ANOMALIES OF STATURE, SIZE, AND DEVELOPMENT. 1 page

Giants.--The fables of mythology contain accounts of horrible monsters,

terrible in ferocity, whose mission was the destruction of the life of

the individuals unfortunate enough to come into their domains. The

ogres known as the Cyclops, and the fierce anthropophages, called

Lestrygons, of Sicily, who were neighbors of the Cyclops, are pictured

in detail in the "Odyssey" of Homer. Nearly all the nations of the

earth have their fairy tales or superstitions of monstrous beings

inhabiting some forest, mountain, or cave; and pages have been written

in the heroic poems of all languages describing battles between these

monsters and men with superhuman courage, in which the giant finally

succumbs.

The word giant is derived indirectly from the old English word "geant,"

which in its turn came from the French of the conquering Normans. It is

of Greek derivation, "gigas", or the Latin, "gigas." The Hebrew

parallel is "nophel," or plural, "nephilim."

Ancient Giants.--We are told in the Bible a that the bedstead of Og,

King of Basham, was 9 cubits long, which in English measure is 16 1/2

feet. Goliath of Gath, who was slain by David, stood 6 cubits and a

span tall--about 11 feet. The body of Orestes, according to the Greeks,

was 11 1/2 feet long. The mythical Titans, 45 in number, were a race of

Giants who warred against the Gods, and their descendants were the

Gigantes. The height attributed to these creatures was fabulous, and

they were supposed to heap up mountains to scale the sky and to help

them to wage their battles. Hercules, a man of incredible strength, but

who is said to have been not over 7 feet high, was dispatched against

the Gigantes.

Pliny describes Gabbaras, who was brought to Rome by Claudius Caesar

from Arabia and was between 9 and 10 feet in height, and adds that the

remains of Posio and Secundilla, found in the reign of Augustus Caesar

in the Sallustian Gardens, of which they were supposed to be the

guardians, measured 10 feet 3 inches each. In common with Augustine,

Pliny believed that the stature of man has degenerated, but from the

remains of the ancients so far discovered it would appear that the

modern stature is about the same as the ancient. The beautiful

alabaster sarcophagus discovered near Thebes in 1817 and now in Sir

John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London measures 9 feet 4

inches long. This unique example, the finest extant, is well worth

inspection by visitors in London.

Herodotus says the shoes of Perseus measured an equivalent of about 3

feet, English standard. Josephus tells of Eleazar, a Jew, among the

hostages sent by the King of Persia to Rome, who was nearly 11 feet

high. Saxo, the grammarian, mentions a giant 13 1/2 feet high and says

he had 12 companions who were double his height. Ferragus, the monster

supposed to have been slain by Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne, was

said to have been nearly 11 feet high. It was said that there was a

giant living in the twelfth century under the rule of King Eugene II of

Scotland who was 11 1/2 feet high.

There are fabulous stories told of the Emperor Maximilian. Some

accounts say that he was between 8 1/2 and 9 feet high, and used his

wife's bracelet for a finger-ring, and that he ate 40 pounds of flesh a

day and drank six gallons of wine. He was also accredited with being a

great runner, and in his earlier days was said to have conquered

single-handed eight soldiers. The Emperors Charlemagne and Jovianus

were also accredited with great height and strength.

In the olden times there were extraordinary stories of the giants who

lived in Patagonia. Some say that Magellan gave the name to this

country because its inhabitants measured 5 cubits. The naturalist

Turner says that on the river Plata near the Brazilian coast he saw

naked savages 12 feet high; and in his description of America, Thevenot

confirms this by saying that on the coast of Africa he saw on a boat

the skeleton of an American giant who had died in 1559, and who was 11

feet 5 inches in height. He claims to have measured the bones himself.

