Simply Amazing: Communication Sciences and Disorders

By Dennis C. Tanner Ph.D.

The ability to communicate is amazing. No other human ability is so complicated, so sophisticated, so important to civilizationand yet so taken for granted. How tragic would life be without the marvelous ability to communicate? In Simply Amazing: Communication Sciences and Disorders, Dr. Dennis C. Tanner explores the stages of the communication chain and examines the act of speech communication from the speakers thoughts to the listeners understanding of them.

Relying on more than forty years of experience studying, teaching, researching, and providing clinical services in the communication sciences discipline, Tanner provides a frank and informative discussion about the subject, including both conventional and offbeat theories of human communication, unique and sometimes bizarre disorders, and intriguing patients.

Through anecdotes, examples, illustrations, case studies, and personal asides of the amazing human ability to communicateas well as the myriad disorders, defects, delays, and disabilities that can lay waste to itSimply Amazing: Communication Sciences and Disorders provides keen insight into the world of communication.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491724255

Dennis C. Tanner Ph.D.

Dennis C. Tanner, Ph.D., is the author of fourteen published books. He has been named Outstanding Educator by the Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions and the College of Health Profession’s Teacher of the Year. Tanner is a Professor of Health Sciences at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. Visit him online at www.drdennistanner.com.

Book preview

SIMPLY AMAZING: COMMUNICATION

SCIENCES AND DISORDERS

Copyright © 2014 Dennis C. Tanner, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2424-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2426-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-2425-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014902051

iUniverse rev. date: 09/29/2014

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Dedication

1    Human Communication And Its Disorders

From Farm To Campus

The Communication Chain In A Nutshell

History Of The Study Of Communication Sciences And Disorders

The Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, And Romans

The Middle Ages

The Renaissance

The Modern Period

The Cyber Speech And Hearing Clinic

Believing And Knowing In Communication Sciences And Disorders

2    Expressive Language

Global Aphasia

Energize

Mental Retardation

Fluffer Had Fluffies

I Bathroom

Stretch It Out And Rapid Recall

The Only Professor With A Beard

Idioglossia: Twin Speech

Jet Vapor Trails

Cognitive, Linguistic, And Social-Communication Scales

Young Children Should Stay At Home With Their Mothers

Mikey’s Moonshadow Ranch

The Asperger Syndrome Myth

Asperger Syndrome And Political Correctness

Other Language Expressions

Clinical Blunder

3    Motor Speech Programming

I See Dead People

The Three-Minute Rule

The Tornado Man

Apraxia And Freedom Of Will And Action

I Can’t Seem To Say: Andrea

Oral And Limb Apraxia

The Quick Assessment Series For Neurogenic Communication Disorders

Apraxia Of Speech And Broca’s Aphasia

A Medical Malpractice Case Involving Childhood Apraxia Of Speech

4    Respiration

The Biological Pump

Iron Lung

Respiration And The Dysarthrias

Pneumonia And Swallowing Disorders

Love Me, Love My Dog

The Swallowing Evaluation

Malpractice Attorneys: Legal Eagles Or Vultures?

The Role Of The Expert Witness

Expert Whores?

Avoiding Negative Dysphagia Management Outcomes

5    Phonation

The Neurochronaxic Theory Of Voice Production

The Importance Of A Medical Referral

The Myoelastic Aerodynamic Theory Of Voice Production

Pitch And Loudness

The Pitch And Loudness Changing Mechanism

Vocal Tract Resistance

Vocal Nodules, Polyps, And Contact Ulcers

Shooting The Rapids

Pink Harley

Cancer Of The Larynx

Psychogenic Voice Disorders

The Humming Method

Vocal Cord Paralysis

If You Cut Off My Head…

Cleft Lip And Palate

6    Articulation

From Omnivore To Talking Animal

Cosmetic Articulation Disorders: Nonstandard Or Substandard?

