美国总统林肯面部极端不对称

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(1) of Lincoln's face, reveal the 16th president's unusual degree of facial asymmetry(2), according to a new study.

The left side of Lincoln's face was much smaller than the right, an aberration(3) called cranial(4) facial microsomia. The defect joins a long list of ailments — including smallpox(5), heart illness and depression — that modern doctors have diagnosed in Lincoln.

Lincoln's contemporaries(6) noted his left eye at times drifted upward independently of his right eye, a condition now termed strabismus(7). Lincoln's smaller left eye socket(8) may have displaced a muscle controlling vertical movement, said Dr. Ronald Fishman, who led the study.

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(9) and history buff(10).

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.

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(11) face, Fishman said.

The scanning technique is usually used to create 3-D images of children with cleft lip(12) and palate(13) before and after surgery. Fishman teamed up with Dr. Adriana Da Silveira, an Austin, Texas, orthodontist(14) 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(15) in the 1860s, said James Cornelius, curator at the Lincoln Presidential Library.

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(16), Cornelius said.

1. plaster cast：石膏模型

2. asymmetry：不对称

3. aberration：失常

4. cranial：头盖的

5. smallpox：天花

6. contemporary：同时代的人

7. strabismus：斜视

8. eye socket：眼眶

9. ophthalmologist：眼科专家

10. buff：狂者爱好者

11. lopsided：不平衡的

12. cleft lip：兔唇

13. palate：上腭

14. orthodontist：正牙医生

15. be in vogue：正在流行

16. posterity: 子孙，后裔