History of Laryngology

후두학의 역사

An understanding of the history of laryngology is both interesting and useful for those in the field so this study attempts to uncover some of the interesting aspects of its history. The oldest reference of laryngology in the Orient is in the medical documents called the "Whangjainaekyung",(황제내경) which was written over a time period between 3000-4000 B.C., and described the laryngeal function of respiration, protection of the airway and phonation. In the West, a drawing that seems to portray a tracheostomy was found in medical tombs in the plains of Saqqara in Egypt. These drawings date from approximately 3600 B.C. A watershed in laryngology occurred when a spanish music professor named Manuel Garcia in first successfully used a mirror to inspect the larynx. Since that time, laryngology has developed relatively quickly and clinical laryngology made it possible by means of a number of favorable developments. Great advances in laryngological diagnosis and treatment has occurred since the 1970s thanks to improvements in technology leading to the introduction of an operating microscope, endoscopes and lasers. Despite our recent advances in laryngology, we still have not achieved uniformly favorable outcomes and there is much that we do not know. Our future promises continued advances in the field of laryngology such as gene therapy to improve wound healing and tissue engineering to allow the recreation of normal mucosa. In this review, I divide the history of the larynx into the past, present and future. In the last section, I described the history of laryngology in Korea briefly.