He says that the bones of the leg measured 3 feet 4 inches, and the

skull was 3 feet and 1 inch, just about the size of the skull of

Borghini, who, however, was only of ordinary height. In his account of

a voyage to the Straits of Magellan, Jacob Lemaire says that on

December 17, 1615, he found at Port Desire several graves covered with

stones, and beneath the stones were skeletons of men which measured

between 10 and 11 feet. The ancient idea of the Spaniards was that the

men of Patagonia were so tall that the Spanish soldiers could pass

under their arms held out straight; yet we know that the Patagonians

exhibit no exaggeration of height--in fact, some of the inhabitants

about Terra del Fuego are rather diminutive. This superstition of the

voyagers was not limited to America; there were accounts of men in the

neighborhood of the Peak of Teneriffe who had 80 teeth in their head

and bodies 15 feet in height.

Discoveries of "Giants' Bones."--Riolan, the celebrated anatomist, says

that there was to be seen at one time in the suburbs of Saint Germain

the tomb of the giant Isoret, who was reputed to be 20 feet tall; and

that in 1509, in digging ditches at Rouen, near the Dominicans, they

found a stone tomb containing a monstrous skeleton, the skull of which

would hold a bushel of corn; the shin-bone measured about 4 feet,

which, taken as a guide, would make his height over 17 feet. On the

tomb was a copper plate which said that the tomb contained the remains

of "the noble and puissant lord, the Chevalier Ricon de Vallemont."

Plater, the famous physician, declares that he saw at Lucerne the true

human bones of a subject that must have been at least 19 feet high.

Valence in Dauphine boasted of possessing the bones of the giant

Bucart, the tyrant of the Vivarias, who was slain by his vassal, Count

de Cabillon. The Dominicans had the shin-bone and part of the

knee-articulation, which, substantiated by the frescoes and

inscriptions in their possession, showed him to be 22 1/2 feet high.

They claimed to have an os frontis in the medical school of Leyden

measuring 9.1 X 12.2 X .5 inches, which they deduce must have belonged

to a man 11 or 12 feet high.

It is said that while digging in France in 1613 there was disinterred

the body of a giant bearing the title "Theutobochus Rex," and that the

skeleton measured 25 feet long, 10 feet across the shoulders, and 5

feet from breast to back. The shin-bone was about 4 feet long, and the

teeth as large as those of oxen. This is likely another version of the

finding of the remains of Bucart.

Near Mezarino in Sicily in 1516 there was found the skeleton of a giant

whose height was at least 30 feet; his head was the size of a hogshead,

and each tooth weighed 5 ounces; and in 1548 and in 1550 there were

others found of the height of 30 feet. The Athenians found near their

city skeletons measuring 34 and 36 feet in height. In Bohemia in 758 it

is recorded that there was found a human skeleton 26 feet tall, and the

leg-bones are still kept in a medieval castle in that country. In

September, 1691, there was the skull of a giant found in Macedonia

which held 210 pounds of corn.

General Opinions.--All the accounts of giants originating in the

finding of monstrous bones must of course be discredited, as the

remains were likely those of some animal. Comparative anatomy has only

lately obtained a hold in the public mind, and in the Middle Ages

little was known of it. The pretended giants' remains have been those

of mastodons, elephants, and other animals. From Suetonius we learn

that Augustus Caesar pleased himself by adorning his palaces with

so-called giants' bones of incredible size, preferring these to

pictures or images. From their enormous size we must believe they were

mastodon bones, as no contemporary animals show such measurements.

Bartholinus describes a large tooth for many years exhibited as the

canine of a giant which proved to be nothing but a tooth of a

spermaceti whale (Cetus dentatus), quite a common fish. Hand described

an alleged giant's skeleton shown in London early in the eighteenth

century, and which was composed of the bones of the fore-fin of a small

whale or of a porpoise.

The celebrated Sir Hans Sloane, who treated this subject very

learnedly, arrived at the conclusion that while in most instances the

bones found were those of mastodons, elephants, whales, etc., in some

instances accounts were given by connoisseurs who could not readily be

deceived. However, modern scientists will be loath to believe that any

men ever existed who measured over 9 feet; in fact, such cases with

authentic references are extremely rare Quetelet considers that the

tallest man whose stature is authentically recorded was the "Scottish

Giant" of Frederick the Great's regiment of giants. This person was not

quite 8 feet 3 inches tall. Buffon, ordinarily a reliable authority,

comes to a loose conclusion that there is no doubt that men have lived

who were 10, 12, and even 15 feet tall; but modern statisticians cannot

accept this deduction from the references offered.

