CHAPTER XVI 



VOICE AND SPEECH 



A CUT carried horizontally backwards across the cartilage 

 which projects forwards as Adam's apple, a quarter of an inch 

 below its notch, would show that it is V-shaped, the point of 

 the V in front. Each limb of the V is a broad plate. In the 

 mid-line is a gap, the rima glottidis, through which the wind- 

 pipe communicates with the pharynx (Fig. 45). It is overhung 

 by the stiff leaf-shaped epiglottis, the edge of which can be felt 

 with the finger behind the tongue. (yXwrrk, the mouthpiece of 

 a reed-pipe, is the term commonly used, for short, for the rima 

 glottidis.) When air is being drawn into the lungs, the glottis 

 is widely open. In speaking or singing it is almost closed. It 

 is tightly shut whilst food is passing down the gullet. 



The glottis is bounded, as to its anterior two-thirds, by two 

 membranous folds, the vocal cords. In its posterior third it has 

 a triangular cartilage, the arytenoid, on either side. A distinc- 

 tion is sometimes drawn between the anterior part, bounded 

 by the vocal cords, and the whole glottis, the former being 

 termed " rima vocalis "; but it is scarcely justified, for, although 

 it is true that the anterior part is essentially the organ of voice, 

 and its margins alone vibrate when high notes are sung, the 

 anterior ends of the arytenoid cartilages also vibrate during 

 the production of low notes. (The substance of these pro- 

 cesses is not, properly speaking, cartilage ; it resembles the 

 epiglottis in containing a great abundance of elastic fibres.) 

 And here we must warn the reader not to picture to himself a 

 vocal " cord " as a kind of fiddle-string. It bears no resem- 

 blance to a cord, as we ordinarily understand the word ; it 

 is but a fold of mucous membrane, such as one might pinch 

 up between finger and thumb from the inner side of the cheek. 



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