“Young man,” she said solemnly—rather accusingly, in fact—“if the Lord put adenoids in the human nose he put ‘em there for some purpose.”
“Doubtless. But that purpose, whatever it may have been, no longer exists.”
“Everything in the human body has some use,” she persisted.
“Had,” corrected Dr. Strong. “Not has. How about your appendix?”
Mrs. Sharpless’s appendix, like the wicked, had long since ceased from troubling, and was now at rest in alcohol in a doctor’s office, having, previous to the change of location, given its original proprietress the one bad scare of her life. Therefore, she blinked, not being provided with a ready answer.
“The ancestors of man,” said Dr. Strong, “were endowed with sundry organs, like the appendix and the adenoids, which civilized man is better off without. And, as civilized man possesses a God-given intelligence to tell him how to get rid of them, he wisely does so when it’s necessary.”
“What have the adenoids to do with Betty’s deafness?” asked Mr. Clyde.
“Everything. They divert the air-currents, thicken the tubes connecting throat and ear, and interfere with the hearing. Don’t let that little deficiency in keenness of ear bother you, though. Most likely it will pass with the removal of the adenoids. Even if it shouldn’t, it is too slight to be a handicap. But I want the child to be repaired before any of the familiar and more serious adenoid difficulties are fixed on her for life.”
“Are there others?” asked Mrs. Clyde apprehensively.
“Oh, every imaginable kind. How could it be otherwise? Here’s the very first principle of life, the breath, being diverted from its proper course, in the mouth-breather; isn’t a general derangement of functions the inevitable result? The hearing is affected, as I’ve shown you already. The body doesn’t get its proper amount of oxygen, and the digestion suffers. The lungs draw their air-supply in the wrong way, and the lung capacity is diminished. The open mouth admits all kinds of dust particles which inflame the throat and make it hospitable to infection. By incorrect breathing the facial aspect of the mouth-breather is variously modified and always for the worse; since the soft facial bones of youth are altered by the continual striking of an air-current on the roof of the mouth, which is pushed upward, distorting the whole face.”