From the original estimation of the height of Adam (Henrion once

calculated that Adam's height was 123 feet and that of Eve 118) we

gradually come to 10 feet, which seemed to be about the favorite height

for giants in the Middle Ages. Approaching this century, we still have

stories of men from 9 to 10 feet high, but no authentic cases. It was

only in the latter part of the last century that we began to have

absolutely authentic heights of giants, and to-day the men showing

through the country as measuring 8 feet generally exaggerate their

height several inches, and exact measurement would show that but few

men commonly called giants are over 7 1/2 feet or weigh over 350

pounds. Dana says that the number of giants figuring as public

characters since 1700 is not more than 100, and of these about 20 were

advertised to be over 8 feet. If we confine ourselves to those

accurately and scientifically measured the list is surprisingly small.

Topinard measured the tallest man in the Austrian army and found that

he was 8 feet 4 1/2 inches. The giant Winckelmeyer measured 8 feet 6

inches in height. Ranke measured Marianne Wehde, who was born in

Germany in the present century, and found that she measured 8 feet 4

1/4 inches when only sixteen and a half years old.

In giants, as a rule, the great stature is due to excessive growth of

the lower extremities, the size of the head and that of the trunk being

nearly the same as those of a man or boy of the same age. On the other

hand, in a natural dwarf the proportions are fairly uniform, the head,

however, being always larger in proportion to the body, just as we find

in infants. Indeed, the proportions of "General Tom Thumb" were those

of an ordinary infant of from thirteen to fifteen months old.

Figure 156 shows a portrait of two well-known exhibitionists of about

the same age, and illustrates the possible extremes of anomalies in

stature.

Recently, the association of acromegaly with gigantism has been

noticed, and in these instances there seems to be an acquired uniform

enlargement of all the bones of the body. Brissaud and Meige describe

the case of a male of forty-seven who presented nothing unusual before

the age of sixteen, when he began to grow larger, until, having reached

his majority, he measured 7 feet 2 inches in height and weighed about

340 pounds. He remained well and very strong until the age of

thirty-seven, when he overlifted, and following this he developed an

extreme deformity of the spine and trunk, the latter "telescoping into

itself" until the nipples were on a level with the anterior superior

spines of the ilium. For two years he suffered with debility, fatigue,

bronchitis, night-sweats, headache, and great thirst. Mentally he was

dull; the bones of the face and extremities showed the hypertrophies

characteristic of acromegaly, the soft parts not being involved. The

circumference of the trunk at the nipples was 62 inches, and over the

most prominent portion of the kyphosis and pigeon-breast, 74 inches.

The authors agree with Dana and others that there is an intimate

relation between acromegaly and gigantism, but they go further and

compare both to the growth of the body. They call attention to the

striking resemblance to acromegaly of the disproportionate growth of

the boy at adolescence, which corresponds so well to Marie's terse

description of this disease: "The disease manifests itself by

preference in the bones of the extremities and in the extremities of

the bones," and conclude with this rather striking and aphoristic

proposition: "Acromegaly is gigantism of the adult; gigantism is

acromegaly of adolescence."

The many theories of the cause of gigantism will not be discussed here,

the reader being referred to volumes exclusively devoted to this

subject.

Celebrated Giants.--Mention of some of the most famous giants will be

made, together with any associate points of interest.

