FLOPPING EAR NEEDS CAREFUL OPERATION
Next to the cauliflower ear, no other deformity of this particular organ is so frequently the subject of correction as the outstanding ear. This is usually a congenital development and one which is likely to give much distress, particularly to a girl who is otherwise handsome. Many persons have thought that outstanding ears could be corrected merely by sewing the ear to the skin back of it. However, in practice it has been found that the skin will stretch promptly and the ear sag into a new and perhaps more undesirable position. The operation is, therefore, most intricate, involving actual transplantation of part of the cartilage of the ear to the bony covering of the skull behind the ear.
Such decorative surgery is comparatively recent in medicine. Perhaps the first operation for correction of outstanding ears was devised in 1861. Nowadays, with the increasing prosperity, publicity and vanity, such operations have become fairly frequent.
The reliable cosmetic and plastic surgeon is usually associated with a hospital that has been classified by the American Medical Association and the American College of Surgeons as a reputable institution. His work is done under the best surgical conditions, with the assistance of well trained nurses and with all of the cleanliness that is absolutely necessary if surgery of any type is to be successful.
It has been said that the persons who seek cosmetic surgery are likely to be dissatisfied with any result short of perfection, and that they submit to operation after operation, falling more and more into the net of the unprincipled surgeon, if they happen to have begun their quest for beauty with an advertising quack.
The great campaign of education about quackery carried on for many years has resulted in the development of new methods of advertising by the unprincipled surgical impresario. He is far too shrewd to indulge himself in purchased advertising space in newspapers or periodicals. He, therefore, secures a publicity agent who is as likely as not to be a reporter on some local newspaper, willing to eke out a narrow income by playing both ends against the middle. This enterprising journalist takes payment from the beauty surgeon for securing space for him in the daily press, and submits to his newspaper news items regarding weird operations performed by the beauty surgeon on actors, pugilists and other notorious persons. The result is to bring a flood of less notable but equally simple kitchen mechanics, stenographers, elderly housewives and other shallow-minded searchers for beauty into the net.