After this episodic existence among the Greeks, there is no mention of anything like intubation of the larynx until about the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1801, Desault, a French surgeon, while attempting to feed a patient suffering with a stricture of the oesophagus through a tube passed down the throat, inadvertently allowed the tube to pass into the larynx. This brought on a severe fit of coughing, but after a time the tube was tolerated and an attempt was made to feed the patient through it, with the production (as can be readily imagined) of a very severe spasmodic laryngeal attack. Desault realized the probable position of the tube then, and, taking a practical hint from this accident, suggested that possibly tubes could be passed down into the lungs even through a spasmodically contracted or infiltrated larynx, with the consequent assurance of free ingress of air. As these cases were otherwise extremely {337} hopeless, it was not long before he found the opportunity to put his hypothesis to the test, and in some half a dozen cases he succeeded in lengthening patient's lives and making them more comfortable for some hours at least. Desault's suggestion was followed by similarly directed experiments on the part of Chaussier, Ducasse and Patissier. All these came during the first quarter of the century in France, while, in 1813, Finaz of Seyssel, a student of the University of Paris, in writing his graduation thesis for the faculty of medicine, suggested the use of a gum-elastic tube that should be passed down into the larynx in order to allow the passage of air in spasmodic and other obstructive conditions. In 1820, Patissier suggested that some such remedy as this should be employed for edema of the glottis. This affection, which is apt to be rapidly fatal, is a closing of the chink of the glottis, or _rima glottidis_, as it is called, which occurs very rapidly as the result of inflammatory conditions, especially in patients who are suffering from some kidney affection. There was no doubt in the mind of practitioners generally of the necessity in many cases for some such expedient as the intubation of the larynx, but there was a very generally accepted notion that the mucous membrane of the larynx was entirely too sensitive to permit of a tube remaining for any considerable length of time in contact with the vocal cords and the very sensitive mucous membrane of the epiglottis. Meantime many precious lives were lost. Our own Washington was a sufferer, perhaps, from inflammatory edema of the larynx, complicated by a kidney trouble, though this was thirty years before Bright's work, and (as a matter of course) we have no definite data in the matter; or, as seems not unlikely, he suffered from a severe attack of laryngeal diphtheria, and, after hours of intense dyspnoea, {338} suffocated while his physicians stood hopelessly by, unable to do anything for him.