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.
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