Gauging small, medium and large digits in place of small, medium and large nostrils
According to the patent, ‘certain dimensions of an individual’s digits can be correlated to certain dimensions of an individual’s internal nostril, or nasal airway size. Gauging the size of an individual’s internal nostril or nasal airway by measuring certain dimensions of their digit(s) provides a highly correlating sizing method that is much easier, faster and more convenient than measuring the nostril or nasal airway directly.’
Four
Bones, Foreskins, Armpits, Slime
In brief
‘The Swedish Pimple: Or, Thoughts on Specialization’
by Jeffrey D. Bernhard (published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 1995)
Some of what’s in this chapter: Explain that itch • Army dandruff • What colour the foreskin • Fingers and pigment, perhaps • Botox for the fetid • Facial hair vs decollatage • Harry Potter, recessively • Kangaroo, harp, infant • Gay anticlockwise scalp hair-whorl rotation • Influence of fingers in eyes • Nude doll with gonorrhoea • Slimeball’s gooey power • White hair, too suddenly • Cheek dimples counted and made • Soy sauce hair
The apparent source of an itch
‘Observations during Itch-Inducing Lecture’ is a study published by German researchers in the year 2000. It delivers exactly what the title promises.
Professor Uwe Gieler at Justus-Liebig University in Giessen and two colleagues begin with the basics: ‘Itching is defined as a sensation associated with an impulse to scratch.’
They invited people to attend a public lecture called ‘Itching – What’s Behind It?’ The lecture was purportedly recorded for broadcast on television. In fact, the TV cameras were there to record what the audience did – whether people scratched themselves, or failed to scratch themselves.
Method of soliciting and observing participants for the lecture
The lecture had two parts, the first filled with slides of fleas, mites, scratch marks on skin and other visual stimuli that the scientists hoped would ‘induce itching’. The remainder of the lecture presented photos of babies, soft skin and other items meant to ‘induce relaxation and a sense of well-being’.
The experiment was to some extent a success. Audience members, on average, scratched themselves more frequently during the itch-provoking part of the lecture. However, because the audience was small, the scientists hesitate to draw any firm conclusion from what happened.
Five years earlier, Clifton W. Mitchell published a treatise called ‘Effects of Subliminally Presented Auditory Suggestions of Itching on Scratching Behavior’. It describes his doctoral thesis research at Indiana State University.
For Mitchell, itching and scratching were but a means to an end. His main interest was subliminal perception. His stated intent was ‘to create an experimental situation closely analogous to that encountered in commercially available subliminal self-help audiotapes’.
Dr Mitchell had volunteers listen to a specially prepared eleven-minute-long recording of recited ‘suggestions of itching’. The report does not specify the nature of these suggestions, other than to say that they were recorded at a level so low that it ‘prohibit[ed] conscious detection of spoken words’. Mitchell buried these whisperings beneath a loud soundtrack of what he describes as ‘new-age style music’.
A different group of volunteers listened to a recording of just the music.
A third group heard a recording of someone simply, loudly making suggestions about itching. The technical term for this explicit prompting, the report informs us, is ‘supraliminal suggestions’.
Mitchell added extra scientific rigour: ‘To distract participants from the purpose of the experiment, a biofeedback-type headband with bogus sensors and wiring was fitted around the head.’
He video-recorded the test subjects, then evaluated the recordings to see who scratched themselves, and how often.
The report presents the results of the experiment, condensed into a concise, readable table that is labelled ‘Means and standard deviation for number of scratching-type behavior observed for each group across phases’. Those results were a bit paradoxical. Those who listened to the overt itching messages scratched themselves least, those who listened to the pure music scratched most.
There was, Mitchell reports finally, ‘no evidence’ that listening to subliminally presented auditory suggestions of itching led to an increase in scratching behaviour.
Niemeier, Volker, Jörg Kupfer and Uwe Gieler (2000). ‘Observations during Itch-inducing Lecture’. Dermatology and Psychosomatics 1 (1 suppl.): 15–8.
