Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/66

 to certain serious accidents are portended by the shape of her neck. When it is full in front it signifies a plethoric constitution, liable to the accidents which arise from a too sanguineous habit. At about the age of forty a deposit of fat occurs low down at the back of the neck, over the vertebræ, forming sometimes a small prominent mass, which reveals the age more certainly than words.

WRY-NECK AND GOITRE.

The most common defects in the contour of the neck are owing to irregular action of the muscles drawing it over to one side, or to the peculiar swelling of the glands known as goitre.

Children not unfrequently seem unable to hold the head erect for any length of time. It drops forward on the chest or to one side. Others have "wry-neck," in which complaint the head is drawn forcibly toward one shoulder by a shortening of the muscles.

Such conspicuous disfigurements as these should have prompt attention, the more so as they are readily remedied by proper means. It has been recently discovered that an injection of the active principle of belladonna beneath the skin often acts with great efficiency, but other cases require surgical appliances and sometimes an operation, quite too formidable to be described here.

Goitre is a swelling in the front part of the neck.