CLEFTS of the lip and palate constitute the most frequent serious congenital deformity amenable to surgical treatment. One baby in every 665 is born with a cleft lip or cleft palate, or both, and involved in each one of these misfortunes is a person who needs surgical help as much as any one possibly could. These lesions are not becoming less frequent, but, possibly as a result of plastic operation, many patients with good repairs are getting by without attracting attention.
It is evident, however, that one cannot give the patient all that he deserves, and this makes it necessary that all technical advances be utilized. Two advances of recent years are: (1) the development of a method of marking which insures the most symmetric nostrils that it is now possible to obtain and (2) the realization of the extreme importance of having a full, smooth, lower border in the