That acute disorders of the nose and throat are often caused by digestive disturbances is almost universally acknowledged, for clinical experience frequently shows the correlation between these organs. The precise philosophy of this inter-dependence is in part explained by the supposition of an auto-intoxication, in which poisons derived from the alimentary tract are carried by the blood stream and have an irritating effect on the epithelium, cause vaso-motor disturbances through their actions on the neurons, or even cause minute structural changes through their cytolytic affinities. It is to be remembered too, that rhinorhea and congestion of mucous membranes are frequent symptoms in the experimental study of intestinal auto-toxins.

It cannot be denied that any chronic depressant predisposes to catarrhal inflammations and causes what is commonly termed the catarrhal constitution, and it is equally true that auto-intoxication causes an impairment of the general health and the lithemic state. But as a specific cause of nasal and pharyngeal disease we have no experimental evidence to warrant the sweeping assertions so often seen in literature. For a great many cases of chronic rhinitis are dependent upon anatomical imperfections as is seen by the countless instances in which relief and cure follow upon the removal of nasal obstructions, of hypertrophied turbinateds, the straightening of deflected septa and the removal of post-nasal adenoids. It affords but little satisfaction to attribute every departure from perfect health to a mysterious and unexplainable predisposition or dyscrasia, and frequently the careful examination of individual cases shows an underlying cause such as syphilis, tuberculosis, congenital malformation or unsuitable environment.

We have as yet but little definite knowledge of the specific properties of the faucial and pharyngeal tonsils or of lymphoid tissue generally, and it is certainly true that children of the constitutio lymphatica are subject to a variety of systemic disturbances and rises of temperature from slight causes, even if the growths are not large enough to interfere with respiration. The writer cannot agree with those who would attribute these states to the supposed toxic secretions of these masses, thinking instead that they serve as foci for the retention of bacterial masses thereby causing infection rather than intoxication. For examination of these lymphoid bodies frequently shows them to contain crypts filled with foul pultaceous nodules containing a variety of bacteria, which might easily account for systemic disturbances and furnish material for autoinfection.