Epiglottitis is an infection and inflammation of the epiglottis.
An inflamed epiglottis can swell and close off the windpipe, thus causing the patient to suffocate.
The epiglottis is a piece of cartilage behind the tongue that closes the opening to the windpipe when a person swallows.
Again, from different points of the cortex the assunIption of the requisite positions of the tongue, lips, cheeks, palate and epiglottis, as components in the act of sucking, can be provoked singly.
This embraces the base of the epiglottis, and, except while swallowing food, shuts off all communication between the cavity of the mouth and the pharynx, respiration being, under ordinary circumstances, exclusively through the nostrils.