Medicine: The Isadora Syndrome

Dancer Isadora Duncan died as dramatically as she lived, when her long scarf became caught in the wheel of a moving car and strangled her. A one-in-a-million fluke? Not quite. Flowing neckwear has been in style recently, and according to an article in the A.M.A. Journal, so have freakish—and often fatal—injuries. In one of eleven cases studied, a teen-age girl suffered severe facial cuts and bruises when her scarf snagged in the wheel of her boy friend’s motorcycle. An eleven-year-old boy whose scarf caught in the engine of his snowmobile was saved only by prompt mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Other victims of the Isadora syndrome were even less fortunate. Five of the eleven victims died, but none as gruesomely as a young mother who wore a long scarf on a ski lift. Riding to the top of a mountain, she was yanked from her seat and hanged when her scarf caught on a descending chair.