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From: "Ernest Everett Blevins" <>
Subject: [SUVCW] Lincoln's Two Faces
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 08:37:59 -0400


I saw a teaser of this on another list and had to hunt it down. The
source for this particular one is
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LOPSIDED_LINCOLN?SITE=INKEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
but
you might find it with other searches as well.

I'm guessing Lincoln knew of this himself when he made the quote "If I had
two faces, do you think I'd be wearing this one."

** begin story**
Aug 13, 11:03 PM EDT

Laser Scans of Two Life Masks Reveal Facial Defect on Left Side of Abraham
Lincoln's Face

By CARLA K. JOHNSON
Associated Press Writer
[image: AP
Photo]<http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/files/photos/N/NYOL96008132037.html?SITE=INKEN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT>;
AP Photo/M. Spencer Green U.S. Video
Advertisement

Buy AP Photo Reprints
<http://pictopia.com/perl/gal?provider_id=38>;

CHICAGO (AP) -- Artists, sculptors and photographers knew Abraham Lincoln's
face had a good side. Now it's confirmed by science. Laser scans of two life
masks, made from plaster casts of Lincoln's face, reveal the 16th
president's unusual degree of facial asymmetry, according to a new study.

The left side of Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right, an
aberration called cranial facial microsomia. The defect joins a long list of
ailments - including smallpox, heart illness and depression - that modern
doctors have diagnosed in Lincoln.

Lincoln's contemporaries noted his left eye at times drifted upward
independently of his right eye, a condition now termed strabismus. Lincoln's
smaller left eye socket may have displaced a muscle controlling vertical
movement, said Dr. Ronald Fishman, who led the study published in the August
issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology.

Severe strabismus leads to double vision and can be treated today by
surgery.

"Lincoln noticed double vision only occasionally and it did not bother him a
great deal," said Fishman, a retired Washington, D.C., ophthalmologist and
history buff.

Most people's faces are asymmetrical, Fishman said, but Lincoln's case was
extreme, with the bony ridge over his left eye rounder and thinner than the
right side, and set backward.

Lincoln's appearance was mocked by his political enemies, historians say.
The author Nathaniel Hawthorne, a Lincoln fan, wrote of the president's
"homely sagacity" and his "sallow, queer, sagacious visage." Hawthorne's
description was deemed disrespectful and deleted by a magazine editor, said
Daniel Weinberg, owner of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago.

Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum described the left side of Lincoln's
face as primitive, immature and unfinished.

When Lincoln was a boy, he was kicked in the head by a horse. Laser scans
can't settle whether the kick or a developmental defect - or neither -
contributed to Lincoln's lopsided face, Fishman said.

The scanning technique is usually used to create 3-D images of children with
cleft lip and palate before and after surgery. Fishman teamed up with Dr.
Adriana Da Silveira, an Austin, Texas, orthodontist who specializes in
children with facial defects, to scan a bronze and a plaster copy of two
life masks, owned by the Chicago History Museum.

Life masks were in vogue in the 1860s, said James Cornelius, curator at the
Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill.

Lincoln cooperated with sculptors to make them twice, in 1860 before his
first presidential nomination, and in 1865, two months before his
assassination. Lincoln probably did it for political purposes more than
posterity, Cornelius said.

"It's the equivalent of TV face time now," Cornelius said.

**end story**

Ernie

List Administrator


--
Ernest Everett Blevins, MFA • Blevins Historical Research
110 Evergreen Way • Villa Rica, Georgia 30180
• 770-456-1876

Historic Preservation Consultant -- Historical and Architectural Research --
Genealogical (Family) Research -- Preservation Planning and Documentation --
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Member: American Planning Association, New England Historic Genealogical
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