He also says, "It is one of the misfortunes of civilization that it has too many amusing and exciting things for the mouth to say, and too many delicious things for it to taste, to allow of its being closed during the day. The mouth therefore has too little reserve for the protection of its natural purity of expression, and too much exposure for the protection of its garniture; but, do keep your mouth shut when you read, when you write, when you listen, when you are in pain, when you are walking, when you are running, when you are riding, and by all means when you are angry! There is no person but who will find and acknowledge improvement in health and enjoyment from even a temporary attention to this advice."
Again he says, "There is a proverb, as old and unchangeable as their hills, amongst North American Indians, 'My son, if thou wouldst be wise, open first thy eyes; thy ears next, and last of all thy mouth, that thy words may be words of wisdom, and give no advantage to thine adversary.' This might be adopted with good effect in civilized life; he who would strictly adhere to it would be sure to reap its benefits in his waking hours, and would soon find the habit running into his hours of rest, into which he would calmly enter; dismissing the nervous anxieties of the day, as he firmly closed his teeth and his lips, only to be opened after his eyes and his ears in the morning, the rest of such sleep would bear him daily and hourly proof of its value."
Catlin regards the habit of sleeping with the mouth open the most pernicious of all bad habits. The horrors of nightmare and snoring are, according to him, but the least of its evil effects. He thinks "for the greater portion of the thousands and tens of thousands of persons suffering with weakness of lungs, with bronchitis, asthma, indigestion, and other affections of the digestive and respiratory organs," the correction of this habit is a panacea for their ills!
He insists that "mothers should be looked to as the first and principal correctors of this most destructive of human habits; ... and the united and simultaneous efforts of the civilized world should be exerted in the overthrow of a monster so destructive to the good looks and life of man. Every physician should advise his patients, and every boarding-school in existence and every hospital should have its surgeon or matron, and every regiment its officer, to make their nightly and hourly 'rounds,' to force a stop to so unnatural, disgusting, and dangerous a habit! Under the working of such a system, mothers guarding and helping the helpless, schoolmasters their scholars, hospital surgeons their patients, generals their soldiers, and the rest of the world protecting themselves, a few years would show the glorious results in the bills of mortality, and the next generation would be a regeneration of the human race."
The Windpipe ([pl. I], W).—Having examined the bellows of our vocal organ, we next notice the windpipe, by means of which the air is carried into and out of the lungs. It is an elastic tube kept open by 18 or 20 rings which do not quite meet at the back. It enters the lungs by means of two smaller tubes, which in their turn branch out very much like the roots of a tree, until their ramifications end in the microscopic cells of the lungs. The windpipe is capable of being slightly elongated or shortened, and narrowed or widened, and its interior is covered with a mucous membrane, which, as its name implies, is continually kept in a moist state.
The Voicebox, or Larynx ([pl. V]) may be described as resembling a funnel, the upper part of which has been bent into a triangular shape. Its front corner ([pl. V], 1) may be both seen and felt in the throat, and the general position of the voicebox is thereby at once indicated. The framework of the voicebox consists of five parts. 1st. The Ring cartilage ([pl. V], 2) is so named on account of its general resemblance to a signet ring. It is narrow in front, and has the part corresponding to the seal behind; the upper border ([pl. V], 8, 4) rises very considerably towards the back, where it is about an inch high. 2nd. Riding upon this, as it were, with its
Plate V.
SIDE VIEW OF THE VOICEBOX, OR LARYNX.