# Half a jaw short



## The Din (Mar 1, 2012)

In my WIP, one of my characters finds himself on the wrong end of a sword and loses half his bottom jaw as a result. I'm just wondering how much I can lop off without losing functions such as speech, eating, drinking, etc? I was planning on taking off a whole side and leave him a dribbling, slurring wreck, I just don't know if a single hinge to the skull would support the weight, or if the missing muscles would make a difference. 

Further down the track said character makes a nice metal replacement for the missing half, but I have a major scene with his half-jawed model and kinda need him talkative. 

Keen to know if anyone sees any glaring holes in such a scenario.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Mar 1, 2012)

I can't say that I have any expertise in partial jaw removal, but there's certainly got to be case studies out there of how people are affected by partial jaw damage or removal. If his tongue isn't affected, his speech should be mostly normal, but the tongue is attached to the jaw and if that part of the jaw is damaged, then the tongue is going to suffer, so he's going to slur his speech at the very least.

I'm pretty sure the jaw can still function even if the muscles on one side are compromised, but it'll be awkward and weird and he'll drool and slur. A single "hinge" can still suffice; keep in mind that the jaw is attached to the skull by ligaments (three on each side), but there's other tissue helping hold it in place.

In practice you can probably just describe him as having his jaw partly sliced off, and give it some gruesomeness of description, and people will visualize what they want.

*EDIT:* Just keep in mind that I may be completely talking out of my ass here, so if Ravana comes along and gives a dissertation about how wrong I am, don't say I didn't warn you,


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## Corvus (Mar 1, 2012)

My advice would be to try researching bear attacks. I've seen some documentaries where people had half their faces missing. WWI soldiers also suffered similar wounds as a result of explosions. 

Fun fact:In an attempt to help disfigured WWI soldiers plastic surgery was invented.


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## SeverinR (Mar 1, 2012)

I am guessing here, based on basic anatomy.
I would say from the hinge to tip of chin, you could lose the outer quarter, my tongue connects at about this point. There will be some difficulty learning to speak well enough to understand for sometime. That is true for any permanent injury to the mouth or jaw. We speak like we do by how our mouth feels, position of the tongue, exact amount our jaw is opened.
Anything more then the outer quarter would damage the tongue, even chance of having the tongue cut off with the jaw. The tip of the tongue is very important in talking.

Simply a fractured jaw would make it extremely hard to eat, all food would have to be ground up. No dried meat on the trail unless soaked in water until soft.
The jaw might still have the molars, but these are grinders, not biters. So even when healed he would have to cut up his food very small. If nothing covers the tongue(no lips skin) the tongue will get dirty frequently, as every little bit of dirt would blow into it and if wet, it would stick. Also the tongue would dry out, and the person would have to drink more. A dry tongue is more more common to get mouth sores and infections.  unprotected Warm moist and sweet areas is the perfect storm for disease. 
So more chance for a serious infection.  Best chance would be first injury, but could happen anytime after.
Cosmetic: a person with a seriously disfigured face is more likely to keep it covered, and uncovered or covered people will not trust him, or be repulsed by him.  People staring at him, or always avoiding looking at him will be his irritation.  The man behind the mask or veil is concealing his identity, such as a robber or assasin. If you can't see their face, don't trust them.

This is a real world potential problem post, its your world and your medical technology to fix the damage, so use it as you want.


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## San Cidolfus (Mar 1, 2012)

Everyone above covered the particulars about no solid foods and dry mouth and infection--really big problem, right there--but I feel the need to add that, unless you've got magical healing, a medieval man is unlikely to survive a sword cleaving his jaw in the first place.  If a sword blow hits hard enough to take out a hunk, that blow will likely shatter the whole jawbone.  And again, unless you have healing magic, medieval doctors wouldn't be able to set such sensitive bones properly.  The pain alone would be enough to warrant a mercy killing.  Never mind all the problems to follow.  If you're set on doing this, you'll need some magic to fill in the gaps.

Pun not intended.

All that aside, thanks, Din.  I always enjoy your macabre questions.


