, 1888-10-12
DIMPLEs MADE TO ORDER.
A Chicago Doctors" Method-A French.
mans Process-A Bad Job.

physician, and believe myself capable of
performing any ordinary operation. Chi
cago needs a dimple maker and / want
to be the man. There's money in it for
me and beauty in it for the ladies. The
process is practically painless and the
after result as beautiful a dimple as the
heart of man could desire to look upon
or woman to possess. Dimple making
is a regular business in New York and
other eastern cities. l think l can in
troduce improvements into the art. l
nave been to Paris and have studied there
under the great dimple makers, and
think myself competent. TIL process is
simple. Through an incision made in
the skin 1 remove a small portion of the
flesh sufficient to leave a cavity large
enough for a dimple. The wound is
dressed and nature is left to heal it. No,
l don't care to go into particulars, be-
cause l do not want to be initiated. The
charge will be from $25 to $50, and the
time required about one week. The OPP
Grafton itself takes but a few minutes.
Of course the healing of the wound is
a matter of more or less time"
The first establishment of the business,
if it can be so called, in America, was
managed by a Frenchman named LIE
Compile, who introduced it. He had
been a barber in his own country, and
had learned dimple making as an adj
junct to shaving, as the Italians learn
how to use the lancet. He was not an
expert, but he was shrewd. He knew
that doctors of n certain class come
cheap, so when he hired a first floor front
in one of the old houses on Fourteenth
street, New York, before the reorganiza-
ton of that thoroughfare, he hired a
young graduate to help him. This was
in 1876.
lie Compile soon became the rage. He
early achieved newspaper notoriety from
the novelty of his calling, and this helped
him. His process was not SO simple or
SO free from pain as the present method.
He applied a small hollow cone of silver
to the cheek or chin of the would be
dimpled. To the open small end of the
cone was affixed n tube leading to an air
pump. By exhausting the air from the
cone the integument and flesh covered
by the open f1ared end of it was forced
up, filing the cW:c. A ligament was
then tied around iap base of the conical
portion of flesh { ~r"Cvent it sinking back
to the level of the face. The cone was
then removed and an opening made in
the elevated particle of face, and enough
of that flesh removed to cause the desired
depression, when the ligament was re-
moved. AS none of the epidermis was
removed, there was usually no difficulty
experienced in causing the wound to
heal with suppuration. To give the dim
pie its required shape, q solid CONF was
inserted in the depression and kept there
until the wound had healed by means of
a bandage. During this time it was pre-
sumed that the more or less fair patient
was not at home to callers. Or. if seen,
she had a bad toothache or the mumps,
or any other complaint causing the muf-
fling of the face.
LIE Compile did quite q business at first,
but it was soon discovered that his opera
lions left either a scar or a permanent
redness behind, which was more unpleas-
ant than the lack of a dimple. He had
imitators, of course, and some of them
improved on his methods. 1t was not
until local anasthetics came into vogue
that the business received a great i'm
petus. With cocaine a new field was
opened to dimple makers and the other
improvers and benefactors of humanity.
The process was then made practically
painless, and establishments, usually as
adjuncts to dental offices and manicure
shops, were located in Boston and Phil
adelphia as well as New York.
1t rested with a Yankee herb doctor
named Swain to reach the pinnacle of
the profession. Swain had been an
itinerant medicine vender throughout
New England, in which capacity he had
pulled teeth and performed other minor
surgical operations upon the natives of
he districts through which he travelled.
Becoming acquainted with one of LIE
Complies assistants he soon learned all
that the Frenchman knew, and he re-
solved to see whether American ways
and newspaper ink would not improve
on the methods of Europe. He chose
the City of Brotherly Love as the field
for his operations, and opened with the
glare of brass and the fluttering of
dodgers-"health and beauty" parlors,
as he described his apartments on Mar
ket street. He chose as chief assistant q
pretty young Quakeress with a natural
dimple of surprising beauty. She was
exhibited as a specimen of his handicraft.
He did not %confine himself to dimples.
He sold powders and rouges and lotions,
and had certain infailible recipes for
badness and paleness and redness and
all the blemishes, real and imaginary,
with which the bellies of the city thought
themselves afflicted. He soon worked
up a good trade, and at one time he is
said to nave kept two assistants busy
dimple making, but an end came to his
prosperity.
His method of making dimples was
substantially the same as that now prac-
ticed. But familiarity breeds careless
ness as well as contempt, and one day
when the chin of q patrician Philadel-
phia belle was in the process of dimpling
a rusty scalpel was inadvertently used
with disastrous effect. In a few days
the lower jaw of that beauty was far
from frightening her attractiveness. Let
a veil be drawn over the picture. Suffice
it, her good looks were gone forever, and
as she valued her appearance at $25, 900