Congenital absence of the tongue does not necessarily make speech,
taste, or deglutition impossible. Jussieu cites the case of a girl who
was born without a tongue but who spoke very distinctly. Berdot
describes a case in which the tongue was deficient, without apparent
disturbance of any of the functions. Riolan mentions speech after loss
of the tongue from small-pox.

Boddington gives an account of Margaret Cutting, who spoke readily and
intelligibly, although she had lost her tongue. Saulquin has an
observation of a girl without a tongue who spoke, sang, and swallowed
normally. Aurran, Bartholinus, Louis, Parsons, Tulpius, and others
mention speech without the presence of a tongue.

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. Dolaeus
records an instance of double tongue in a paper entitled "De puella
bilingui," and Beaudry and Brothers speak of cleft tongue. Braine
records a case in which there was a large hypertrophied fold of
membrane coming from each side of the upper lip.

In some cases there is marked augmentation of the volume of the tongue.
Fournier has seen a juggler with a tongue so long that he could extrude
it six inches from his mouth. He also refers to a woman in Berlin