ANOMALIES OF STATURE, SIZE, AND DEVELOPMENT. 4 page

repast, he would mount the highest couch and execute with agility his

accustomed dance.

According to old chronicles the cavaliers at Rome who grew fat were

condemned to lose their horses and were placed in retirement. During

the Middle Ages, according to Guillaume in his "Vie de Suger," obesity

was considered a grace of God.

Among the prominent people in the olden time noted for their embonpoint

were Agesilas, the orator Licinius Calvus, who several times opposed

Cicero, the actor Lucius, and others. Among men of more modern times we

can mention William the Conqueror; Charles le Gros; Louis le Gros;

Humbert II, Count of Maurienne; Henry I, King of Navarre; Henry III,

Count of Champagne; Conan III, Duke of Brittany; Sancho I, King of

Leon; Alphonse II, King of Portugal; the Italian poet Bruni, who died

in 1635; Vivonne, a general under Louis XIV; the celebrated German

botanist Dillenius; Haller; Frederick I, King of Wurtemberg, and Louis

XVIII.

Probably the most famous of all the fat men was Daniel Lambert, born

March 13, 1770, in the parish of Saint Margaret, Leicester. He did not

differ from other youths until fourteen. He started to learn the trade

of a die-sinker and engraver in Birmingham. At about nineteen he began

to believe he would be very heavy and developed great strength. He

could lift 500 pounds with ease and could kick seven feet high while

standing on one leg. In 1793 he weighed 448 pounds; at this time he

became sensitive as to his appearance. In June, 1809, he weighed 52

stone 11 pounds (739 pounds), and measured over 3 yards around the body

and over 1 yard around the leg. He had many visitors, and it is said

that once, when the dwarf Borwilaski came to see him, he asked the

little man how much cloth he needed for a suit. When told about 3/4 of

a yard, he replied that one of his sleeves would be ample. Another

famous fat man was Edward Bright, sometimes called "the fat man of

Essex." He weighed 616 pounds. In the same journal that records

Bright's weight is an account of a man exhibited in Holland who weighed

503 pounds.

Wadd, a physician, himself an enormous man, wrote a treatise on obesity

and used his own portrait for a frontispiece. He speaks of Doctor

Beddoes, who was so uncomfortably fat that a lady of Clifton called him

a "walking feather bed." He mentions Doctor Stafford, who was so

enormous that this epitaph was ascribed to him:--

"Take heed, O good traveler! and do not tread hard, For here lies Dr.

Stafford, in all this churchyard."

Wadd has gathered some instances, a few of which will be cited. At

Staunton, January 2, 1816, there died Samuel Sugars, Gent., who weighed

with a single wood coffin 50 stone (700 pounds). Jacob Powell died in

1764, weighing 660 pounds. It took 16 men to carry him to his grave.

Mr. Baker of Worcester, supposed to be larger than Bright, was interred

in a coffin that was larger than an ordinary hearse. In 1797 there was

buried Philip Hayes, a professor of music, who was as heavy as Bright

(616 pounds).

Mr. Spooner, an eminent farmer of Warwickshire, who died in 1775, aged

fifty-seven, weighed 569 pounds and measured over 4 feet across the

shoulders. The two brothers Stoneclift of Halifax, Yorkshire, together

weighed 980 pounds.

Keysler in his travels speaks of a corpulent Englishman who in passing

through Savoy had to use 12 chairmen; he says that the man weighed 550

pounds. It is recorded on the tombstone of James Parsons, a fat man of

Teddington, who died March 7, 1743, that he had often eaten a whole

shoulder of mutton and a peck of hasty pudding. Keysler mentions a

young Englishman living in Lincoln who was accustomed to eat 18 pounds

of meat daily. He died in 1724 at the age of twenty-eight, weighing 530

pounds. In 1815 there died in Trenaw, in Cornwall, a person known as

"Giant Chillcot." He measured at the breast 6 feet 9 inches and weighed

460 pounds. One of his stockings held 6 gallons of wheat. In 1822 there

was reported to be a Cambridge student who could not go out in the

daytime without exciting astonishment. The fat of his legs overhung his

shoes like the fat in the legs of Lambert and Bright. Dr. Short

mentions a lady who died of corpulency in her twenty-fifth year

weighing over 50 stone (700 pounds). Catesby speaks of a man who

weighed 500 pounds, and Coe mentions another who weighed 584 pounds.

Fabricius and Godart speak of obesity so excessive as to cause death.

