Throat ailments : more especially the enlarged tonsil and elongated uvula in connexion with defects of voice, speech, hearing, deglutition, respiration, cough, nasal obstruction, and the imperfect development of health, strength, and growth, in young persons / by James Yearsley.

  • Yearsley, James, 1805-1869.
Date:
1856
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Throat ailments : more especially the enlarged tonsil and elongated uvula in connexion with defects of voice, speech, hearing, deglutition, respiration, cough, nasal obstruction, and the imperfect development of health, strength, and growth, in young persons / by James Yearsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    18/140
    seventeen years, justifies me in saying, that in the whole range of surgery, no operation is so uniformly successful in its result as that for the removal of enlarged tonsils, or rather, strictly speaking, the removal of morbid growths from the tonsils, for the tonsils themselves, as has been erroneously supposed, are never removed; or, at least, there is always sufficient of the glaud left to perform the function for which it was originally destined, namely, the secretion of mucus to lubricate the food in its passage to the stomach. Among the marked effects of enlarged tonsils may be frequently noted the arrest of the growth of young persons. This well-attested fact may be thus accounted for:— 1. Any impediment to the due transmission of blood to the brain must exercise a prejudicial effect upon the nervous system. By the enlarged tonsil exerting a pressure upon the carotid artery in its passage up the side of the neck, such impediment is created. 2. From the lacunae of enlarged tonsils issue foul secre- tions, which taint the food in its passage down the throat to the stomach; the body therefore is deprived of its due supply of pure and wholesome nourishment. 3. The air which the sufferer from enlarged tonsils takes into the lungs in the act of breathing, is vitiated by having to pass over a diseased condition of the throat; consequently it is tantamount to the patient living in an unwholesome atmosphere, or an unhealthy and unsuitable climate. In illustration of these effects I will quote a case. A medical gentleman, in large practice at Pimlico, con- sulted me on behalf of his child. She %vas one of several children, and had suffered the usual ailments resulting from the presence of enlarged tonsils, but her dwarfish appear- ance particularly arrested my attention. The father listened to my observations on this, as being among the prejudicial