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 PALAMEDES VII. in 1814, when he returned to Madrid with the king, and was confirmed in his post of captain general of Aragon. In 1820 he re- tired from office and pronounced in favor of the constitution, and in 1823 signed a protest against the absolutism of Ferdinand VII. In 1833 he joined the party of Queen Isabella, was imprisoned for a time on a false charge, and in 1836 was made duke of Saragossa. PALAMEDES, a legendary Greek hero, son of Nauplius and Clymene. He served in the ex- pedition against Troy, and for a time was com- mander-in-chief in place of Agamemnon, whose measures he opposed. According to the old Cyprian epic, he was drowned while fishing, by Diomedes and Ulysses ; but a later tradition is that he was accused of treason by Ulysses, who concealed gold or a forged letter from Priam in his tent, and then charged him with having been bribed by Priam. When Palamedes was led out to die, he exclaimed : " Truth, I lament thee, for thou hast died even before me." He is not mentioned by Homer, but was made the subject of tragedies by ^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and by some represented as the inventor of lighthouses, weights and measures, dice, and the alphabet. PALATE, the bony and muscular partition which separates the mouth in vertebrate ani- mals from the anterior and posterior nasal cavi- ties. The bony or hard palate forms the roof of the mouth, and consists of the horizontal portion of the superior maxillary bones in front and of the palate bones behind ; these form a parabolic arch, bounded in front and on the sides by the upper teeth and their sockets, cov- ered by mucous membrane, and giving attach- ment posteriorly to the velum palati or soft palate. The width, contractions, elevations, extent, and perforation by larger or smaller in- cisive or other openings, are valuable charac- ters in estimating the rank of the various sub- divisions of vertebrates, those being the highest in which this part is broadest, uniform, and least pierced by foramina, making a complete partition as in man; the changes in the pal- ate bones are connected with corresponding modifications in the sphenoid, and consequent- ly with the whole anatomy of the skull. The soft palate is a movable muscular partition, covered by mucous membrane; its free edge floats above the base of the tongue, having in its centre a conical appendage, the uvula, and on its sides the so-called "palatine arch- es," of which there are two on each side, the anterior and the posterior; they consist of crescentic folds of mucous membrane enclo- sing muscular fibres. The triangular space be- tween the two arches on each side is occupied by the tonsils. The irregularly circular orifice embraced by the palatine arches, which leads from the back part of the mouth into the pharynx, is the " isthmus of the fauces." The mucous membrane of the palate is studded with mucous follicles ; its arteries are derived from the external carotid, and its nerves from the PALATE sir trifacial, the glosso-pharyngeal, and Meckel's ganglion. The muscles of the palatal regions are the circumflexus palati, from the internal surface of the pterygoid process to the velum, stretching horizontally the soft palate, and di- The mouth widely open, showing the tongue below, and the hard and soft palate and uvula above, with the isthmus of the fauces in the centre. On the left are shown the fibres of the glosso-pharyngeal and palatine nerves, dis- tributed to the mucous membrane. lating the Eustachian orifice ; the levator palati, from the petrous portion of the temporal bone, raising the palate and carrying it backward; the azygos uvulce, vertical, forms the chief part of this organ, raising it with the palate ; the palato-pJiaryngeus forms the posterior pill-ar of the palate, depressing the velum and eleva- ting the pharynx ; the constrictor isthmi fau- cium, in the anterior pillars, extending from the base of the tongue to the velum, depresses the latter and elevates the former. The soft palate is endowed with acute sensibility, and in the neighborhood of the uvula and its arch- es, and to a less degree on its anterior portion, ministers to the specific sense of taste. The mucous membrane of the palate is. subject to inflammations, and the bones are attacked in syphilis and other cachectic diseases ; these parts are also liable to arrests of development, in which the mouth and nasal cavities communi- cate through a fissure, with or without hare- lip. In this deformity deglutition is difficult, sucking impossible, and the voice indistinct and nasal ; surgery is necessary for its relief, and by the operation of staphyloraphy, which consists in placing and keeping in apposition the incised edges of the fissure, a partial or complete closure may be effected ; where this is impracticable, relief may be obtained from gutta percha or metallic plates.