Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 1.djvu/126

 be reckoned the larynx, which, for the delicate simplicity of its structure, no less than for the number, importance, and complexity of its functions, is not exceeded by any other organ of the human frame. Placed like a sentinel, as it were, at the very threshold of the pulmonary system, the air, which is to supply the purposes of respiration, first comes into contact with this susceptible mechanism, and we all know, by experience, when certain noxious vapours are presented to it, with what admirable fidelity it executes its functions by excluding them.

The frequency of idiopathic diseases of the larynx, in adults as well as children, which it has been my lot to witness, and the melancholy fatality so common in these insidious and relentless maladies, make it a matter of surprise to me, that it should have been reserved for the medical writers of our day, to draw the special attention of the profession to its pathology. But, in the case of children, it seems endowed with a peculiar tendency to disease, and that of a specific kind, sometimes alone, at others in conjunction with the trachea.

Nor is it always an easy matter to distinguish between structural and functional disease of these parts, for a case may terminate fatally, where, on dissection, no lesion of structure may appear, and, in such instances, we can only account for its sudden fatality, by supposing the existence of some irregular action, as spasm. That the aperture of the glottis is often in a state of spasmodic constriction, is shewn by the crowing noise which some infants make in the act of respiration, even when they are adjudged to be in good health. This tendency to spasmodic constriction