Lisping And Homosexuality

The Causes Of Articulation And Phonology Disorders

Structural Defects

Hearing Loss And Deafness

Neuromuscular Diseases And Disorders

Delayed Development

Emotional Distress

The Traditional And Phonological Approaches To Articulation Disorders

Auditory Perception And The Gatekeeper

Evaluating And Treating Articulation Disorders

7    Resonance

The Human Resonating System

Voice Prints And The Aural Method Of Speaker Identification

Psychological Stress Evaluator

8    Prosody

An Awkward Tongue Has Molded My Life

The Diagnosogenic Theory Of Stuttering

The Monster Study

The Causes Of Stuttering

Multiple Causes Theory Of Stuttering

An Eclectic Treatment For Stuttering

The Visible Features

The Audible Symptoms

Anxiety And Associated Negative Emotions

Personality And Interpersonal Communication

Cluttering

9    Acoustic Energy Transmission

Energy Transformations And Consciousness

Now Or When You Asked Me?

Amplitude-Loudness And Frequency-Pitch

If A Tree Falls In The Forest… ?

The Inverse Square Law And The Doppler Effect

The Written Examination And Oral Defense Of The Dissertation

Acoustics And The Sound Spectrogram

Barber College Degree

Entropy And Communication Theory

The Myth Of The Sound Wave

10    Mechanical And Hydraulic Energy Transmission

Eustachian Tube

External Ear Canal And Eardrum

Conductive Hearing Loss

Hearing Aids

Sensorineural Hearing Loss

Noise And Hearing Loss

Cochlear Implants

11    Auditory Perception

Bread Delivery And The Concept Of Saliency

Adrian, Sherlock, And Shawn

The Sapir-Whorfian Hypothesis

Disorders Of Perception

Faces In The Crowd

Loss Of One-Half Of The Visual World

Reading And Visual Agnosia

The Cocktail Party Phenomenon

Pass The Salt, Pepper, And Sugar

My Happy Place

Denial Of Disability

12    Receptive Language

’Tis Better To Have Loved And Lost

Levels Of Semantic Decoding

Connotation And Denotation

Receptive Language Disorders In Children

A Country Bumpkin

Receptive Aphasia

Acrylic Man

Brain Surgery

Denial, Projection, And Euphoria

Sharing Associations

13    College Professor

Work Ethic

Blasphemy

Introduction To Communication Sciences And Disorders

Teaching, Service, And Scholarship

Publishing Books

We Live In An Increasingly Violent Society

Online Courses, Degrees, And Certificates

Team Building And Diversity Workshops

Tenure

Assistant, Associate, And Full Professor

About The Author

PREFACE

I have written Simply Amazing: Communication Sciences and Disorders to be an interesting and informative book on the discipline of communication sciences and disorders. It is a unique book and far different from other books you might read on the subject.

Simply Amazing: Communication Sciences and Disorders explores each stage of the communication chain, and examines the act of speech communication from the speaker’s thoughts to the listener’s understanding of them. The stages of the communication chain addressed include:

Expressive Language

Motor Speech Programming

Respiration

Phonation

Articulation

Resonance

Prosody

Acoustic Energy

Mechanical Energy

Hydraulic Energy

Neural Electrochemical Energy

Auditory Perception

Receptive Language

This is not your typical academic treatise on language, articulation, voice, fluency, hearing, perception, motor speech production, and disorders thereof. While there is much substance to the book about the remarkable discipline of communication sciences and disorders, there are many anecdotes, examples, illustrations, case studies, and personal asides that I believe lend interest and depth to the discussions. Many of them are autobiographical in nature and reflect the continued awe I experience when considering the amazing human ability to communicate, and the myriad disorders, defects, delays, and disabilities that can lay waste to it.

I have never been one to leave my profession at the office, classroom, laboratory, and clinic and dissociate myself from it after hours. This discipline has permeated my life; I do not draw distinctions between it and the rest of my world. My students sometimes refer to me as Dr. Tangent because I do not limit myself to dry classroom discussions about the subject at hand. They report these tangents, the anecdotes, examples, illustrations, case studies, and personal asides add interest to the lectures and give them memorable personal connections with the discipline. Simply Amazing: Communication Sciences and Disorders takes the reader on an exciting journey through the communication chain with no apologies for the tangents I provide.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to extend a special thanks to Christine Michelle Davis and Suzanne De Vivo for their help with editing and proofing the manuscript.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to the Northern Arizona University Lumberjacks—Go Jacks.

