Say "aaah" … and let’s take a look at those tonsils. Did you get your tonsils taken out as a kid? For people who grew up before the 1980s, the surgery and its attendant promise of icecream and jelly afterwards were almost a rite of passage. But while tonsil removal used to be prescribed for conditions as seemingly unrelated as bed-wetting, you don’t hear about it quite so often these days. So, do people still routinely get their tonsils out? And what is the purpose of the surgery? What actually are tonsils? You might think of your tonsils as simply the two protrusions that bracket the back of your throat, but they’re actually part of a much larger system. Tonsils are bundles of lymphoid tissue similar to the lymph nodes or glands in your neck, armpits and groin. A diagram of a mouth and throat, showing tongue, uvula, tonsils […]