Mitchell, Clifton W. (1995). ‘Effects of Subliminally Presented Auditory Suggestions of Itching on Scratching Behavior’. Perceptual and Motor Skills 80 (1): 87–96.
May we recommend
‘Severe Infestation of a She-Ass with the Cat Flea Ctenocephalides felis felis (Bouche, 1835)’
by I. Yerhuham and O. Koren (published in Veterinary Parasitology, 2003)
Dandruff in the army of Pakistan: a comprehensive look
Public knowledge about dandruff in Pakistan’s army comes mainly from a study called ‘Knowledge, Attitude and Practice regarding Dandruff among Soldiers’, written by Naeem Raza, Amer Ejaz and Muhammad Khurram Ahmed, published in 2007 in the Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons – Pakistan.
Raza, Ejaz and Ahmed surveyed eight hundred male soldiers of all ranks, ascertaining each soldier’s knowledge about, and personal experience with, dandruff. The survey was ‘designed keeping in mind the general taboos of our region about dandruff, which included visits to doctors, homeopathic physicians or “hakims”, use of oils, any home-made remedies or commercial products’.
If this sampling of soldiers was truly representative, we now know that approximately 65 percent of Pakistani soldiers have, or have had, dandruff ‘either permanently or periodically’. ‘Almost two thirds of the respondents stated to remain tense and embarrassed because of their dandruff.’ Noting that the ‘media has played an important role in making people think like that’, the study concludes with a recommendation. Healthcare professionals should make a greater effort to educate the populace.
Both the numbers and the reactions are typical of the region and the world, according to a study published three years later in the Indian Journal of Dermatology, called ‘Dandruff: The Most Commercially Exploited Skin Disease’.
The Indian report sketches the underlying situation: ‘Dandruff is a common scalp disorder affecting almost half of the population at the pre-pubertal age and of any gender and ethnicity. No population in any geographical region would have passed through freely without being affected by dandruff at some stage in their life.’ It helpfully fills in the etymology. ‘The word dandruff (dandruff, dandriffe) is of Anglo-Saxon origin, a combination of “tan” meaning “tetter” and “drof” meaning “dirty” ’.
The Pakistan military report cites a 1990 monograph called ‘The History of Dandruff and Dandruff in History. A Homage to Raymond Sabouraud’. That homage was written by Didier Saint-Léger of l’Oréal in Aulnay-sous-Bois, France, and published in the journal Annales de Dermatologie et de Vénéréologie. Saint-Léger explains that Raymond Jacques Adrien Sabouraud (1864–1938), a French dermatologist, painter and sculptor, is the dominant figure in humanity’s effort to understand dandruff.
Saint-Léger shares how dandruff figured in Sabouraud’s greatness: ‘In one of his books, written at the beginning of this century, Raymond Sabouraud devotes some 280 pages to the history of dandruff. Their reading illustrates how, from the Greeks to Sabouraud’s era, this desquamative disease has been subjected to endless doctrinal and scientific conflicts.’
A medical book written during Raymond Sabouraud’s lifetime speaks admiringly of the man: ‘It is said that Sabouraud can tell your moral character, the amount of your yearly income and what you have eaten for breakfast by looking at the root of one of your hairs.’
Raza
, Naeem, Amer Ejaz and Muhammad Khurram Ahmed (2007). ‘Knowledge, Attitude and Practice regarding Dandruff among Soldiers’. Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons – Pakistan 17 (3): 128–31.
Ranganathan, S., and T. Mukhopadhyay ‘Dandruff: The Most Commercially Exploited Skin Disease’. Indian Journal of Dermatology 55 (2): 130–4.
Saint-Léger, Didier (1990). ‘The History of Dandruff and Dandruff in History: An Homage to Raymond Sabouraud’. Annales de Dermatologie et de Vénéréologie 117 (1): 23–7.
Thompson, Ralph Leroy (1908). Glimpses of Medical Europe. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, p. 145.
May we recommend
‘The History of Freckles in Art’
by H.W. Seimens (published in Der Hautarzt, 1967)
Colourful foreskin research
Bryan B. Fuller is the world’s top expert on skin colour in human foreskins.
