I was alerted of a rather unusual story from the past about acrotomophilia, the fetishism for mutilated bodies. You can read it in full here, but the gist of it is that in middle XIX century England syphilis was so common that seeing people missing their noses (one of the gruesome symptoms of that condition) was a somewhat frequent . The prosthesis pictured above belonged to an unnamed woman who wore it to help her social life a little… even if it was apparently not always needed.

In fact, according to her correspondence and official records, she became a member of a strange dinner club hosted by a “Mr. Crampton” who enjoyed being surrounded by noseless people – then she married a man with the same fetish, driving her to sell the prosthesis altogether. To each his own, as they say…