355.  The Care of the Throat and Voice.  The throat, exposed as it is to unwholesome and overheated air, irritating dust of the street, factories, and workshops, is often inflamed, resulting in that common ailment, sore throat.  The parts are red, swollen, and quite painful on swallowing.  Speech is often indistinct, but there is no hoarseness or cough unless the uvula is lengthened and tickles the back part of the tongue.  Slight sore throat rarely requires any special treatment, aside from simple nursing.

The most frequent cause of throat trouble is the action of cold upon the heated body, especially during active perspiration.  For this reason a cold bath should not be taken while a person is perspiring freely.  The muscles of the throat are frequently overstrained by loud talking, screaming, shouting, or by reading aloud too much.  People who strain or misuse the voice often suffer from what is called “clergyman’s sore throat.”  Attacks of sore throat due to improper methods of breathing and of using the voice should be treated by judicious elocutionary exercises and a system of vocal gymnastics, under the direction of proper teachers.

Persons subject to throat disease should take special care to wear suitable underclothing, adapted to the changes of the seasons.  Frequent baths are excellent tonics to the skin, and serve indirectly to protect one liable to throat ailments from changes in the weather.  It is not prudent to muffle the neck in scarfs, furs, and wraps, unless perhaps during an unusual exposure to cold.  Such a dress for the neck only makes the parts tender, and increases the liability to a sore throat.

Every teacher of elocution or of vocal music, entrusted with the training of a voice of some value to its possessor, should have a good, practical knowledge of the mechanism of the voice.  Good voices are often injured by injudicious management on the part of some incompetent instructor.  It is always prudent to cease speaking or singing in public the moment there is any hoarseness or sore throat.

The voice should not be exercised just after a full meal, for a full stomach interferes with the free play of the diaphragm.  A sip of water taken at convenient intervals, and held in the mouth for a moment or two, will relieve the dryness of the throat during the use of the voice.

356.  Effect of Alcohol upon the Throat and Voice.  Alcoholic beverages seriously injure the throat, and consequently the voice, by causing a chronic inflammation of the membrane lining the larynx and the vocal cords.  The color is changed from the healthful pink to red, and the natural smooth surface becomes roughened and swollen, and secretes a tough phlegm.

The vocal cords usually suffer from this condition.  They are thickened, roughened, and enfeebled, the delicate vibration of the cords is impaired, the clearness and purity of the vocal tones are gone, and instead the voice has become rough and husky.  So well known is this result that vocalists, whose fortune is the purity and compass of their tones, are scrupulously careful not to impair these fine qualities by convivial indulgences.