The Voice by Editor

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 17, 1878

The Voice.

By Editor

MAN is distinguished from the brutes by his power of speech. The great desideratum in speech is to have it agreeable. In order for this to be the case, enunciation should be perfectly easy. There should be no constrained effort of the vocal organs. To tax the expressive powers beyond ease of delivery, either by bawl, or rant, or scream, is to affect the voice for the worse.

Sometimes the voice is rendered harsh and unpleasant by a tickling in the throat, bringing on an asthmatic complaint, and causing a dryness in the parts used for speaking. The remedy for this is to gargle the throat with clear cold water. This will often prove more effectual than medicated lozenges or troches. Sometimes, however, it helps, to use a lozenge and cause expectoration; but when this is the case, it is our experience that anything with sharp taste is as good as a troche.

A general rule to keep the throat healthy is to keep the stomach clean. Dyspeptics, whose pipes are suffused, are generally great sufferers with their throats. We think more injury is done to the voice by eating indigestibles, than by any other means. It causes distress and heat in the part named, which are exceedingly inimical to the voice. Indeed, it often happens that the enunciation of a dyspeptic is cracked, uncertain.

We give the advice to all who may be engaging in public exercises,—speak slowly and as deep down in the throat as possible. The happiest results follow. The effect on the listener is one of profound gravity. That was Edward Irving's plan.