The Semon-Rosenbach's rule of the vocal cords in recurrent nerve paralysis has been discussed for many years by many authors, and it is recognized that this theory does not give the rule which can be generally applied to all cases of recurrent nerve paralysis. And there is also no hypothesis reported which can explain the types of the vocal cords position seen in recurrent nerve paralysis, namely median position, paramedian position, intermediate position and lateral position.
The author and his co-workers, T. Ueda and T. Mukasa had investigated the position of the vocal cords in cadavers and reported the findings in the previous volume of this Journal.
In this previous investigation the vocal cords in cadavers were seen to be in the median, the paramedian, the intermediate so-called in the cadaveric and in the lateral position.
From this result the author surmised that the vocal cords might take the upper mentioned positions in recurrent nerve paralysis because of the consititutional difference of the muscle tonus after paralysis of the recurrent nerve between the opener and the closers of the glottis.