There is a case reported from the French of a person who weighed 800

pounds. Smetius speaks of George Fredericus, an office-holder in

Brandenburgh, who weighed 427 pounds.

Dupuytren gives the history of Marie Francoise-Clay, who attained such

celebrity for her obesity. She was born in poverty, reached puberty at

thirteen, and married at twenty-five, at which age she was already the

stoutest woman of her neighborhood notwithstanding her infirmity. She

followed her husband, who was an old-clothes dealer, afoot from town to

town. She bore six children, in whom nothing extraordinary was noticed.

The last one was born when she was thirty-five years old. Neither the

births, her travels, nor her poverty, which sometimes forced her to beg

at church doors, arrested the progress of the obesity. At the age of

forty she was 5 feet 1 inch high and one inch greater about the waist.

Her head was small and her neck was entirely obliterated. Her breasts

were over a yard in circumference and hung as low as the umbilicus. Her

arms were elevated and kept from her body by the fat in her axillae.

Her belly was enormous and was augmented by six pregnancies. Her thighs

and haunches were in proportion to her general contour. At forty she

ceased to menstruate and soon became afflicted with organic heart

diseases.

Fournier quotes an instance of a woman in Paris who at twenty-four, the

time of her death, weighed 486 pounds. Not being able to mount any

conveyance or carriage in the city, she walked from place to place,

finding difficulty not in progression, but in keeping her equilibrium.

Roger Byrne, who lived in Rosenalis, Queen's County, Ireland, died of

excessive fatness at the age of fifty-four, weighing 52 stone. Percy

and Laurent speak of a young German of twenty who weighed 450 pounds.

At birth he weighed 13 pounds, at six months 42, and at four years 150

pounds. He was 5 feet 5 inches tall and the same in circumference.

William Campbell, the landlord of the Duke of Wellington in

Newcastle-on-Tyne, was 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 728 pounds. He

measured 96 inches around the shoulders, 85 inches around the waist,

and 35 inches around the calf. He was born at Glasgow in 1856, and was

not quite twenty-two when last measured. To illustrate the rate of

augmentation, he weighed 4 stone at nine months and at ten years 18

stone. He was one of a family of seven children. His appetite was not

more than the average, and he was moderate as regards the use of

liquors, but a great smoker Notwithstanding his corpulency, he was

intelligent and affable.

Miss Conley, a member of an American traveling circus, who weighed 479

pounds, was smothered in bed by rolling over on her face; she was

unable to turn on her back without assistance.

There was a girl who died at Plaisance near Paris in 1890 who weighed

470 pounds or more. In 1889 an impresario undertook to exhibit her; but

eight men could not move her from her room, and as she could not pass

through the door the idea was abandoned.

There was a colored woman who died near Baltimore who weighed 850

pounds, exceeding the great Daniel Lambert by 120 pounds. The journal

reporting this case quotes the Medical Record as saying that there was

a man in North Carolina, who was born in 1798, who was 7 feet 8 inches

tall and weighed over 1000 pounds, probably the largest man that ever

lived. Hutchison says that he Saw in the Infirmary at Kensington, under

Porter's care, a remarkable example of obesity. The woman was only just

able to walk about and presented a close resemblance to Daniel Lambert.

Obesity forced her to leave her occupation. The accumulation of fat on

the abdomen, back, and thighs was enormous.

According to a recent number of La Liberte, a young woman of

Pennsylvania, although only sixteen years old, weighs 450 pounds. Her

waist measures 61 inches in circumference and her neck 22 inches. The

same paper says that on one of the quays of Paris may be seen a

wine-shop keeper with whom this Pennsylvania girl could not compare. It

is said that this curiosity of the Notre-Dame quarter uses three large

chairs while sitting behind her specially constructed bar. There is

another Paris report of a man living in Switzerland who weighs more

than 40 stone (560 pounds) and eats five times as much as an ordinary

person. When traveling he finds the greatest difficulty in entering an

ordinary railway carriage, and as a rule contents himself in the

luggage van. Figure 171 represents an extremely fat woman with a

well-developed beard. To end this list of obese individuals, we mention

an old gentleman living in San Francisco who, having previously been

thin, gained 14 pounds in his seventieth year and 14 pounds each of

seven succeeding years.

Simulation of Obesity.--General dropsy, elephantiasis, lipomata,

myxedema, and various other affections in which there is a hypertrophic

change of the connective tissues may be mistaken for general obesity;

on the other hand, a fatty, pendulous abdomen may simulate the

appearances of pregnancy or even of ovarian cyst.