CHAPTER 1

Human Communication

and Its Disorders

The ability to communicate is amazing. No other human ability is so complicated, so sophisticated, so important to civilization, and yet, so taken for granted. Communication allows people to work cooperatively to build families, legal and political systems, corporations, universities, libraries, space programs, religions, and the World Wide Web. Most importantly, it allows people to connect, to reduce loneliness and isolation, to comfort one another, and to counter the bleakness of existence that results from desolation. Mother Teresa of Calcutta observed: Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. How tragic would life be without this marvelous ability to communicate?

Communication disorders have afflicted humans since the beginning of recorded history. As will be discussed later, there are references to them in the ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman societies. For some, communication and its disorders are God-given. In Exodus 4:10, there is a reference to the divine nature of communication and its disorders: And Moses said unto the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? Or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord? Whether communication disorders are the nuisance of a lisp or a mild stutter, the devastation of the loss of language from a stroke, or symptoms of the gradual onset of dementia, they affect the lives of millions of people. One in ten people in the United States has a communication disorder.

Communication sciences and disorders is an academic and clinical discipline whose mission is to understand communication and treat its disorders. It is a fledgling science and a newcomer to the sciences and therapeutic professions. It is a bit arrogant in assuming it can understand and explain the complexities of human communication, yet optimistically ambitious in tackling the treatment of its disorders.

This book is about communication sciences and disorders, and in some ways, it is a love story. It is a chronicle of my lifelong love affair with the marvelous human ability to communicate and my commitment to treating its disorders. In this book, you will read interesting examples, case studies, and observations about consciousness, language, acoustics, hearing, paralysis, disorientation, delusions, mental impairment, dementia, and the functions of the brain. They are but a few of the human abilities and maladies that are the subjects of this book.

This book is based on my experiences. I discuss only those topics with exceptional scientific and philosophical importance that often have implications about the human condition. You will read about the remarkable communication functions and fascinating disorders I have studied and observed. My goal is to give you an interesting read, and to share with you some of the amazing diseases, defects, disorders, and disabilities I have come across as a professor, scientist, and clinician.

I have been a professor of communication sciences and disorders for nearly 40 years and an enthusiastic student of communication all of my life. For most of my adult life, I have studied communication, speech-language pathology and audiology, and the speech and hearing sciences. I have owned a private speech and hearing clinic, served as an expert witness in legal cases involving communication sciences and disorders, and consulted with local, state, and federal agencies, as well as Native American Tribes of the Southwest. I have received several university, foundation, and federal grants. I have 14 books in print and list dozens of research articles and professional papers on my resume. I have published pamphlets, diagnostic tests, and treatment programs. I have been involved with the forensic aspects of voice prints, speaker profiling, and speaker recognition. I love what I do, and it occurred to me that I should share my experiences with you who may be considering majoring in this discipline, or who have a loved one with a communication disorder. This book may also be of interest to those of you who simply want to learn more about this human ability and the interesting disorders that can impair or destroy it.

From Farm to Campus

I was born on a large farm in Idaho. My family also owned a 2,000-acre cattle and sheep ranch in southwestern Montana. Looking back on it, I suspect I was a hyperactive child. My family was fortunate there were hundreds of acres of farm and ranch land available for me to roam, run, explore, play, and exhaust my high levels of energy. On the negative side, current research shows exposure to chemicals often used on farms and ranches are a cause of attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD) and other conditions. One of the most vivid memories I have is of my father spraying the yard around our home with DDT to combat flies and mosquitoes. We grew potatoes, hay, and wheat. During the planting season, the seed potatoes were dipped in chemicals, and I would ride behind the planter to see that all of them were dropped into the ground. After each round, I remember wiping off the dried dirt and chemicals, including DDT, which had caked on my face. In addition, cattle are branded, dehorned, and given chemicals to prevent disease, stimulate growth, and to keep flies off them. Chemicals were and still are a big part of farming and ranching.