Becanus, physician to Charles V, says that he saw a youth 9 feet high

and a man and a woman almost 10 feet. Ainsworth says that in 1553 the

Tower of London was guarded by three brothers claiming direct descent

from Henry VIII, and surnamed Og, Gog, and Magog, all of whom were over

8 feet in height. In his "Chronicles of Holland" in 1557 Hadrianus

Barlandus said that in the time of John, Earl of Holland, the giant

Nicholas was so large that men could stand under his arms, and his shoe

held 3 ordinary feet. Among the yeoman of the guard of John Frederick,

Duke of Hanover, there was one Christopher Munster, 8 1/2 feet high,

who died in 1676 in his forty-fifth year. The giant porter of the Duke

of Wurtemberg was 7 1/2 feet high. "Big Sam," the porter at Carleton

Palace, when George IV was Prince of Wales, was 8 feet high. The porter

of Queen Elizabeth, of whom there is a picture in Hampton Court,

painted by Zucchero, was 7 1/2 feet high; and Walter Parson, porter to

James I, was about the same height. William Evans, who served Charles

I, was nearly 8 feet; he carried a dwarf in his pocket.

In the seventeenth century, in order to gratify the Empress of Austria,

Guy-Patin made a congress of all the giants and dwarfs in the Germanic

Empire. A peculiarity of this congress was that the giants complained

to the authorities that the dwarfs teased them in such a manner as to

make their lives miserable.

Plater speaks of a girl in Basle, Switzerland, five years old, whose

body was as large as that of a full-grown woman and who weighed when a

year old as much as a bushel of wheat. He also mentions a man living in

1613, 9 feet high, whose hand was 1 foot 6 inches long. Peter van den

Broecke speaks of a Congo negro in 1640 who was 8 feet high. Daniel,

the porter of Cromwell, was 7 feet 6 inches high; he became a lunatic.

Frazier speaks of Chilian giants 9 feet tall. There is a chronicle

which says one of the Kings of Norway was 8 feet high. Merula says

that in 1538 he saw in France a Flemish man over 9 feet. Keysler

mentions seeing Hans Brau in Tyrol in 1550, and says that he was nearly

12 feet high.

Jonston mentions a lad in Holland who was 8 feet tall. Pasumot mentions

a giant of 8 feet.

Edmund Mallone was said to have measured 7 feet 7 inches. Wierski, a

Polander, presented to Maximilian II, was 8 feet high. At the age of

thirty-two there died in 1798 a clerk of the Bank of England who was

said to have been nearly 7 1/2 feet high. The Daily Advertiser for

February 23, 1745, says that there was a young colossus exhibited

opposite the Mansion House in London who was 7 feet high, although but

fifteen years old. In the same paper on January 31, 1753, is an account

of MacGrath, whose skeleton is still preserved in Dublin. In the reign

of George I, during the time of the Bartholomew Fair at Smithfield,

there was exhibited an English man seventeen years old who was 8 feet

tall.

Nicephorus tells of Antonius of Syria, in the reign of Theodosius, who

died at the age of twenty-five with a height of 7 feet 7 inches.

Artacaecas, in great favor with Xerxes, was the tallest Persian and

measured 7 feet. John Middleton, born in 1752 at Hale, Lancashire,

humorously called the "Child of Hale," and whose portrait is in

Brasenose College, Oxford, measured 9 feet 3 inches tall. In his

"History of Ripton," in Devonshire, 1854, Bigsby gives an account of a

discovery in 1687 of a skeleton 9 feet long. In 1712 in a village in

Holland there died a fisherman named Gerrit Bastiaansen who was 8 feet

high and weighed 500 pounds. During Queen Anne's reign there was shown

in London and other parts of England a most peculiar anomaly--a German

giantess without hands or feet who threaded a needle, cut gloves, etc.

About 1821 there was issued an engraving of Miss Angelina Melius,

nineteen years of age and 7 feet high, attended by her page, Senor Don

Santiago de los Santos, from the Island of Manilla, thirty-live years

old and 2 feet 2 inches high. "The Annual Register" records the death

of Peter Tuchan at Posen on June 18, 1825, of dropsy of the chest. He

was twenty-nine years old and 8 feet 7 inches in height; he began to

grow at the age of seven. This monster had no beard; his voice was

soft; he was a moderate eater. There was a giant exhibited in St.

Petersburg, June, 1829, 8 feet 8 inches in height, who was very thin

and emaciated.

