Word: saliva
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Saliva...
Your come-back to A. C. Whitaker's letter (TIME, Dec. 4) "Saliva is saliva, distilled or not-ED." is the most inept and unsnappy that I can recall. In fact I might say it was positively dumb. What Mr. Whitaker tried to tell you in a nice way was that the moisture that accumulates in musicians' wind instruments was not spit but actual water, and he was right...
Take a piece of toast hot from the toaster tomorrow morning and lay it on a cold plate. When you pick it up you will note the plate is beaded with drops of moisture. And it won't be saliva. . . . The air the musician takes into his lungs is not saturated with saliva when he blows it into his horn, it is warmed in the lungs so that its natural moisture is more easily condensed when it passes into the cooler metal coils of the horn, and this natural moisture of the air (water) is what is precipitated within...
...Saliva consists of that liquid derived from the three pair of salivary glands proximate and discharging into the mouth. The fluid substance removable after the playing of wind instruments consists mainly of condensed exhaled breath whose source is the lungs...
...Saliva is saliva, distilled...