Fuller’s foreskin research was for a long time based at the University of Oklahoma. He then became the founder and CEO of DermaMedics (www.dermamedics.com).
A research paper Fuller co-authored with four colleagues in 1990 is the most frequently cited study on the topic of foreskin colour. Entitled ‘The Relationship between Tyrosinase Activity and Skin Color in Human Foreskins’, it appeared in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. It makes lively reading.
The scientists pre-select their foreskins on the basis of race. The paper explains: ‘The race of the child was determined from the race of both parents. Foreskins were only used from children whose parents were either racially caucasian or black. No foreskins from racially mixed marriages were used.’
The Fuller process of preparing and utilizing a foreskin is complex.
Seen from the point of view of a foreskin, this is a many-stage adventure. First, the foreskin is surgically removed from its birthplace. Then it is placed on a gauze pad that’s been saturated with a fluid called ‘Hank’s balanced salt solution’. It is then trimmed and sliced into five-square-millimetre chunks. Then each chunk is homogenized three times. It is then sonicated three times. (You may not be familiar with sonication. Sonication, in the words of the Hielscher Ultrasonics company, which makes sonicators, is ‘a very effective method for the mixing, homogenizing, emulsifying, dispersing, disintegrating, and degassing of liquids by means of ultrasonic cavitation’.) The foreskin bits are then frozen, then centrifuged, then sonicated once more.
By this time, the foreskin has been through a lot. But the adventure is really just beginning. Now, at last, the foreskin bits get analysed, but that is a story for another time.
Fuller’s patent (US patent no. 5,589,161) for using foreskins to test skin-tanning solutions is the ne plus ultra on how to use foreskins to test skin-tanning solutions.
During his academic days, one of Fuller’s main aims, according to his website, was ‘to develop skin care products which can stimulate melanin production (tanning) in fair-skinned individuals’. Five of his eleven foreskin-related patents, though, were about how to make skin become lighter. One, called ‘Method for Causing Skin Lightening’, features a 1,300-word exposition about foreskins.
Scientists of an earlier generation fondly recall D.A. Pious and R.N. Hamburger’s study of fifty cultures of human foreskin cells, published in 1964. Pious and Hamburger, however, had little to say about the colour of the foreskins.
And of earlier times, there is little on the record. Most disappointing is the fact that foreskin colour is not mentioned at all in Frederick M. Hodges’ instant-classic of a report on ‘The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome’, which was published in 2001 in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine. A Fuller account is wanted.
Fuller, Bryan B. (1996). ‘Pigmentation Enhancer and Method’. US patent no. 5,589,161, 31 December.
— (2000). ‘Method for Causing Skin Lightening’. US patent no. 6,110,448, 29 August.
Pious, D.A., R.N. Hamburger and S.E. Miles (1964). ‘Clonal Growth of Primary Human Cell Cultures’. Experimental Cell Research 33 (3): 495–507.
Hodges, Frederick M. (2001). ‘The Ideal Prepuce in Ancient Greece and Rome: Male Genital Aesthetics and Their Relation to Lipodermos, Circumcision, Foreskin Restoration, and the Kynodesme’. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75 (3): 375–405.
In brief
A fuller partial accounting of Bryan B. Fuller’s patents and patents pending:
‘Pigmentation Enhancer and Method’.
US patent no. 5,540,914, 30 July 1996.
‘Pigmentation Enhancer and Method’.
US patent no. 5,554,359, 10 September 1996.
‘Pigmentation Enhancer and Method’.
US patent no. 5,589,161, 31 December 1996.
‘Pigmentation Enhancer and Method’.
US patent no. 5,591,423, 7 January 1997.
‘Pigmentation Enhancer and Method’.
US patent no. 5,628,987, 13 May 1997.
‘Composition for Causing Skin Lightening’.
US patent no. 5,879,665, 9 March 1999.
‘Enhancement of Skin Pigmentation by Prostaglandins’.
US patent no. 5,905,091, 18 May 1999.
‘Method of Lightening Skin’.
