Ear piercing

“ After the piercing a peacock’s feather or some stalks of grass or straw are put in to keep the hole open and enlarge it. A Hindu girl has her ear pierced in five places, three being in the upper ear, one in the lobe and one in the small flap over the orifice. Muhammadans make a large number of holes all down the ear and in each of these they place a gold or silver ring, so that the ears are dragged down by the weight. ”

“ Earrings were worn by nearly all men and women. Atsugewi employed bone rings, clamshell beads, feathers and even painted ear ornaments. Mountain Maidu and Yana usually used bone or wooden ones, plain or decorated with feathers or shells. Abalone, like other sea shells, were received only in trade and were fashioned into pendants for ears or noses.
Nose piercing consisted of making a hole through the septum of the nose. This practice was popular among all local tribes. It was done to permit the wearing of jewelry although Yana ascribed a deeper meaning to the custom as well. ”

“ Inflammation may be set up in the lobe after piercing it for wearing ear-rings, should a portion of gristle happen to be transfixed by the needle, and all the more likely should that be a dirty or rusty one. The best thing to do is to bathe it frequently with hot water. The silly habit of pulling children’s ears is very liable to cause disease and injury. ”

“ There is therefore no excuse for having badly-shaped or wrongly-inclined ears in these days of cosmetic surgery.
In the most beautiful ears the lobe is free, and not attached to the head in its lower part. Heavy earrings, which have a tendency to unduly enlarge the lobules, are now tabooed by Fashion; but very small jewels in the ear may be looked on, like small finger-rings, necklaces, and bracelets, as unobjectionable from an æsthetic point of view, though real beauty unadorned is adorned the most. ”

“ This gem was formerly in the Treasury of St. Denis, and is considered to belong to the Carlovingian period. [428]
So large and heavy were the earrings worn in Rome that there were women known as auriculæ ornatrices, special doctresses whose sole occupation was the healing of ear tumors and of injured or infected ears. In a similar way, at the present day, we have the ear piercer, whose vocation, however, is rapidly becoming useless because of the ingenious modern devices for holding the pearls to unpierced ears ”

“ Hardly any woman in Eastern Central Africa is without a lip-ring; they say it makes them look pretty, and “the bigger the ring, the more they value themselves!”971 The Shulis bore a hole in the underlip and insert in it a piece of crystal three or four inches long, which sways about as they speak;972 and similar customs are common among other African peoples,973 as also in some parts of North and South America.974 The Papuans perforate the septum of the nose and insert in the hole sticks, claws of birds, &c.975 The most common practice is to pierce, enlarge, or somehow mutilate the ear-lobes. ”

“ Only the remaining one of the two bifurcated parts of an ear-lobe would be pierced, cut in two and adhesioned on the top, in the case where the other part would be found to be gone. A surgeon well-versed in the knowledge of surgery (Shastras) should slice off a patch of living flesh from the cheek of a person devoid of ear-lobes in a manner so as to have one of its ends attached to its former seat (cheek) . ”

“ In like manner the bodies are notably free from artificial deformation; the skulls are not flattened or otherwise distorted; there is no scarification, or even tattooing; neither ears nor lips are pierced for pendants or labrets; the teeth are not filed or drilled, though in some cases at least the first incisors of females are extracted; and while there are trustworthy records of the piercing of the nasal septum for the insertion of pendants, no examples were found at Costa Rica in 1894. ”

“ If the chin tends to be heavy, the earclips should be accented with color and have an upswept look. Long earclips are permissible, if not thin but rich-looking and full. In this case, however, they should be worn only with full décolleté or strapless gown.
Obviously, small earclips should be avoided on the round face; they will make it seem broader and the features heavier. Similarly, little bowknots will seem childish. Any design [132] that merely follows the lines of the ear lobe will accentuate the roundness, which properly chosen earclips will not emphasize but use to full advantage. ”

“ Split the lips and remove their fleshy interior, split the nose cartilage and separate it from the outer skin. With some blunt tool pry the skin of the back of the ear from the cartilage and turn the ears wrong side out to their tips. Give the scalp at least 24 hours' pickling or it will be liable to excessive shrinkage on drying.
Many a fine head mounted green, without thinning or pickling, has shrunk and continued to shrink for months, until all stitches gave way and it cracked and shriveled to an inglorious end. ”

“ The adornment of the person is confined almost exclusively to women so that the following observations apply principally to them. In the discussion of bodily mutilations reference will be made to such permanent adornment as tattooing, perforation and elongation of the ear lobes, superciliary and axillary depilation, grinding of the teeth, and the blackening of the teeth and lips--all of which, with the exception of the elongation of the ear lobes, are common to both men and women. ”

“ The ears of the females are pierced in many places; the gold or silver rings return to their several stations after Mahurrum, forming a broad fringe of the precious metals on each side the head; but when they dress for great events,—as paying visits or receiving company,—these give place to strings of pearls and emeralds, which fall in rows from the upper part of the ear to the shoulder in a graceful, elegant style. ”

“ Some wear breech cloths, and not a few are bare to the waist. In the early morning, when the air is still sharp, many of these people, clad in red flannel blankets, go stalking along with their legs uncovered to the thighs. I have already spoken of the ear plugs. Some have the holes in the lobes of their ears so stretched that I can put my fist through them. The loops are so long that when a man takes out his ear plug he hangs the loop of skin over the top of his ear to prevent its catching on something and tearing. ”

