nose

nose The nose is at the centre of attention when we examine the face. One can read the culture of the nose and its central place in the study of physiognomy. One can stress that the face is the part of the modern body (along with the hands) which is uncovered, unveiled, and therefore available for analysis. A society in which all of its members wore masks could stress the imagined nose, much as Western society stresses the imagined breast or buttock. The West ‘sees’ the nose: it is ‘real’ and therefore immediate and concrete, and the more it becomes a place for fantasy the more real it seems.

Noses are loaded with multiple layers of meaning. As Charles Darwin noted in The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex: ‘As the face with us is chiefly admired for its beauty, so with savages it is the chief seat of mutilation’. This focus on the beautiful face is understood by Darwin as a quality of the modern world. Noses define civilization. Oswald Spengler, writing in his study of The Decline of the West in 1918, called this fascination a sign of the triumph of the ‘science’ of physiognomy and the movement toward a ‘single uniform overarching physiognomy of all human beings’. The face and the sciences which contribute to its reading are given specific priority as signs of the modern.

The history of the nose is written as part of the history of the face. And we have a long tradition in the West of giving meaning to the face and its parts. One could say that the nose defines the human face. It is central to the face. The face, in terms of the psychology of perception, is not a face without a nose. In the first modern history of plastic surgery (1838), Eduard Zeis commented that ‘The eye is so used to seeing a nose on a human face, that even an ugly one is preferable to one that is partly or completely missing …’ It is of little wonder that the classic image of the ‘death's head’ is one without a nose. Historically, anxiety about the loss of the nose is tied to stigmatizing diseases — leprosy and syphilis. The syphilis epidemic of the sixteenth century makes the ‘lost’ nose a sign of moral decay. In another context, the focus on Black slavery and the condition of the Black in the Enlightenment, associates the form of the Black's nose with defences of slavery; it becomes a sign of the ‘primitive’. The Dutch eighteenth-century anatomist Petrus Camper presents criteria for the beautiful face in his study. Indeed, he defines the ‘beautiful face’ as one in which the facial line creates an angle of 100 degrees to the horizontal. According to the contemporary reading of Camper the African is the least beautiful — and therefore the least erotic.

The too-long nose comes to be read as a physical sign for the identification of the Jews as essentially different from all others in the modern state. George Jabet, writing as Eden Warwick, in his Notes on Noses (1848) characterized the ‘Jewish, or Hawknose’, as ‘very convex, and preserves its convexity like a bow, throughout the whole length from the eyes to the tip. It is thin and sharp.’ Shape also carried here a specific meaning: ‘It indicates considerable Shrewdness in worldly matters; a deep insight into character, and facility of turning that insight to profitable account.’ Noses become a sign of character, both good character and bad character. But they are always a sign of immutable character. All of these ideas of the nose exist simultaneously; it was only a question of emphasis and priorities — by a nose.

In functional terms, the nose is the route whereby aromas reach the nerve cells — in the upper part of its lining — whose fibres enter the brain through perforations at the base of the skull, and serve the sense of smell. The broader associations of this function are embedded in the language — to have a nose for something, to nose it out, or simply to be ‘nosey’, imply the ancient fundamental link in the animal kingdom between smell and appraisal of the outside world.

The nose is also the channel for quiet breathing. The nostrils have a greater resistance to airflow than any other part of the route into the lungs, contributing to the optimal mechanical balance which makes quiet breathing a negligible effort. (When we are pushed into breathing vigorously, the flow is diverted to the wider mouth.) The other highly effective function of the nose is as an air conditioner — a heat and moisture exchanger. Air enters dryer and cooler (usually) than the inside of the body. The moist and blood-warmed surface formed by the mucous membrane lining is much larger than the outside of the nose, because it is folded around three thin, curved sheets of bone (conchae) that project into the cavity on each side, as well as covering both sides of the central septum. In passing through this maze, the air is warmed and moistened — conditioned to do no damage to the lungs. Then, on its way back out, now saturated with water vapour and at body temperature, the air does not escape in that state; the membrane that it had cooled and dried automatically retrieves much of the heat and water. Thus in cold conditions, when heat and water conservation can be of major importance, the nose is a crucial protective tool. The normally beneficial divisions and restrictions of space within the nose are all too apparent when the lining is swollen by inflammation with the common cold, and obstructs the flow of air. Opening into the nose are conduits from the sinuses within the skull bones; also the ducts that drain the continuous eye-moistening secretions from the lachrymal glands, preventing overflow as tears, unless overloaded by the excesses of weeping. At the back in the nasopharynx the cavity of the nose communicates with the cavity of the middle ears through the eustachian tubes. This enables the equalization of pressure between the ears and the outside air via the nose, assisted by swallowing or by blowing against closed nostrils when external pressure alters, as in a descending aircraft.

Sander L. Gilman, and Sheila Jennett

Bibliography

Holden, H. M. (1950). Noses. World Publishing Co., Cleveland.
Romm, S. (1986). Noses by design. National Museum of American History, Washington, DC.

See respiratory system.See also physiognomy; taste and smell.