Eyes, Ears and Nose

A Handbook of Health
by Woods Hutchinson

(Page 24 of 32)

The Lookout Department

Why the Eyes, Ears, and Nose are Near the Mouth. If you had no eyes, ears, or nose, you might just as well be dead; and you soon would be, if you had no one to feed you and guide you about and take care of you. Naturally, all three of these scouts and spies of the body, which warn us of danger and guide us to food and shelter, are near the mouth, at the head-end of the body. The nose by means of which we smell food, to see whether it is sweet and good or not, is directly above the mouth; the eyes are above and on each side, like the lamps of an automobile, but swinging in sockets like search-lights; while the ears are a couple of inches behind, on each side of us, for catching from the sea of air the waves that we call sound.

You could almost guess what each of these is for, just by looking at it. The nose and the ears are open and hollow because air must pass into them in order to bring us odors or sounds; while the eyes are solid, somewhat like big glass marbles, to receive light - because light can go right through anything that is transparent. Eyes, ears, and nose all began on the surface, and sank gradually into the head, so as to be surrounded and protected, leaving just opening enough at the surface to allow smells, light-rays, and sound-waves to enter; and all of them have at their bottom, or deepest part, a sensitive patch of surface, which catches the light, or the smells, or the sounds, and sends them by a special nerve to the brain.

These three sets of organs have gradually and slowly grown into the shape in which we now find them, in order to do the particular kind of smelling, seeing, and hearing that will be most useful to us. Every kind of animal has a slightly different shape and arrangement of eye, of ear, and of nose to fit his particular "business"; but in all animals they are built upon the same simple, general plan.

The Nose

How the Nose is Made. The nose began as a pair of little puckers, or dimples, just above the mouth, containing cells that were particularly good smellers, in order to test the food before it was eaten. All smells rise, so these cells were right on the spot for their particular "business."

The original way of breathing, before the nose-dimples or pits opened through into the throat, was through the mouth; and that is one reason why it is so easy to fall into the bad habit of mouth-breathing whenever the nose gets blocked by adenoids or catarrh. Some creatures - fishes, for instance, - breathe through their mouths entirely; if you watch one in an aquarium or a clear stream, you will easily see that it is going "gulp, gulp, gulp" constantly. The saying "to drink like a fish" is a slander upon an innocent creature; for what it is really doing is breathing, not drinking. Even a frog, which has nostrils opening into its throat, still has to swallow its air in gulps, as you can see by watching its throat when it is sitting quietly. And, strange as it may seem, if you prop its mouth open, it will suffocate, because it can no longer gulp down air.

Our noses are nine-tenths for breathing, and only about one-tenth for smelling; so that by far the greater part of the nose is built on breathing lines. But the smelling part of it, though small, is very important, because it now has to decide, not merely upon the goodness or badness of the food, but also upon the purity or foulness of the air we breathe. The nostrils lie, as you can see, side by side, separated from each other by a thin, straight plate of gristle and bone known as the septum. This should be perfectly straight and flat; but very often when the nose does not grow properly in childhood, it becomes crumpled upon itself, or bulged over to one side or the other, and so blocks up one of the nostrils. This is a very common cause of catarrh, and requires, for its cure, a slight operation, a cutting away of the bulging or projecting part of the septum. The rims of the openings of the nose, known as the wings, have little muscles fastened to them which pull them upward and backward, thus widening the air openings or, as we say, dilating the nostrils. If you will watch any one who has been running fast, or a horse that has been galloping, you will see that his nostrils enlarge with every breath; and these same movements occur in sick people who are suffering from disease of the lungs or the heart, which makes it difficult for them to get breath enough.

Each nostril opens into a short and rather narrow, but high, passage, known as the nasal passage, through which the air pours into the back of the throat, or pharynx, and so down into the windpipe and lungs. Instead of having smooth walls, however, the passage is divided into three almost separate tubes, by little shelves of bone that stick out from the outer wall. These are covered with thick coils of tiny blood vessels, through which hot blood is being constantly pumped, like steam through the coils of a radiator, so that the air, as it is being drawn into the lungs, is warmed and moistened. The passage is lined with a soft, moist "skin," called mucous membrane, very much like that which lines the stomach and bowels, except that it is covered with tiny little microscopic hairs, called cilia, and that its glands pour out a thin, sticky mucus, instead of a digestive juice. This thick network of blood vessels just under the thin mucous "skin" is easily scratched into or broken, and then we have "nose-bleed."

The purpose of this mucus is to catch and hold, just as flypaper catches flies, all specks of dust, lint, or germs that may be floating in the air we breathe, and to keep them from going on into the lungs. As these are caught upon the lining of the nose, they are washed down by the flow of mucus or wafted by the movement of the tiny hairs back into the throat, and swallowed into the stomach, where they are digested. Or, if they are very irritating, they are blown out of the nostrils, or sneezed out, and in that way got rid of.

If the dust is too irritating, or the air is foul and contains disease germs, these set up an inflammation in the nose, and we "catch cold," as we say. If we keep on breathing bad or dusty air, the walls of the nasal passages become permanently thickened and swollen; the mucus, instead of being thin and clear, becomes thick and sticky and yellowish, and we have a catarrh.

Houghton Mifflin Company
Copyright, 1911, By Woods Hutchinson
All Rights Reserved
Tenth Impression

About the Author

Woods Hutchinson (1862-1930) was an American physician, born at Selby, Yorkshire, England. He graduated from Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1880 and received his medical degree from the University of Michigan four years later. He worked as a professor of anatomy at the State University of Iowa and then became a professor of comparative pathology at the University of Buffalo.