Dr. Adam Clarke, who died in 1832, measured a man 8 feet 6 inches tall.

Frank Buckland, in his "Curiosities of Natural History," says that

Brice, the French giant, was 7 feet 7 inches. Early in 1837 there was

exhibited at Parma a young man formerly in the service of the King of

the Netherlands who was 8 feet 10 inches high and weighed 401 pounds.

Robert Hale, the "Norfolk Giant," who died in Yarmouth in 1843 at the

age of forty-three, was 7 feet 6 inches high and weighed 452 pounds.

The skeleton of Cornelius McGrath, now preserved in the Trinity College

Museum, Dublin, is a striking example of gigantism. At sixteen years he

measured 7 feet 10 inches.

O'Brien or Byrne, the Irish giant, was supposed to be 8 feet 4 inches

in height at the time of his death in 1783 at the age of twenty-two.

The story of his connection with the illustrious John Hunter is quite

interesting. Hunter had vowed that he would have the skeleton of

O'Brien, and O'Brien was equally averse to being boiled in the

distinguished scientist's kettle. The giant was tormented all his life

by the constant assertions of Hunter and by his persistence in locating

him. Finally, when, following the usual early decline of his class of

anomalies, O'Brien came to his death-bed, he bribed some fishermen to

take his body after his death to the middle of the Irish Channel and

sink it with leaden weights. Hunter, it is alleged, was informed of

this and overbribed the prospective undertakers and thus secured the

body. It has been estimated that it cost Hunter nearly 500 pounds

sterling to gain possession of the skeleton of the "Irish Giant." The

kettle in which the body was boiled, together with some interesting

literature relative to the circumstances, are preserved in the Museum

of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, and were exhibited at the

meeting of the British Medical Association in 1895 with other Hunterian

relics. The skeleton, which is now one of the features of the Museum,

is reported to measure 92 3/4 inches in height, and is mounted

alongside that of Caroline Crachami, the Sicilian dwarf, who was

exhibited as an Italian princess in London in 1824. She did not grow

after birth and died at the age of nine.

Patrick Cotter, the successor of O'Brien, and who for awhile exhibited

under this name, claiming that he was a lineal descendant of the famous

Irish King, Brian Boru, who he declared was 9 feet in height, was born

in 1761, and died in 1806 at the age of forty-five. His shoe was 17

inches long, and he was 8 feet 4 inches tall at his death.

In the Museum of Madame Tussaud in London there is a wax figure of

Loushkin, said to be the tallest man of his time. It measures 8 feet 5

inches, and is dressed in the military uniform of a drum-major of the

Imperial Preobrajensky Regiment of Guards. To magnify his height there

is a figure of the celebrated dwarf, "General Tom Thumb," in the palm

of his hand. Figure 158 represents a well-known American giant, Ben

Hicks who was called "the Denver Steeple."

Buffon refers to a Swedish giantess who he affirms was 8 feet 6 inches

tall. Chang, the "Chinese Giant," whose smiling face is familiar to

nearly all the modern world, was said to be 8 feet tall. In 1865, at

the age of nineteen, he measured 7 feet 8 inches. At Hawick, Scotland,

in 1870, there was an Irishman 7 feet 8 inches in height, 52 inches

around the chest, and who weighed 22 stone. Figure 159 shows an

American giantess known as "Leah, the Giantess." At the age of nineteen

she was 7 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 165 pounds.

On June 17, 1871, there were married at Saint-Martins-in-the-Field in

London Captain Martin Van Buren Bates of Kentucky and Miss Anna Swann

of Nova Scotia, two celebrated exhibitionists, both of whom were over 7

feet. Captain Bates, familiarly known as the "Kentucky Giant," years

ago was a familiar figure in many Northern cities, where he exhibited

himself in company with his wife, the combined height of the two being

greater than that of any couple known to history. Captain Bates was

born in Whitesburg, Letcher County, Ky., on November 9, 1845. He

enlisted in the Southern army in 1861, and though only sixteen years

old was admitted to the service because of his size. At the close of

the war Captain Bates had attained his great height of 7 feet 2 1/2

inches. His body was well proportioned and his weight increased until

it reached 450 pounds. He traveled as a curiosity from 1866 to 1880,

being connected with various amusement organizations. He visited nearly

all the large cities and towns in the United States, Canada, Great

Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Russia.

