Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Secondly, as to the nose. Popularly the humped or hook nose
constitutes the most distinctive feature of the Jewish face.
Observations among the Jews, in their most populous centers, do not,
however, bear out the theory. Thus Majer and Kopernicki (1885), in
their extended series, found only nine per cent of the hooked type--no
greater frequency than among the Poles; a fact which Weissenberg
confirms as to the relative scarcity of the convex nose in profile
among his South Russian Jews. He agrees, however, that the nose is
often large, thick, and prominent. Weisbach (1877) measured the facial
features of nineteen Jews, and found the largest noses in a long
series of people from all over the earth; exceeded in length, in fact,
by the Patagonians alone. The hooked nose is, indeed, sometimes
frequent outside the Jewish people. Olechnowicz found, for example,
over a third of the noses of the gentry in southeast Poland to be of
this hooked variety. Running the eye over our carefully chosen series
of portraits, selected for us as typical from four quarters
of Europe--Algeria, Russia, Bosnia, and the confines of
Asia--representing the African, Balkan Spagnuoli, and Russian
Ashkenazim varieties, visual impression will also confirm our
deduction. The Jewish nose is not so often truly convex in profile.
Nevertheless, it must be confessed that it gives a hooked impression.
This seems to be due to a peculiar "tucking up of the wings," as Dr.
Beddoe expresses it. Herein lies the real distinctive quality about
it, rather than in any convexity of outline. In fact, it often
renders a nose concave in profile, immediately recognizable as Jewish.
Jacobs[24] has ingeniously described this "nostrility," as he calls
it, by the following diagrams: Write, he says, a figure 6 with a long
tail (Fig. 1); now remove the turn of the twist, and much of the
Jewishness disappears; and it vanishes entirely when we draw the lower
continuation horizontally, as in Fig. 3. Behold the transformation!
The Jew has turned Roman beyond a doubt. What have we proved, then?
That there is in reality such a phenomenon as a Jewish nose, even
though it be differently constituted from our first assumption. A
moment's inspection of our series of portraits will convince the
skeptic that this trait, next to the prevalent dark hair and eyes and
the swarthy skin, is the most distinctive among the chosen people.
[Illustration: _Fig. 1._]
[Illustration: _Fig. 2._]
[Illustration: _Fig. 3._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account