Evening star., 1938-10-11
BY THOMAS r. HENRY.

Making new noses out Of dead mems
ribs was described before the Ameri-
can Academy of OptAalmology and
Otolaryngology, meeting at the May
flower today, by Dr. Claire L. Straith
of Detroit.
Noses, smashed and apparently badly
deformed for life, can be rebuilt out Of
rib cartilage so that they are as good
as new, Dr. Straith said. Formerly it
has been the practice to remove this
cartilage from the patient with the
smashed nose. Now, he said, it has
been found that a piece taken from
another person in surgical opera
tion. and kept In refrigerator is just
as good. 1t also is entirely feasible, he
explained, to use cartilage removed at
an autopsy.
Nourished by lymph instead Of
blood, DR.. Straith said, cartilage, like
the cornea Of the eye, does not undergo
the same degeneration as part of the
body fed by the blood stream and can
be grated" into another person
weeks after it has been removed from
somebody else. He described new in
struments by which a perfectly fitting
new nose can be constructed.
In restoring a badly damaged face,
he stressed, the greatest difficulty is in
obtaining new skin which will not look
like an obvious patch, however skill
fully the plastic surgery is carried out.
Anybody knocked through the wind
shield of an automobile with the loss
of part of the nose or an ear, he
stressed, may save themselves lot Of
embarrassment later If they keep cool,
search for the severed portion and take
1t to the surgeon within few hours.
Then it can be grated in place again.
Search for a cutoff end of a nose
at the scene of the accident later on
usually is useless, DR.. Straith said.
The next best thing to do is to take
piece of skin from behind the pa
tents ear which makes fair match
with the skin of the nose. Skin from
any other part of the body never can
be made to look entirely natural on
the face.
The newest developments in plastic
are rapidly eliminating permanent
facial deformities In most operations
in which very fine needles and tiny
sutures are made scar is hardly dis
cernible. The majority of such oper-
ations today, he said, are being per-
oI h1:r IN,
tomobile smash-ups. Seated beside
the driver when the crash occurs they
are much more likely to be thrown
through the windshield.
Pigs Shed Light on Deafness.
Experiments with a newly developed
strain of waltzing guinea pigs which
throw light on an hitherto unrecog-
nized form of hereditary deafness
were described by DR.. NJ H. Lurie of
the Harvard University School of
Medicine.
In the heredity of these animals,
first obtained few years ago at the
Kansas State Agricultural College,
are three linked recessive traits-a
uC6CICA dOAOAI dG lIi VI Vi SdH VI
corti, the spiral structure in the inner
ear which is the direct organ of hear
ing; an irresistible impulse to whirl
around in circles whenever in the
least excited, and some unknown
'lethal' gene which ordinarily kills
the animal before it is born. Be-
cause of this last it is impossible to
breed to guinea pigs directly with each
other BY breeding them to normal
animals. however, and mating the
offspring it is possible to get COM
binations of the deafness and dane
ing genes without the lethal one.
Offspring of two walters inherit all
the recessive genes In a bunch and
very rarely would one of them be
born alive.
Nature Corrects Mistake.
It long has been known that ototis
poadio ono nf the most WIDESPREAD