modified in sneezing;—let us reflect on the various combinations
of muscles of the throat, windpipe, tongue, lips, in speaking and
singing, and we shall be able justly to estimate the extent of the
muscles which are associated with the proper or simple act of
dilating and compressing the chest. But how much more numerous
are the changes wrought upon these muscles, if nature employs
them in the double capacity of expression; not in the language of
sounds merely, but the language of expression in the countenance
also; and certainly the one is as much their office as the other.
By what nervous cords these muscles are combined, it would be
superfluous to describe here. The labour of many months discloses
but a part of them; and the display, and the consideration of
the uses they serve, present the most overwhelming proof of the
excellence of design,—but a design made manifest by the results,
rather than comprehensible in its means. Can we perfectly comprehend
how tickling the throat should produce a convulsion over
the whole frame, in which a hundred muscles are finely adjusted
and proportioned in their actions to expel what irritates the windpipe
? or do we comprehend how tickling the nostril should make
a change in these muscles, throw some out and bring others into
action, to the effect of sending the air through a different tube to
remove what is offensive there ? and all this without the act of the
will!
Let us now see how the machine works. Observe a man threatened
with suffocation: see the sudden and wild energy that pervades
every feature; the contractions of his throat, the gasping and the
spasmodic twitchings of his face, the heaving of his chest and
shoulders, and how he stretches his hands and catches like a
drowning man. These are efforts made under the oppressive,
intolerable sensation at his heart; and these the means which
nature employs to guard and preserve the animal machine, giving
to the vital organ a sensibility that irresistibly animates to the
utmost exertion.
It is this painful sensation that introduces us to “ this breathing
world,” which guards the vital functions through life as it draws us
into existence. Pain is the agent which most effectually rouses the
dormant faculties of both mind and body. While the child slumbers
in the womb it does not live by breathing, it possesses an organ
which performs the office of the lungs. In the birth there is a short
interval, betwixt the loss of the one organ, and the substitution of
the other; nor would the breath ever be drawn, or the lungs perform
their function, but for this painful and irresistible nisus, which
calls the whole corresponding muscles into action. Spasms and
contractions are seen to extend over the infant’s chest; the features
are working, and the muscles of the face agitated, probably for the
first time; at last air is admitted into the lungs, a feeble cry is
heard, the air in successive inspirations fully dilates the chest, and
the child cries lustily. Now the regular inspiration is established,
and the animal machinery subsides into repose. With the revolution
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