In this series of diagrams from A System of Elocution (1846) by Andrew Comstock, the physician draws on a scene from Milton’s Paradise Lost — in which Satan, expelled from Heaven and finding himself in Hell, delivers a speech to awaken his legions — in order to demonstrate the most effective cadences and gestures one should adopt when public speaking.

Comstock divides Satan’s speech into elocutionary units, each illustrated with physical gestures — which he defines as the “enforcement of language” — and annotated with prosodic diacritics: holds, rests, pauses, whispers, tonal ironies, etc. He calls his exercises “vocal gymnastics”, the performance of which not only make his students more confident in speech, but also fortifies their lungs against the ravages of disease and serve as “a powerful means of promoting digestion”. Gesticulations complement the gymnastics of the tongue, for “graceful and appropriate gesture renders vocal delivery far more pleasing and effective.” Just as the arms and legs should be subjected to daily exercise, argues Comstock, so too should “all the muscles of voluntary motion” (including the lips, tongue, and vocal cords) adhere to a regimen to stave off the risk of stammering and lisps. Comstock’s prescriptions often took the form, recounted the physician Samuel Potter, of reading aloud for several hours each day.

A physician and professor of elocution at the Vocal and Polyglot Gymnasium in Philadelphia, Comstock was hugely influential in the burgeoning science of elocution in mid-nineteenth-century America. Among other boasts in his autobiography, he discusses inventing his own phonetic alphabet to improve the speech of his pupils, and translating the New Testament into this system. The good doctor of elocution was no Milton, however, but that did not dissuade him from writing in verse. He was fond of structuring his personal correspondence as poetry, with one letter to a former pupil reading:

Glad am I to learn that you can
’Tend a fracture, cure a fever
Bleed your patient, if he needs it,
Make a hole right through the windpipe,
Operate upon the eye, and
Cut a leg off quite as coolly
As your friend can carve a Turkey.
Glad am I to learn you speak straight,
That your tongue no longer stammers.