much may be cut out in a living 

 person, a much larger portion will be left behind. 

 Hence the statements made by a long series of 

 writers, beginning with the eye-witnesses Victor 

 Vitensis and iEneas of Gaza, that the tongues of 

 the African Confessors were cut out or torn out 

 by the roots, and the consequent expressions that 

 the Confessors spoke without tongues, must be re- 

 jected as inaccurate. This inaccuracy, springing 

 as it did from defective information respecting the 

 structure and length of the tongue, inevitably in- 

 troduced false ideas of the real phenomenon to be 

 explained ; and thus it now turns out that the 

 precise fact concerning which Gibbon intimates 

 his secret incurable suspicion, viz., that of the 

 Confessors speaking without tongues, undoubtedly 

 never occurred. Indeed, previous to Sir John 

 M'Neill, no writer seems to have conceived rightly 

 the result of this barbarous punishment, or to 

 have distinctly apprehended that the sufl'erers still 

 possessed tongues, however mutilated, after the 

 executioner had done his worst. This is a re- 

 markable instance that in matters of this kind 

 even honest eye-witnesses cannot always be de- 

 pended on, unless they have sound special know- 

 ledge, inasmuch as, without any intention to 

 deceive, they may easily mislead, by importing 

 into their statements their own preconceived ideas. 

 3rdly. There is some secondary evidence that 

 the excision of the mere tip of the tongue disables 

 the sufferer from speaking. That evidence, how- 

 ever, is not conclusive : and the eflfect of mutila- 

 ting the tongue does not seem to have been 

 observed by our countrymen, or by scrutinising 

 Europeans, in a sufficient number of cases to 

 justify the inferring any general laws as to the 

 degree of clearness with which the power of speech 

 may possibly be exercised, according to diversities 



