Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/128

 spectacle, fatal to comeliness. It can, and it should be, cured. An operation is necessary, but only a slight and not very painful one, or it can be rendered entirely painless by ether.

If tumors and local swellings appear on the lips, they should be promptly submitted to a medical adviser, as they can only be successfully treated by the more recondite arts of medicine.

A deformity of birth only too common is that familiarly known as "hare-lip," so called because the upper lip is cleft or divided by a fissure, like that of hares or rabbits. This not only gives a hideous expression to the features, but frequently interferes with the pronunciation of words. It can be very neatly remedied by a surgeon, and no one should hesitate to undergo the necessary operation. In children it is best to have it remedied either just before or after they have their first teeth; that is, either when they are five or six months, or between two and three years of age.

Coral lips, cherry lips, rosy lips, such as those of beauteous Queen Guinevere:—

"A man had given all other bliss, And all his worldly worth for this, To waste his whole heart in one kiss   Upon her perfect lips,"

have inspired many a poet with immortal songs. But there is many a fair one whose lips are neither coralline nor roseate, but pale and faded, or puffed and purple.