Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1874 — Noses. [ARTICLE]

Noses.

A medical correspondent sends an amusing letter on noses. He declares that a perfectly symmetrical face, with the nose in the exact mesial line, is a rare, if not an impossible, case—in fact, a monstrosity. He further says that the deviation from perfect symmetry is a beauty, not a defect, and constitutes one superiority of therirving countenance over the imitation by painting or sculpture, in which the slight natural departure from mathematical accuracy is not imitated. He then gives the anatomical explanation of the fact as follows: The nose as a feature depends entirely in its configuration on the arrangement of the bones and cartilages of which it is constructed. The structures here mentioned may superficially be distinctly felt at their point of junction, and it you carefully observe, when no injury has occurred, any deviation from the mesial line only takes place in the cartilaginous portion of the organ. Beyond what may thus be superficially felt, there occurs a bone called the vomer (from its likeness to a plowshare), which plays a very great part in determining the formation and contour of the nose. In truth it is the disposition of this bone which determines the question at issue. It has an attachment to the bones of the nose and face very similar to that of the rudder to a ship, and is so situated over a culcus or slit in the ethmoid bone of the internal nose as of necessity to seek at tacliment to one or other side of this slit. This bone, therefore, is, or ought to be, slightly on one side of the mesial line of the face, and forming, as it does, part of the septum which divides the nostrils, and at the same time forming a middle or central support and point of attachment to the nasal cartilage, it must of necessity carry the soft part of the nose to that side to which it inclines. It will thus appear that, in an anatomical point of view, the nose is abnormal which evenly occupies the middle line of the countenance, and that the organ which is more or less biased from the center is correct. In children this character is absent, or only very slightly apparent, as the vomer itself is but rudimentary and cartilaginous in its structure till the age of puberty is past. Nevertheless, an injury in youth, if unattended to, might and does lead to exaggeration in after years. I have not observed to which side, as a rule, in the majority of cases, the nose inclines. All I can vouch for is my own special case, where the bias is decidedly to the right. —Leisure Hour.