Page:A cyclopedia of American medical biography vol. 1.djvu/79

 LARYNGOLOGY lxix

of the upper air passages. Certain laryngeal conditions in particular which were formerly common are now much less often met with.

The use of the sponge probang and the brush for making applications to the larynx, introduced by Horace Green and universally adopted abroad, was largely supplanted in the United States by the spray method, perfected about 1872 by Sass, although not suggested by him. In the surgery of the larynx the development of the operation of thyrotomy at the hands of Clinton Wagner is worthy of mention, also the work of Rufus P. Lincoln in the removal of retro-pharyngeal fibromata through the natural passages instead of after extensive preliminary operation.

One of the most valuable contributions to laryngology ever made was that of Joseph O'Dwyer, of New York, who in 1880, demonstrated that a foreign body could be tolerated by the larynx indefinitely and who devised and perfected the method known as intubation. While Bouchut had attempted something of the kind in 1856, and Horace Green and McEwen had shown that a catheter could be passed below the glottis and the patient thus enabled to respire, full credit for intubation is conceded to O'Dwyer, whose personal character as well as his achievements as a pathologist and an inventor cause him to rank as one of the great men of his time.

In 1886 Prof. Thomas R. French, of Brooklyn, presented a new and complete method for photographing the human larynx. Lennox Browne has succeeded in obtaining some indifferent pictures of the larynx of Emil Behnke, a famous teacher and vocalist, by means of the ordinary camera and an oxy-hydrogen light, but the exposures were not insian- taneous and his observations were confined to one individual. Dr. French evolved a complete system of laryngeal photography, whereby any patient whose larynx or pharynx could be demonstrated might be photographed. Sunlight was used at first, later the arc light. The exposure is instantaneous. Both physiological and pathological pro- cesses could be pictured. The art was perfected by Dr. French and his apparatus and methods have never been improved upon.

About this time Dr. Franklin H. Hooper, of Boston, was conducting his famous experiments upon the innervation of the larynx, with especial reference to the functions of the recurrent laryngeal nerve. His con- tributions to this department are of historic value. It was Dr. Hooper who returned from Europe bringing the information that Sir Morell Mackenzie had taught him to remove hypertrophied adenoids from the pharynx under general anesthesia, a method hitherto not accepted in this country. The introduction of this idea into the United States was effected by Dr. Hooper, with unspeakably beneficial results.

For the relief of deformities of the nose in general the work of Dr. John 0. Roe, of Rochester, New York, represents unequaled originality