Prof. Blumenbach on the Irritability of the Tongue . 
Iates the cruel deed of Tereus King of Thrace, perpetrated up- 
on Philomela the sister of his wife Procne *; 
— 44 Compressam forcipe lmguam, 
Abstulit ense fero. Radix micat ultima linguae, 
Ipsa jacet, terraeque tremens immurmurat atrae, 
Utque salire solet mutilatae cauda colubrae, 
Palpitat, et moriens dominae vestigia queerit.” 
Which, in truth, I had been accustomed, as often as I read it, 
to refer to the well known licence of poets, who assume an equal 
power with painters in matters of this kind, until my own ocular 
experience taught me, that the description was in no way incon- 
sistent with truth. 
For when, contrary to the opinion which I had hitherto held, 
concerning the remarkable irritability of the tongue of men, and 
of other mammalia, I saw that Sir Everard Home, who has dis- 
tinguished himself by his physiological investigations, so much 
diminished the vis insita of the organ in question, as to pro- 
nounce its muscular fibres to possess a smaller degree of irritabi- 
lity than almost any other part of the body -j-, I determined to 
satisfy myself regarding this point, as well by instituting experi- 
ments myself, as by consulting the observations of others. 
And nowhere did I expect to find a richer harvest of obser- 
vations upon this point, than in the numerous writings on the 
subject of the Hallerian irritability, in which innumerable ex- 
periments, instituted with the view of supporting or of subvert- 
ing the doctrine of muscular excitement, are described. 
But as it not unfrequently happens, with regard to disquisitions 
of this kind, that one may find among them every thing but 
just what he wants, this I found to be the case here also ; and 
I was not a little surprised, that nothing occurred, either in the 
writings of the first President of our University, on the subject 
of his celebrated discovery, the heads of which are contained in 
the commentaries of the Royal Society, or in the works of others, 
whether his supporters or adversaries, in the way of experiment 
or observation upon the irritability of the tongue. 
4 Metamorphos. vi. 
•j* Philosophical Transactions for 1803, p. 211. Observations on the structure 
of the Tongue. “ The internal structure of the tongue is less irritable than al- 
most any other organised part of the body.” 
