In the exercise of the voice, regular and gentle modulation can
contribute nothing to health, but the utterance of louder tones is
beneficial, and is therefore to be practised. For, much air being
inhaled thus by respiration expands the chest and stomach, and dilates
and extends all the pores of the body. Wherefore, even in reading, it
promotes the excretion of redundant humours, to those who read in a
high tone, by inducing sweats; while in those who read with a moderate
tone it promotes the insensible perspiration over the whole frame. For
by attenuating the excrementitious matters which are hawked up, the
saliva, mucus, and phlegm are discharged and consumed. And to those who
stand in need of warming, on account of their frigidity, what mode of
relief can be more proper than the action of respiration? Such persons
ought therefore to read frequently, and, relaxing the whole body, so as
to distend the windpipe and all the other passages of air, endeavour
to utter the loudest sounds. And yet we must not have recourse to the
exercise of the voice rashly, and without consideration, nor when the
system is filled with depraved humours, or the stomach loaded with
crudities, lest noxious vapours be thereby distributed over the whole
body.
* * * * *
COMMENTARY. These remarks of our author are very pertinent; But Oribasius
has given a more comprehensive view of the subject, from the works of
Antyllus. He thus describes the mode of performing vociferation: The
bowels being evacuated, the person’s body is to be first rubbed, and then
the inferior parts and the face are to be sponged with water. He is to
begin talking, at first, in a moderate tone, while at the same time he
walks about, and afterwards, straining his voice to a louder tone, he is
to repeat certain verses. (Med. Collect. vi.)
Plutarch gives nearly the same account of it. He commends vociferation
as giving strength to the internal parts, increasing the vital heat,
purifying the veins, attenuating the blood, and dispelling the humours.
He cautions, however, not to strain the voice to too great a pitch, lest
it occasion rupture of any of the vessels. (De Sanit. tuendâ.)
Vociferation, according to Aëtius, is an exercise of the chest and the
organs of speech, improving the vital heat; attenuating and strengthening
the solid parts of the body. He recommends it for the cure of asthma,
orthopnœa, phthisical and chronic pains of the chest, or apostemes when
they burst; also, in tertian intermittents, and affections of the stomach
attended with vomiting. It is unsuitable, he says, in complaints of the
head. (iii, 5.)