Dercum of Philadelphia has described a variety of obesity which he has

called "adiposis dolorosa," in which there is an enormous growth of

fat, sometimes limited, sometimes spread all over the body, this

condition differing from that of general lipomatosis in its rarity, in

the mental symptoms, in the headache, and the generally painful

condition complained of. In some of the cases examined by Dercum he

found that the thyroid was indurated and infiltrated by calcareous

deposits. The disease is not myxedema because there is no peculiar

physiognomy, no spade-like hands nor infiltrated skin, no alteration of

the speech, etc. Dercum considers it a connective-tissue dystrophy--a

fatty metamorphosis of various stages, possibly a neuritis. The first

of Dercum's cases was a widow of Irish birth, who died both alcoholic

and syphilitic. When forty-eight or forty-nine her arms began to

enlarge. In June, 1887, the enlargement affected the shoulders, arms,

back, and sides of the chest. The parts affected were elastic, and

there was no pitting. In some places the fat was lobulated, in others

it appeared as though filled with bundles of worms. The skin was not

thickened and the muscles were not involved. In the right arm there was

unendurable pain to the touch, and this was present in a lesser degree

in the left arm. Cutaneous sensibility was lessened. On June 13th a

chill was followed by herpes over the left arm and chest, and later on

the back and on the front of the chest. The temperature was normal.

The second case was a married Englishwoman of sixty-four. The enlarged

tissue was very unevenly distributed, and sensibility was the same as

in the previous case. At the woman's death she weighed 300 pounds, and

the fat over the abdomen was three inches thick. The third case was a

German woman in whom were seen soft, fat-like masses in various

situations over either biceps, over the outer and posterior aspect of

either arm, and two large masses over the belly; there was excessive

prominence of the mons veneris. At the autopsy the heart weighed 8 1/2

ounces, and the fat below the umbilicus was seven inches thick.

Abnormal Leanness.--In contrast to the fat men are the so-called

"living skeletons," or men who have attained notice by reason of

absence of the normal adipose tissue. The semimythical poet Philotus

was so thin that it was said that he fastened lead on his shoes to

prevent his being blown away,--a condition the opposite of that of

Dionysius of Heraclea, who, after choking to death from his fat, could

hardly be moved to his grave.

In March, 1754, there died in Glamorganshire of mere old age and

gradual decay a little Welshman, Hopkin Hopkins, aged seventeen years.

He had been recently exhibited in London as a natural curiosity; he had

never weighed over 17 pounds, and for the last three years of his life

never more than 12 pounds. His parents still had six children left, all

of whom were normal and healthy except a girl of twelve, who only

weighed 18 pounds and bore marks of old age.

There was a "living skeleton" brought to England in 1825 by the name of

Claude Seurat. He was born in 1798 and was in his twenty-seventh year.

He usually ate in the course of a day a penny roll and drank a small

quantity of wine. His skeleton was plainly visible, over which the skin

was stretched tightly. The distance from the chest to the spine was

less than 3 inches, and internally this distance was less. The

pulsations of the heart were plainly visible. He was in good health and

slept well. His voice was very weak and shrill. The circumference of

this man's biceps was only 4 inches. The artist Cruikshank has made

several drawings of Seurat.

Calvin Edson was another living skeleton. In 1813 he was in the army at

the battle of Plattsburg, and had lain down in the cold and become

benumbed. At this time he weighed 125 pounds and was twenty-five years

old. In 1830 he weighed but 60 pounds, though 5 feet 4 inches tall. He

was in perfect health and could chop a cord of wood without fatigue; he

was the father of four children.

Salter speaks of a man in 1873 who was thirty-two years of age and only

weighed 49 pounds. He was 4 feet 6 inches tall: his forehead measured

in circumference 20 1/2 inches and his chest 27 inches. His genitals,

both internal and external, were defectively developed. Figure 175

represents the well-known Ohio "living skeleton," J. W. Coffey, who has

been exhibited all over the Continent. His good health and appetite

were proverbial among his acquaintances.

In some instances the so-called "living skeletons" are merely cases of

extreme muscular atrophy. As a prominent example of this class the

exhibitionist, Rosa Lee Plemons at the age of eighteen weighed only 27

pounds. Figure 177 shows another case of extraordinary atrophic

condition of all the tissues of the body associated with

nondevelopment. These persons are always sickly and exhibit all the

symptoms of progressive muscular atrophy, and cannot therefore be

classed with the true examples of thinness, in which the health is but

slightly affected or possibly perfect health is enjoyed.

CHAPTER VIII.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 678