While in England in 1871 the Captain met Miss Anna H. Swann, known as

the "Nova Scotia Giantess," who was two years the junior of her giant

lover. Miss Swann was justly proud of her height, 7 feet 5 1/2 inches.

The two were married soon afterward. Their combined height of 14 feet

8 inches marked them as the tallest married couple known to mankind.

Captain Bates' parents were of medium size. His father, a native of

Virginia, was 5 feet 10 inches high and weighed 160 pounds. His mother

was 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 125 pounds. The height of the

father of Mrs. Anna Swann Bates was 6 feet and her mother was 5 feet

and 2 inches high, weighing but 100 pounds.

A recent newspaper dispatch says: "Captain M. V. Bates, whose

remarkable height at one time attracted the attention of the world, has

recently retired from his conspicuous position and lives in comparative

obscurity on his farm in Guilford, Medina County, O., half a mile east

of Seville."

In 1845 there was shown in Paris Joachim Eleiceigui, the Spanish giant,

who weighed 195 kilograms (429 pounds) and whose hands were 42 cm. (16

1/2 inches) long and of great beauty. In 1882 at the Alhambra in London

there was a giantess by the name of Miss Marian, called the "Queen of

the Amazons," aged eighteen years, who measured 2.45 meters (96 1/2

inches). William Campbell, a Scotchman, died at Newcastle in May 1878.

He was so large that the window of the room in which the deceased lay

and the brick-work to the level of the floor had to be taken out, in

order that the coffin might be lowered with block and tackle three

stories to the ground. On January 27, 1887, a Greek, although a Turkish

subject, recently died of phthisis in Simferopol. He was 7 feet 8

inches in height and slept on three beds laid close together.

Giants of History.--A number of persons of great height, particularly

sovereigns and warriors, are well-known characters of history, viz.,

William of Scotland, Edward III, Godefroy of Bouillon, Philip the Long,

Fairfax, Moncey, Mortier, Kleber; there are others celebrated in modern

times. Rochester, the favorite of Charles II; Pothier, the jurist;

Bank, the English naturalist; Gall, Billat-Savarin, Benjamin Constant,

the painter David, Bellart, the geographer Delamarche, and Care, the

founder of the Gentleman's Magazine, were all men of extraordinary

stature.

Dwarfs.--The word "dwarf" is of Saxon origin (dwerg, dweorg) and

corresponds to the "pumilio" or "nanus" of the Romans. The Greeks

believed in the pygmy people of Thrace and Pliny speaks of the

Spithamiens. In the "Iliad" Homer writes of the pygmies and Juvenal

also describes them; but the fantasies of these poets have given these

creatures such diminutive stature that they have deprived the

traditions of credence. Herodotus relates that in the deserts of Lybia

there were people of extreme shortness of stature. The Bible mentions

that no dwarf can officiate at the altar. Aristotle and Philostratus

speak of pygmy people descended from Pygmaeus, son of Dorus. In the

seventeenth century van Helmont supposed that there were pygmies in the

Canary Islands, and Abyssinia, Brazil, and Japan in the older times

were repeatedly said to contain pygmy races. Relics of what must have

been a pygmy race have been found in the Hebrides, and in this country

in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Dr. Schweinfurth, the distinguished African traveler, confirms the

statements of Homer, Herodotus, and Aristotle that there was a race of

pygmies near the source of the Nile. Schweinfurth says that they live

south of the country occupied by the Niam-Niam, and that their stature

varies from 4 feet to 4 feet 10 inches. These people are called the

Akkas, and wonderful tales are told of their agility and cunning,

characteristics that seem to compensate for their small stature.

In 1860 Paul DuChaillu speaks of the existence of an African people

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 778