New Thinking: About Face
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 17 January 2020
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant? Des Fitzgerald speaks to two researchers investigating the past and future of facial difference and medical intervention.
Emily Cock, from the University of Cardiff looks at our relationship with our noses throughout history – from duels and sexual diseases to racial prejudice.
Fay Bound Alberti, from the University of York, talks about a project called AboutFace which she is running to look at the emotional impact of this complex new surgery and to investigate the moral questions it raises, looking at the impact of facial difference in the age of the selfie, and the emergence of facial transplantation as a response to severe trauma. There have been fewer than 50 face transplants globally since the first was performed in 2005 and none in the UK to date. You can find more at https://aboutfaceyork.com/ @AboutFaceYork Fay is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow from the Department of History at the University of York.
Emily Cock is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, undertaking a three-year project Fragile Faces: Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies (1600–1850). Her book is called Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and culture She and host Des Fitzgerald from Cardiff University are New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by the BBC with the AHRC to work with academics to put research onto radio.
Their conversation was recorded with an audience at the New home for School of Journalism, Media and Culture at Cardiff University.
This episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. Further podcasts are available on the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking website under the playlist New Research https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | This is the Arts and Ideas podcast. I'm Des Fitzgerald and welcome to an episode of New Thinking, |
| 0:36.7 | part of our series looking at new research in UK universities. |
| 0:40.4 | When you look in the mirror, what looks back? On the few occasions I can meet my own reflection, |
| 0:45.6 | I see a face that looks alarmingly like my own grandfathers, a receding hairline, a nose that's too small and a slightly worrying skin flap under my left eye. |
| 0:54.0 | When some people look in the |
| 0:55.3 | mirror though, they see a face that isn't only different or disappointing, they see something more |
| 0:59.4 | troubling. Some see a face in need of intervention, even reconstruction, a face that some people |
| 1:04.9 | might even still call disfigured. This is a podcast about faces and facial differences. It's going to range from the chin to the |
| 1:12.4 | forehead, from Australia to Britain, from reconstructed noses in the 17th century to transplanted faces |
| 1:17.8 | in the 21st. My first guest is Emily Koch, a historian here at Cardiff University where this |
| 1:23.5 | conversation is being recorded. Emily, you've just published a book about noses and nose |
| 1:28.4 | surgery in the 17th century, so forgive me if this is a bit nosy, but what is actually happening |
| 1:33.4 | to people's noses in the 1600s? Paint as a portrait. There are quite a few things happening to |
| 1:38.2 | noses in the 17th century that we might not necessarily think about immediately. One of the big |
| 1:43.3 | problems, syphilis, or as they call it, the pox. So one the big problems, syphilis, or as they |
| 1:45.4 | call it, the pox. So one of the things about syphilis is that it can cause all sorts of damage |
| 1:50.3 | to your soft tissues, your palate can corrode there. The other problem is that during this period, |
| 1:56.0 | the standard treatment for pox is mercury. Mercury, also not good for palate. It causes salivation. The idea |
| 2:03.3 | was you were flushing out, this terrible disease, but that can cause collapses of the nose. |
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