Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/45

 acute and chronic, which lead to the same defects. But these will always be brought to the notice of the medical adviser, who, we hope, will bear in mind that he has before him in the case of every woman a double duty, first to save her life and health, and secondly to preserve her personal charms.

SUPERFLUOUS AND DEFECTIVE MEMBERS.

Nature, at times, plays curious freaks. Generation after generation, in some families, come into the world with six toes, or a double thumb, or a cleft lip. All who have perused Hawthorne's delightful romance, "The Marble Fawn," will remember what he says about the furry and pointed ears which from time immemorial had distinguished the Counts of Monte Beni. They took a sort of pride in the trait, but to most persons in whom such a variation from nature's plan appears, not as the certain stamp of ancient lineage, but as an annoying defect, any such peculiarity is distressing. The advice of all good surgeons is to have a superfluous member trimmed or lopped quite off in early childhood, or as soon as possible thereafter.

Occasionally, but, thank heaven, rarely, a more astonishing deformity of this nature appears. We were present at an operation some years ago where a distinguished surgeon of Philadelphia removed from the cheek of a child some months old a second and distinct child, which had been growing from that portion