The Nose Of A Papuan.

USUALLY the nose of a Western Papuan is like a door-knocker, with its point firmly anchored downward.

But this is the tale of one whose nose, "tip-tilted like the petal of a flower,” was decidedly turned up.

It was with a full sense of the im portance of this beautifully-modelled organ that the Papuan sought treat ment at Torres Strait Hospital and was admitted for operation. The time came when it was necessary to give him an anaesthetic.

While operating, the surgeon was alarmed to discover a black object slowly extruding from the patient’s nostril; and, seizing a forceps, he pulled it out. It proved to be a piece of thin cane, or bamboo, coiled round in the form of a watch spring—the septum between the nostrils having been cut away to form a snug little nest, where the spring action came into play, and kept the point of the nose firmly up in position.

As soon as the cane was removed, the nose collapsed like a punctured bladder and lay flat on the man’s face, after the normal fashion of the Fly River native.

The officiating nurse was preparing to throw the spring away, but the sur geon stopped her —patient’s property is sacred, while under an anaesthetic! and had it disinfected and placed by his bed till recovery from the ether ensued.

For two days it remained there, for the patient neither knew nor cared that his nose had “dropped.” On the third morning, he secretly replaced the spring, and henceforth his nose soared heavenwards, as before.

In place of the customary nurse’s in quiry about false teeth, Papuan patients for anaesthetics should be asked, “Have you a nose spring?”