(1) Circulatory Disturbances

Hyperemia is common with smokers, or those who eat excessively and have acid fermentation in the stomach. The fermentation causes gas, and the gas eructations into the throat keep it in a sensitive state. Constant use of the voice will produce irritation of this kind. Sometimes this condition of the throat will develop in heart disease. Young children will often be made hoarse, their throats being made sensitive by the gas coming up from the stomach, causing irritation and edema. This may be severe enough to cause a husky voice, persistent cough, and often a croupy cough. Where the irritation comes from deranged digestion, this must be corrected by proper feeding. Where it is caused by the use of tobacco, alcoholics, etc., the cause must be stopped.

A cough from pharyngeal irritation often precedes pulmonary tuberculosis.

Hemorrhage is sometimes found. This is associated with a tendency for bleeding of the mucous membranes of other parts of the body. In vicarious menstruation the pharynx will sometimes bleed. Bleeding of the nose, where the blood passes down into the throat, is sometimes taken for bleeding of the pharynx. An enlargement and elongation of the uvula will sometimes be developed, with intense redness, and there will be a certain amount of oozing of blood from it. This is the case where the throat is decidedly abused by wrong eating; it is also found where either hot water or hot coffee is taken, and where tobacco is used to excess.

(2) Acute Pharyngitis

This derangement is frequently met with in epidemics of scarlet fever. In some epidemics there will be fifteen to twenty cases of scarlatinal angina to every marked case of scarlet fever.

Colds are supposed to cause this sore throat. The disease is said to be associated with rheumatism and gout. The reason is that rheumatism and gout are always associated with digestive disorders. Digestive disorders are the primary cause of all these diseases. No one can develop acute pharyngitis without a deranged digestion, unless it should happen to be brought on from accidentally scalding the throat. The cure for this disease is to correct the stomach derangement by feeding properly. The patient should go without food until better, and wash out the bowels. If this is done, it will not take more than three or four days to cure the worst type of the disease.

(3) Chronic Pharyngitis

This may develop in tuberculous subjects after several acute attacks. It is very liable to develop in those who use tobacco, alcoholics, and gum. Clergymen, hucksters, and others are liable to develop this disease from loud talking. It is often a sequel of nasal catarrh--or, rather, an accompaniment. It is accompanied by a dropping-down in the back of the throat. It is strictly a catarrhal derangement.

For treatment, the diet must be corrected. The bowels should move every day.

Until the severe symptoms are overcome, two meals of fruit a day, one meal of buttermilk, and no starch, should be taken.

(4) Ulceration of the Pharynx

On looking into the throat, the follicles will be found inflamed. The ulceration will not be very deep, and there will be other symptoms of catarrh. Syphilitic sore throat is usually confined to the pharynx. Sometimes it goes to the larynx.

(5) Tuberculous Pharynx

This disease is not infrequent. It is very intractable--presumably because the throat is used so much. However, when tuberculosis develops in the throat or the air-passages of the lungs, it means that wrong life is the cause to such an extent that nutrition is pushed very far from the normal. In the tuberculous diathesis it requires a very great deal of painstaking care to bring patients back to normal.