“ It is thin, easily cut and shaped, and just stiff enough to work perfectly in imitating the shape of an ear cartilage. Good, firm, card-board can be used for the ears instead of lead, when you can not get either of the sheet metals.
10. Anoint the skin copiously with arsenical soap, give it time to absorb the poison, then put it in place on the skull and neck, and adjust it carefully. Fasten the lips together at the end of the muzzle by taking a stitch in each and tying the thread. ”

“ The secondary deformity of the ear is brought together by suture. The author has found that this cannot be readily done without puckering the rim when the line of excision is made convexly, and advises making it triangular instead. The defect of the nose should be freshened to the same form. The flap from the ear now becomes ideal, fits better, is more readily sutured in place. No sutures should, however, be made through the apex of this triangular flap to avoid gangrene at this frail point. Silk isinglass at this point acts as a splint. Dry aristol dressings are used.
Fig. 453.—König Method. ”

“ If prolonged attempts to remove the foreign body by instruments have failed. This operation becomes imperative if there are signs of retention of pus within the middle ear.
(ii) If the foreign body has been pushed into the tympanic cavity and cannot be removed otherwise. In such cases, if the perforation is large and the foreign body is small, an attempt may first be made to dislodge the substance by injecting fluid into the middle ear through the Eustachian tube by means of the catheter and syringe (see p. 372) . ”

“ Earrings, however, enjoyed no great popularity during the Middle Ages, and the cause of this must be traced to the fashion which prescribed for women a style of coiffure by which the hair fell down at the sides, or was covered by a veil, which {113} would have effectively hidden any ornaments for the ear. It was only at the end of the fourteenth century that fashion again allowed the hair to be worn high. ”

“ The larger the earclip, within the proportions of the head, the smaller seems the nose. But a woman with a large or pronounced nose should avoid upswept and backswept earclips which follow the line of the ear lobe ”

“ NATIVE TROOPS. Page 59. In this part of India the fondness of the women for silver jewellery seems to be greater than elsewhere, if that be possible. Not only are they loaded with the usual rings, bracelets, armlets, and anklets, but they pierce the nose in three places to adorn it with trinkets. In each nostril a sort of brooch is fastened, and the centre of the nose is pierced to insert a large ring, which hangs down over the mouth. A large hole is opened in the lobe of the ear to hold a heavy ring as big as a bracelet, and in one district a great ear-lobe is considered a mark of beauty. ”

“ An ear-lobe should not be tried to be elongated just after the adhesion of its two severed parts, inasmuch as the centre of the adhesion, still being raw, might cause them to fall off again. Thus an ear-lobe under the circumstance should be gradually elongated, only when it would be found to be marked by the growth of hair on its surface, and the hole or the perforation has assumed a circular look, and the adhesion has become firmly effected, well-dried, painless, even and level in its entire length. ”

“ I will tell you even more: these hairs of down were from four to five millimetres long, by from three to five hundredths of a millimetre in diameter; this is twice the size of the pretty down which grows on a feminine ear; from which I conclude that your piece of ear belongs to a man.
"Against the curved edge of the cartilage, I found delicate striated bunches of the muscle of the helix, and so perfectly intact that one would have said there was nothing to prevent their contracting. ”

“ To this ring is next attached a pendant. In the third type the hook which pierces the ear is hidden by a rosette or disc from which hang tassel-shaped appendages, and in the middle between them small animals enamelled white, such as the geese, swans, and cocks in the British Museum, and the peacocks and doves in the Campana Collection in the Louvre. Earrings of another class are saddle-shaped, formed like an imperfect cylinder, one end of which is closed by an open-work rose cap, which completely enclosed the lobe of the wearer's ear. ”

“ Where the deformity is recognized during infancy the ears should be simply bandaged to the head with a suitable bandage or ear cap, procurable for that purpose with the hope that the cartilages may thus be influenced during their period of hardening and growth. ”

“ The external or outward ear is designed by nature to stand prominent, and to bear its proportion in the symmetry of the head, but in Europe it is greatly flattened by the pressure of the dress; it consists chiefly of elastic cartilage, formed with different hollows, or sinuosities, all leading into each other, and finally terminating in the concha, or immediate opening into the tube of the ear. ”

“ Where the loss of substance is not too great and along the helix of the ear, a flap can be taken from the back of the ear, leaving it attached at its cicatrized union with the primary wound, and sliding this flap upward or outward until the defect of the helix is overcorrected to allow for contraction and suturing the flap in its new position. ”

“ A third view is that the filaments from the hair cells, rather than the basilar membrane, respond to the vibrations and in turn stimulate the terminations of the nerve fibers.
Fig. 155—Diagram showing how wax may plug the auditory canal and cause deafness. Hygiene of the Ear.—The ear, being a delicate organ, is frequently injured by careless or rough treatment. The removal of the ear wax by the insertion of pointed instruments has been found to interfere with the natural method of discharge and to irritate the membrane. It should never be practiced. ”

“ Do not use much force lest the tympanum be injured. If this fail, dry the ear, stick the end of a little linen swab into thick glue, let the patient lie on one side, put this into the ear until it touches the substance, keep it there three quarters of an hour while it hardens, and then draw them all out together. Be careful that the glue does not touch the skin at any point, and that you are at work upon the right ear. Children often deceive one as to the ear which is affected. ”

“ A further method of ear adornment, frequently seen among the women, consists of beads sewed into a number of holes which have been pierced through the helices of the ears.
Both men and women file and blacken the teeth. When a boy or girl has reached the age of puberty, it is time that this beautifying should be done. ”

“ An incision is to be begun opposite to and on the outside of the extremity of the lobe of the ear, and carried downward in a straight line, until it reaches a little below the angle of the jaw, at the distance of nearly half an inch, more or less, as may be found most convenient from the form of the neck. ”