engleski

Beauty: soul or surface?

External or physical beauty is immediately visible, but inner beauty is not. Ideally both types of beauty are connected and spring from one another. The opposite situation, in which only one exists while the other is suppressed, is exemplified in this paper, using a story from 19th c. Croatian literature. Initially beautiful, the main character Tena is disfigured by smallpox, but she is able to discover her inner self. Dermatologists need many clinical skills, but also an understanding of psychology, when addressing skin-related problems. Sometimes the humanities, e.g. poetry and literature, may help to broaden our perspective on such a complex phenomenon as beauty.

beauty; attitude to beauty; humanities; literature and medicine; cosmetic dermatology; smallpox

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