US patent no. 5,919,436, 6 July 1999.
‘Method of Lightening Skin’.
US patent no. 5,989,576, 23 November 1999.
‘Composition for Causing Skin Lightening’.
US patent no. 6,096,295, 1 August 2000.
‘Method for Causing Skin Lightening’.
US patent no. 6,110,448, 29 August 2000.
Research spotlight
‘Second to Fourth Digit Ratio, Sexual Selection, and Skin Colour’
by John T. Manning, Peter E. Bundred and Frances M. Mather (published in Evolution and Human Behavior, 2004)
The authors, at the University of Central Lancashire and the University of Liverpool, write: ‘Skin pigment may be related to mate choice, marriage systems, resistance to micoorganisms, and photoprotection. Here we use the second to fourth digit ratio (2D:4D) to disentangle the relationships.’
In expensively good odour
Botox – a/k/a ‘botulinum toxin’ – has had a curious reputation with the public. First it was feared: it can kill, after all. Then it was cheered: fashionable femmes et hommes were delighted to hear that something with a hint of danger could make their wrinkles vanish. Now we are on the verge of a third and rather different wave of acclaim.
For a long time, only horror film fans, physicians and hypochondriacs were lovingly familiar with the basics about botulinum toxin. Everyone else would hear mention of it only occasionally – whenever the food-borne illness botulism struck down some unhappy soul. The US Centers For Disease Control and Prevention put out a concise description of the illness and its cause: ‘Botulism is a rare but serious paralytic illness caused by a nerve toxin that is produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum.’
As all up-to-date celebrity worshippers know, one particular variety of botulinum toxin – called ‘botulinum toxin A’ – turned out to be useful in a cosmetically valuable way. Botulinum toxin A has other medical uses, too. One of them, the control of excessive, by-the-bucketful underarm sweating, inspired the notion that botulinum toxin might be useful in combating nasty armpit odour.
The notion was put to the test using T-shirts, sniff tests and volunteers who allowed doctors to inject botulinum toxin A into one armpit and a salt solution into the other.
This is specialized research, and discussing it calls for a bit of specialized vocabulary. Bromidrosis is a word familiar to physicians, to pedants and to some of the people who suffer from bromidrosis. It is especially familiar to those sufferers who have consulted a pedant or a physician. Bromidrosis means ‘fetid or foul-smelling perspiration’. The word axillary means ‘having to do with the armpit’.
I mention these two obscure words – bromidrosis and axillary – because Drs Marc Heckmann, Bianca Teichmann and Bettina M. Pause of the Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich,
and Gerd Plewig of Christian-Albrecht-University in Kiel, use them in describing their volunteers. The report says that ‘although the volunteers had no history of bromidrosis, the axillary odor was clearly rated as unpleasant prior to treatment’.
T-shirt sniff tests were performed before, and again seven days after, the botox-in-the-armpit injections. The results, report the doctors, were dramatic: ‘Apart from reduced odor intensity, axillae treated with botulinum toxin A were also rated as smelling less unpleasant or literally more pleasant, which means an improvement in the quality of body odor. Presently, any explanation for this phenomenon can only be highly speculative.’
We see here the birth of a tentative new rule of thumb: what doesn’t kill you makes you smoother, and less stinky.
Heckmann, Marc, Bianca Teichmann, Bettina M. Pause, and Gerd Plewig (2003). ‘Amelioration of Body Odor After Intracutaneous Axillary Injection of Botulinum Toxin A’. Archives of Dermatology 139 (1): 57–9.
In brief
‘Self-referent Phenotype Matching in a Brood Parasite: The Armpit Effect in Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus alter)’
by Mark E. Hauber, Paul W. Sherman and Dóra Paprika (published in Animal Cognition, 2000)
Losing by a whisker
Not being a barber, and not having had an adulthood that spanned 130 years, Dwight E. Robinson was in no position to report firsthand the frequency of changes in relative prevalence of sideburns, moustaches and beards in London during the years 1842–1972. He used an indirect source: issues of the Illustrated London News published during that time.
This is Improbable Too Page 9