Word: eared
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What persuaded the late oil billionaire J. Paul Getty to pay $2.9 million in ransom for his kidnaped grandson Eugene Paul Getty II was the 17-year-old's right ear. His Calabrian kidnapers had cut it off and mailed it to a Rome newspaper with threats of further mutilations. Last week young Getty, now 21, was working in Southern California on documentary films and no longer self-conscious about that ear. A new ear of tissues taken from his own body is in process of being sculpted at Stanford University Medical Center...
Getty is the most famous patient among 150 who have acquired new ears through the specialized skills of Plastic Surgeon Burt Brent, 39. His case is also among the most difficult that have confronted Brent, because of the savagery with which the ear was hacked off and the infection that followed, leaving Brent very little natural tissue to work with. So far Getty's ear form has been substantially recreated, but further surgery to refine both its form and appearance remains necessary...
...Ear restoration was attempted as early as 1597 by the Bolognese surgeon Gaspare Tagliacozzi, who grafted attached flaps of the patient's own skin and thus evaded the body's rejection mechanism more than three centuries before this phenomenon was scientifically understood. Such procedures were declared impious and were forbidden. More recent restoration efforts, using metal ear molds or dead cartilage, have produced poor results in many cases, although silicones have been employed successfully...
...bride galloping on a white horse through the mist and poplar trees, a small boy playing in the river, a group of peasant women resisting the landlords against a red sunset. But just as often, Bertolucci also gives us scenes guaranteed to horrify: a man sacing off his ear, a boy's head smashed against a wall. If he goes to extremes in length and content, Bertolucci goes to even greater ones in purely physical terms...
Garbage can be golden," gushes New York City Sanitation Commissioner Anthony Vaccarello. "Garbage is the sow's ear that can be turned into a silk purse," adds Michael Dingman, president of Wheelabrator-Frye, a maker of environmental-control equipment. Such glowing descriptions of refuse, which is more conventionally considered a smelly, unsightly and unwanted byproduct of urban life, underscore the increasing popularity of trash as fuel in a U.S. facing growing shortages of energy...