Page:Personal beauty how to cultivate and preserve it in accordance with the laws of health (1870).djvu/46

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of the face from before birth, a sort of parasite, deriving its life from that of its twin sister.

Instances are also known of children born without an arm, or a leg, or some other member. When we were denizens of the Quartier Latin, in Paris, haunting the precincts of the École de Médecine, a woman used to stand daily on the Pont Neuf across the Seine, asking alms, and to excite the pity of the passers-by, showing her arms, each of which terminated above the elbow in a button of flesh. She had been so from birth. Probably some of our medical readers will recall her case, as Professor Paul Dubois used occasionally to exhibit her before his class.

The loss of a member by accident is much more frequent. To whatever cause the deformity may be owing, modern art offers a ready and admirable resource in the "artificial limb." Several expert mechanicians and eminent surgeons have devoted their abilities to perfecting these contrivances, until now there is little left to be desired. The limbs are faultless in form, light, easily adjusted and removed, and not very dear. Miss Kilmansegg with her golden leg is quite behind the times, for now her gold will buy her a more shapely leg of wood and steel than ever she owned in the flesh. The spokes and fellies of the human wheel have been so thoroughly studied and closely imitated, that the most critical eye can no longer detect the presence of an artificial limb when