Philib reports a case in which mutism, almost simulating that of
one congenitally deaf, was due to congenital adhesions of the
tongue to the floor of the buccal cavity. Speech was established
after removal of the abnormal adhesion. Routier speaks of
ankylosis of the tongue of seventeen years' duration.
Jurist records such abnormal mobility of the tongue that the
patient was able to project the tongue into the nasopharynx.
Wherry and Winslow record similar instances.
There have been individuals with bifid tongues, after the normal
type of serpents and saurians, and others who possessed a
supernumerary tongue. Rev. Henry Wharton, Chaplain to Archbishop
Sancroft, in his journal, written in the seventeenth century,
says that he was born with two tongues and passed through life
so, one, however, gradually atrophying. In the polyclinic of
Schnitzer in Vienna in 1892 Hajek observed in a lad of twelve an
accessory tongue 2.4 cm. in length and eight mm. in breadth,
forming a tumor at the base of the normal tongue. It was removed
by scissors, and on histologic examination proved to be a true
tongue with the typical tissues and constituents. Borellus,
Ephemerides, Eschenbach, Mortimer, Penada, and Schenck speak of
double tongues, and Avicenna and Schenck have seen fissured
tongues.
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