LEGISLATION TO SAVE AMERICAN WOMEN from the effect of “frantic and artificial efforts to make themselves beautiful,” is advocated by Dr. Charles F. Pabst, chief dermatologist of Greenpoint Hospital, Brooklyn, New York. In an interview published in the Brooklyn Eagle he proposes drastic methods to stop “face-lifting” and other such processes, pointing out that in France similar acts, practised by barbarous races, are subject to heavy penalties. Says The Eagle:        

“Skin-peelings, face-lifting, paraffin injections to change the shape of a nose or the obstinate curve of a chin—these things, the doctors find, are being more and more indulged in by the beauty-cult followers; to their own harm, and despite all the warnings of the medical profession.

“The question was discust, formally and informally, at a recent medical convention in Atlantic City, where tales were told to indicate that this type of beauty culture is exacting a great toll from its followers, in deformities, inflammations, skin diseases of one sort and another—even death.”

Said Dr. Pabst, after returning from the convention:

“Where paraffin and wax are injected under the skin, irritation sets in after a few months and, after a few years, you have sloughing of the tissue, gangrene sets in, and even death has been known to result.

“Now, the average normal adult has sixteen square feet of skin, which would form a mat two feet wide and eight feet long, and the modern American woman treats it like a door-mat.

Facelift article continued here

Source: The Literary Digest for October 1, 1927

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