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## Devor (Mar 1, 2012)

That, for sure, is a letter-to-a-doctor type of question.  A quick google search suggests that even breathing could be a problem.


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## Ravana (Mar 2, 2012)

Don't think you have much to worry about on this one, Benjamin. 

Just from what I do know about facial anatomy–here my education puts me on slightly firmer ground than for other body parts–I think the complete loss of one side of the jaw would be crippling at a minimum. It may still be able to go up and down on the remaining hinge, but the force it could exert would be drastically reduced; also, the muscles on that side would tend to pull the remainder in their direction, something I have no idea how difficult it would be to learn to compensate for, assuming it's possible at all. Salivation, as mentioned, could become socially embarrassing. Infection… probably no worse than a wound in any other location, and no more likely over the long term than anyone who routinely breathes through his mouth–or perhaps more comparably, anyone with an unrepaired cleft palate–assuming the victim learns to take some basic precautions. 

Speech I can be a bit more definitive about. Basically, assuming he survives the wound in the first place, and hasn't lost more than half his tongue, he will eventually learn to speak well enough to be understood. It would never be as clear as pre-injury, but it would certainly be comprehensible to anyone willing to show a little patience, or anyone who'd been around him enough to learn his "accent." (I once went about for a couple of weeks "translating" for a friend who'd had palatal surgery–breaking and re-setting it, and putting a spreader in, to widen it and reduce an overbite. I'd just finished having to deal with this "accent" a couple months earlier, after my mother had the same surgery: I had no problem understanding my friend at all. And no one else had a clue what she was saying… for about the first week. Then they started picking it up.)

Losing the tip of the tongue would make things harder, but would not be debilitating in itself: the tongue can be thrust pretty far forward even from its base… /th/ sounds may be completely lost; the rest it should be possible to at least approximate if not compensate for entirely. (Trilling an /r/ would probably be out of the question, but I can't do that anyway, in spite of years of trying: my Spanish always sounds like I have a speech defect. Which, in essence, I do.) The victim would also lose the corresponding portion of the lower lip, impairing labials and labiodentals ( /p, b, m, w, f, v/ for English), but at worst this too would be no harder to understand than a lisp would be for a different set of sounds. In fact, the sound most likely to be lost would be the English /r/, as this requires both sides of the tongue to make contact with the upper teeth; losing part of one side could seriously impair this. 

How many muscles of the tongue are cut in the loss of the jaw could be a factor, but I can't imagine the person would lose the ability of comprehensible speech unless the tongue itself were largely cut away: four of the eight muscles that control it aren't even attached to bone. 

I suspect that you'd be on firmer ground if you stuck to just part of the lower jaw being removed–one of the front quadrants; that would avoid most of the potential problems, and probably still give you the results you want. I do know you'll be able to find material on cleft palates more easily; you might want to consider checking that out for damage that is, if not quite comparable, at least similar in its worst manifestations.

Odd bit of synchronicity here… I was just re-reading a chapter of history yesterday, which mentioned an assassination attempt on William I of Orange–he was shot through the face:



> one bullet pierced the neck below the right ear and passed out at the left jaw-bone



I _don't_ know how much damage there was to the jaw or the internal structure of the mouth (possibly none, though that's kind of hard to imagine); at any rate, he survived to lead the Dutch Rebellion for another two years, until someone found a more decisive place to put a bullet in him. And, yes, he could still talk: his cognomen "the Silent" was earned some three decades before that time.


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## SeverinR (Mar 2, 2012)

I did not think of the torque of impact that would cut off the jaw, would probably dislocate or destroy the hinge of jaw. Hypothetically, if the blade was sharp enough to slice through bone, the neck might absorb enough of the impact to only sprain the hinge.  If taken off by a "light saber" type device, the hinge would be fine, as it slices through without taking material with it.
Someone with sword experience-could a sword of any type, slice through the mandible so cleanly as not to dislodge the joint?

any trauma to face can cause swelling that could affect breathing.


You might search for people that talk about jaw injuries. Their description might give you some idea on how to describe your char.


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