Here’s a testable hypothesis: I propose that presented with a simple fruit salad, cosmetic dermatologists would tend to salivate more than other physicians.
Why? Because many cosmetic defects are named after fruit (and the occasional vegetable).
There’s the apple-dumpling chin, peau d’orange, and radish calf. And, as a result of his acne scars, former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was called “The Pineapple.”
Photo courtesy Dr. Joel L. Cohen
A patient with "peach pitting" of the chest.
Now, Dr. Joel L. Cohen, director of AboutSkin Dermatology and DermSurgery in Englewood, Colo., has named—and found a way to repair—another potentially fruitful cosmetic defect: “the peach pit.”
The peach pit is the patch of wrinkled skin that sometimes develops in the center of an older woman’s décolletage. (More about the peach pit will be coming in a story and video from the annual cosmetic dermatology seminar sponsored by Skin Disease Education Foundation in Santa Monica.)
Who would be likely to fund a study on salivation? The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases would be the obvious government source, but perhaps the National Institute of Mental Health would be more appropriate.
Among private philanthropies, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation probably has a special interest in fruit. Or perhaps funding could come from a growers’ marketing association such as the Fruit Labeling and Produce Society (FLAPS), which probably has a soft place in its heart for dermatologists.
I don’t know. I’m just a reporter. But if any medical scientist decides to undertake this study, I want to be thanked in the acknowledgments. And when the work goes on to win the Ig Nobel Prize, I want to be up on there on the stage, dressed in tails, and salivating at the thought of taking home a piece of the fruit.
— Bob Finn