Today, a child with hyperactivity would likely be treated with medication. I am thankful medication was not prescribed to me for this disorder, if in fact I had it. ADHD is diagnosed far too frequently. I am certain there are children who suffer greatly from this disorder, and for them, medication is a godsend. I am equally certain that not every child who is active and full of energy, and who has problems attending in a stuffy classroom, is disordered. Today, Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer would likely have been diagnosed with ADHD, oppositional defiance disorder (ODD), antisocial personalities, and been promptly medicated.

When lecturing, I tell my students that rather than being disordered, perhaps I was simply a curious child with an intense enthusiasm for living. In the evenings and after supper, I would often still be wound-up. (My family called the evening meal supper and hyperactivity simply being wound-up.) To rid me of excess evening energy, my parents required me to go outside and run around our house many times. It worked. After the exercise, I would retreat to my room exhausted and much calmer. Most of the time, I dutifully did my nightly therapy; however, several times I tried to fool my parents. Rather than do my exercise, I would pass the window from which they watched, turn around, sneak underneath it, and then pretend I had run completely around the house. Unfortunately, my timing was off, and my antics made it appear I was running around the house at superhuman speed. Despite my lame attempts to fool my down-to-earth parents, they treated hyperactivity with exercise. Today, there are studies showing the benefits of using this approach instead of medication.

My father did not complete high school, but managed to be a very successful farmer, rancher, and businessman. He was also a private pilot, and aviation was his passion. He had the kind of common sense, down-to-earth understanding of life I admired, respected, and tried to emulate. He was also fearless. It seems nothing frightened him, whether it was landing his blue, low-wing, tail-dragging airplane on a short landing strip or climbing high buildings, silos, and haystacks.

As a schoolgirl, my mother participated in an intelligence study. I heard from relatives that her tested IQ was 145, higher than 99% of the general population. She graduated from a small high school and desperately wanted to go to college. One of ten children, five boys and five girls, she lived through the Great Depression that left a lasting impression on her. Sadly, at that time, it was rare for women to get a higher education, and her parents encouraged only her brothers to go to college. Times certainly have changed, and now about 65% of college students are women.

I attended Idaho State University in Pocatello where I received a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications. In the 1960s, a degree in communications was similar to an interdisciplinary or liberal studies degree. Like most undergraduate students, I changed my major several times. For a while I studied philosophy, and the two best courses I took as an undergraduate were logic (inductive and deductive reasoning) and epistemology (the study of the acquisition of knowledge). As a professor, I have advocated for those two courses to be required of all college students. They taught me the fundamentals of how to think logically.

My Master’s degree is in Speech Pathology and Audiology. One of my linguistics professors suggested I explore this major, and it immediately intrigued me. My advisor, Dr. Larry Sant, was a speech scientist who specialized in the anatomy and physiology of the speech mechanism. He was an excellent professor and died far too young from a congenital heart disorder.

During my second year of graduate school, I struggled to select a topic for my research project. I ended up writing it on interviewing and counseling parents of children who stutter, and I learned a lot from it. However, before settling on that topic, I started a study on the effects of marijuana on psycholinguistic abilities.

One of the tests available to me was the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities (ITPA). It is a complex test that assesses various so-called psycholinguistic abilities. There are twelve subtests: auditory reception, visual reception, auditory association, visual association, verbal expression, manual expression, grammatic closure, visual closure, auditory sequential memory, visual sequential memory, auditory closure, and sound blending. The goal of my research proposal was to compare the ITPA scores of people under the influence of marijuana with a control group.

There was no shortage of volunteers to be subjects for the research; it was the early 1970s after all. After I submitted my prospectus to Dr. Sant, it was necessary for me to get the marijuana. We requested the drug from a state agency, and it took a year to be provided to us. Because of the time delay, I had to abandon the project. In fact, just before I left Pocatello to seek my doctorate, Dr. Sant received an ounce of the most potent marijuana available in Idaho. I remember him saying to me: What am I supposed to do with this? It was a frustrating and fruitless wait when I could have easily purchased the marijuana from hundreds of campus sellers. Perhaps the best lesson I learned from the experience was to be practical in research and to consider reasonable time objectives. When doing research, there are often factors you cannot control that will delay your project.

