Singing voice and medicine

The world of art related to medicine is fascinating.

In the eighteenth century, one of the most important artists of his time, Manuel del Popolo Vicente Garcia, transformed his family into one of the best representatives of music and song.

Daughter Maria Felicia was undoubtedly the most talented and rebellious against parental imposition; Her wonderful voice enchanted everyone who heard her.

But it was another son, the baritone Manuel Patricio Garcia, who went further than singing.

The singer was obsessed with seeing the larynx in motion in a living creature.

“Neither autopsy nor autopsy can reveal the secrets of sound formation. But how can I see my throat… I believed that seeing the larynx was something so elusive, deep and dark.

Finally one day, walking through Paris, I saw in my imagination, like a flash of lightning, the mechanism of a laryngoscopy.

I ran to Charrriere’s house, showed me a dental mirror. I bought it for six francs and went to a store to buy a larger hand mirror.

I got home impatiently, I dampened the mirror in hot water so that it wouldn’t get stuck and put it in my mouth until the bell; There I directed the sunlight with the hand-mirror toward the mirror which I had in Ganiote; I could see the glottis, trachea, and vocal cords. To my surprise, I could see how the oboe opened and closed and the position the strings took as the sound and song were emitted.”

Thus the laryngoscope was created. It was published in the Journal of the Royal Society of London in March 1855 under the title “Notes of the Human Voice”.

Today, otolaryngologists use a laryngoscope on a daily basis to monitor ‘throat’ conditions.

The discovery of this musical hero has made it possible to intubate millions of patients around the world and provide them with some treatment methods.

[email protected]