Book 1
5
Sometimes, also, the parts concerned in deglutition are paralysed, which is the sole help and safety of persons in apoplexy, both for the swallowing of food and for the transmission of medicines. For not only is there danger of want of nourishment and hunger, but also of cough, difficulty of breathing, and suffocation; for if one pour any liquid food into the mouth it passes into the trachea, neither the tonsils coming together for the protrusion of the food, nor the epiglottis occupying its proper seat where it is placed by nature, as the cover of the windpipe; we must, therefore, pour honeyed-water or the strained ptisan into a piece of bread resembling a long spoon, and passing it over the trachea, pour its contents into the stomach; for in this way deglutition is still accomplished. But if the patient be in the extremity of danger, and the neck with the respiration is compressed, we must rub the neck and chin with heating things and foment. They effect nothing, and are unskilful in the art, who apply the cupping-instrument to the throat, in order to dilate the gullet; for distension, in order to procure the admission of food, is not what is wanted, but contraction of the parts for the purposes of deglutition. But the cupping-instrument distends further; and, if the patient wish to swallow, it prevents him by its expansion and revulsion, whereas it is necessary to pass into a state of collapse, in order to accomplish the contraction of deglutition; and in addition to these, it stuffs the trachea so as to endanger suffocation. And neither, if you place it on either side of the windpipe, does it any good; for muscles and nerves, and tendons and veins, are in front of it.