My doctorate is in Audiology and Speech Sciences from Michigan State University. At Michigan State, I had the honor of studying under Dr. Oscar I. Tosi. Dr. Tosi had a Ph.D. in Speech and Hearing Sciences and another doctorate in Physics. He was director of the Michigan State University Institute of Voice Identification which, at the time, was one of the world’s preeminent voice print laboratories. Dr. Tosi served as an expert witness in many criminal cases and did voice analyses in the laboratory. Besides having superior academic and scientific qualifications, he spoke five languages fluently. During my first meeting with him, I wondered whether English was one of them due to his heavy Italian accent. Dr. Tosi was not only my mentor, but a good friend. We spent many hours discussing not only the speech sciences and acoustics, but the meaning of life. He was a brilliant and personable individual, and a true scientist and philosopher.

The Communication Chain in a Nutshell

The act of communication can be viewed as a chain of events. In this book, I will address each link in the chain as a normal process and also cover disorders that can disrupt, impair, delay, or eliminate each aspect of communication. While there can be communication through reading, writing, gestures, art, texting, and so forth, I concentrate on speech communication, which is the main way people communicate.

Communication begins as thoughts in the speaker’s mind. Those thoughts are coded into a language for expression. At a small site in the left hemisphere of the brain, Broca’s area, they are programmed into speech acts. The breath support necessary to utter the expression is created, and air is sent up the vocal tract. Most speech sounds are voiced at the level of the vocal cords and the acoustic energy is projected upward through the oral and nasal cavities. Some speech sounds have more nasal resonance than others, and this is produced by opening and closing the nasal chambers by using the soft palate. The articulators shape each of the 44 vowels and consonants of English primarily by the actions of the tongue. Also programmed by Broca’s area is the cadence of speech, which gives utterances a smooth, melodic rhythm.

The production of speech sounds results in changes in atmospheric pressure, and the thoughts of the speaker are transmitted to the listener by a series of energy transformations. The listener picks up the acoustic energy by the eardrum, which is in contact with the atmosphere. The eardrum and bones of the middle ear transform the acoustic energy into mechanical energy. At the inner ear, the speech signal is further transformed into hydraulic energy and back again into neural electrochemical energy. The neural electrochemical energy carrying the meaning of the utterance then travels to a brain structure called the thalamus, which is important for perception. From the thalamus, the message goes to an area of the brain called Wernicke’s area, where it is partially decoded, and the listener understands the speaker’s communication by making associations. Each link in the communication chain must be unbroken or the message will be disrupted, impaired, or lost. Speech communication is a series of energy transformations: neural electrochemical, acoustic, mechanical, hydraulic, and back again to neural electrochemical impulses in the listener.

When a speaker begins the act of communication, he or she first formulates the thoughts to be communicated. Obviously, thoughts are a product of the brain. Although much has been learned about brain functioning, there remains much to learn about it. Fundamental to understanding human consciousness is comprehending how the neural electrochemical impulses in the brain become thoughts. This is sometimes referred to as the brain-mind leap. With regard to communication, the question becomes: How does the neural electrochemical energy in the brain become the meanings of utterances? Before addressing this link in the communication chain, I will address some interesting history, suppositions, theories, and facts about the brain.

History of the Study of Communication Sciences and Disorders

The human brain is often a topic of my lectures. It never ceases to amaze me how innately interested students are in the brain. Whether they are freshmen in an introduction course or graduate students studying neurogenic communication disorders, it is easy to captivate and intrigue them about the intricacies of the brain. But then, why shouldn’t the brain be an interesting topic? The human brain is only about three pounds of organic tissue, yet it has the ability to create human thought in all its forms, to split the atom, and understand the creation of the universe. It cures illnesses, builds skyscrapers, nurtures babies, and permits jury deliberations. Internet social networks, brain scanning devices, digital photography, virtually all advances in civilization are products of this small organ. It is about 2% of a human’s total body weight, enclosed in a bony skull, and sits atop a fragile neck. More than 100 billion neurons somehow work together, and through a series of neural electrochemical reactions, create human consciousness. Philosophically, this is all done by the brains in fragile human beings, who reside on a small planet revolving around an unremarkable sun, one of 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which is but one of at least 100 billion galaxies of the known universe, and possibly one of an infinite number of universes. The human brain is truly a remarkable organ.

The Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans

Our knowledge of the brain, and its role in communication, did not come easily or quickly, and it certainly is not complete. Archeologists have records of primitive humans with holes bored in their skulls dating back about 10,000 years. Apparently, these surgeries were crude attempts to cure injury or disease. About 6,000 years ago, the ancient Egyptians first began the systematic study of the human brain. The earliest Egyptian surgical text, written on papyrus, gives us a glimpse of the medical procedures and practices in ancient Egypt.

The Egyptian Medical Papyri describe 48 cases, beginning with injury to the head and systematically moving downward in the body. Case 22 was a speechless patient with a head injury. In this account, speechlessness and brain injury were linked probably for the first time in recorded history. The Egyptian physicians also discovered the cerebral ridges and valleys, and the membranes surrounding the brain. According to scholars, the ancient Egyptians believed loss of speech was a metaphysical event brought on by an outside god or the breath of death. As for Patient 22, they did not believe his communication disorder was treatable. Around 800 years later, more detail was provided about this speechless patient. Apparently, he suffered a projectile-induced open head injury. Scholars note that the Egyptians did not believe a person’s fundamental nature was altered by brain injury, rather the heart was the seat of the soul and where life memories were stored.

The ancient Egyptians have always interested me, and someday I hope to travel to Egypt. I think highly of them for their curiosity and active pursuit of knowledge about the human body. I also find their religious and philosophical views intriguing. I view the ancient Egyptians as the first people to attempt to understand the wonders of the universe and humanity’s place in it.

I sometimes ask my scientist and professor friends and acquaintances what first prompted them to enter their professional fields. Learning what motivated them to take a particular professional path is fun. Many of them recall how as youngsters, a respected individual aroused their curiosity about the particular profession. For some, it may have been a visit to a doctor’s office, tour of a campus, an introductory course, or a teacher whom they admired. Others feel they always had the calling and say they were born with an interest in the profession.

Many speech-language pathologists and audiologists go into communication sciences and disorders because they themselves experienced a communication impediment. The skill, compassion, and sensitivity of their therapists impressed them. For some people who stutter, they go into the discipline to learn more about themselves and their disorder. Others go into communication sciences and disorders because they have a child who suffers from a communication disorder or a parent or grandparent who was a stroke survivor. Goofy as it seems, the 1959 horror movie, The Mummy, played an important role in my goal to become a college professor.

I was ten-years-old when the movie came out, and my parents allowed me to watch the Friday Midnight Horror Movies. I remember a particular scene where an adventurous and courageous professor was exploring a mummy’s tomb. I was awestruck at the drama of it all. I distinctly remember thinking that being a professor would be an amazing career choice, full of adventure and excitement. I was also a farm boy and had never met a professor. I was quite impressionable, but The Mummy did push me in the direction of science and academia. I suspect professor Indiana Jones’ adventures may have had a similar effect on other youngsters. Sometimes, our early commitment to a vocation or a profession falls to the wayside. One of my sons, Benjamin, who now has a doctorate in microbiology and owns a successful testing laboratory, announced that he wanted to be a garbage man with two dogs. He made this proclamation at age three; he was quite precocious. He had just watched our garbage being removed, and was impressed by the large truck and the sounds it made much like children are impressed by fire engines.

The ancient Greek physicians and philosophers studied the human brain and communication. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, broke with the ancient Egyptians and believed the brain, not the heart, is where thought occurs in humans. He also discounted the irrational belief of the time that illness was punishment from the gods for bad deeds, and that by pleasing the gods sickness could be cured. Hippocrates was a believer in the Body Humors Theory of Illness and that a healthy body had a balance of blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Body Humors treatments included inducing vomiting and bloodletting. The Body Humor Theory of Illness was practiced in one form or another into the 1700s, and it is rumored that bloodletting contributed to George Washington’s death. Hippocrates coined the terms aphonos and anaudos for communication