Karl Langer spend the 1800s doing some relatively gruesome experiment on cadavers . What he discovered is still of use to surgeons today .
Karl Langer pass most of the 1850s attacking hoi polloi with spikes . In his defense , those multitude were numb . Langer was concerned in the underlying social system of the skin . The pelt gets its semi - elastic properties from collagen fibers plant within it . Those fibre are not oriented the same fashion throughout the eubstance .
Langer noticed that , when he thrust the skin of a corpse with a round instrument , the result hole was not rotund . It was overstretch into an oval by the underlying tenseness in the skin . It occurred to him that surgeon who made surgical incision certain ways might be wee-wee snub that make the skin to pull itself aside . As convenient as that seems when make the dent , it had to hinder the healing process . The skin would have to knit itself up against the effectiveness of its own clout .
To determine which means the cutis pulled all over the body , Langer father bodies and systematically pierce the peel at regular time interval with an ice - pick - like musical instrument . He noted which fashion the skin deplume the minuscule hole he had made . He then painstakingly diagram the counsel of the skin pull for the intact body . you may see one of his early diagrams above .
Langer ’s piece of work paid off , though . Although surgeons debate whether Langer line are really the best manner to cut in all cases , his inquiry has provided useful guides for certain surgery – especially cosmetic procedures . Doctors can calculate for how the skin will answer to the cut they make to minimize trauma and scarring . It also has told scientists a outstanding deal about the underlie social organization of the peel .
Still , just imagine how creepy it would look on an actual consistence . If a aesculapian student had wandered in they would have mean that Jack the Ripper had remove up pointillism .
[ ViaLanger ’s Lines : To apply or Not to Use , Estimating dynamical peel Tension Lines . ]
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