Lincoln may have had facial defect - Yahoo!

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Lincoln
may
have
had
facial
defect
By CARLA K. JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
30 minutes ago

CHICAGO - 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

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070813/ap_on_re_us/lopsided_lincoln (1 of 3)8/13/2007 5:14:06 PM
Lincoln may have had facial defect - Yahoo! News

smaller than the right, an aberration called ADVERTISEMENT

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.
AP Photo: **FILE PHOTO** President
Abraham Lincoln poses for a portrait in this
undated file photo. ... "Lincoln noticed double vision only occasionally and it did not bother him a great deal," said Fishman, a
retired ophthalmologist and history buff.
U.S. Video
Most people's faces are asymmetrical, Fishman said, but Lincoln's case was extreme, with the bony ridge
Miner Rescue over his left eye rounder and thinner than the right side, and set backward.
Plods On
ABC News Lincoln's appearance was mocked by his political enemies, historians say. The author Nathaniel
Surf Camp for Vets Hawthorne, a Lincoln fan, wrote of the president's "homely sagacity" and his "sallow, queer, sagacious
visage," said Daniel Weinberg, owner of the Abraham Lincoln Book Shop in Chicago.
ABC News

» All news video 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.
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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.
___

ADVERTISEMENT On the Net:

Archives of Ophthalmology: http://archopht.ama-assn.org

Chicago History Museum: http://www.chicagohs.org/

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