Figure 156 shows a portrait of two well-known exhibitionists of about the same age, and illustrates the possible extremes of anomalies in statureRecently, 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 2inches 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 *****;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 7feet 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 9feet. 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 7feet 7 inches. Artacaecas, in great favor with Xerxes, was the tallest Persian and measured 7 feet. John Middleton, born in 1752at Hale, Lancashire, humorously called the "Child of Hale," and whose portrait is in Brasenose College, Oxford, measured 9 feet 3inches tall. In his "History of Ripton," in Devonshire, 1854, Bigsby gives an account of a discovery in 1687 of a skeleton 9feet long. In 1712 in a village in Holland there died a fisherman named Gerrit Bastiaansen who was 8 feet high and weighed 500pounds. 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.