Curiosities of Medical Experience Part 2

In temperate climates the height of the human race averages from four feet and a half to six feet, but occasional instances have been met with of men reaching eight and nine feet--nay, some authors go so far as ten and eighteen; but the latter a.s.sertions seem to refer to fossil bones attributed to man, but which evidently belonged to other animals. Buffon mentions gigantic human bones discovered at Lucerne, but which upon examination Blumenbach p.r.o.nounced to be the remains of an elephant.

Halicot, in his work called _Gigantosteologia_, describes bones found in a sepulchre in Dauphiny over which was a stone inscribed TEUTOBOCCHUS REX: this skeleton was twenty-five feet and a half high, and ten feet broad at the shoulder. Riolan, the celebrated anatomist, disputes the fact; and in his book ent.i.tled _Gigantomachia_ positively affirms that they also belonged to an elephant. It is worthy of remark, that in this controversy each party considered his opinion and decision of sufficient weight to need no ill.u.s.tration, and therefore neither of them thought it necessary to confirm his _dixit_ by drawings and engravings of the questionable remains. Such is the vanity of the learned! An infallible philosopher informs us that Adam's stature was one hundred and twenty-three feet nine inches; Eve's, one hundred and eighteen feet nine inches and three quarters; Noah's, twenty feet short of Adam's; Abraham's, twenty-eight feet; Moses', thirteen; and Hercules', ten.

That the first races of man were of larger dimensions than those of our contemporaries, has ever been a general opinion. Thus Virgil in his Georgics:

Grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulchris.

Lucretius ascribes the same superiority to animals.

Jamque ade fracta est aetas, effoetaque tellus Vix animalia parva creat, quae cuncta creavit Saecla, deditque ferarum ingentia corpora partu.

And again the Mantuan poet,

Sic Omnia fatis In pejus ruere, ac retr sublapsa referri.

Not only have our forefathers been considered more gigantic in stature, but of more vigorous power. Hence Juvenal says,

Nam genus hoc, vivo jam decrescebat Homero.

Terra malos homines nunc educat, atque pusillos.

It is however obvious, that former races, although they might have excelled the present generation in vigour from the nature of their education and pursuits, could not claim any pre-eminence in stature. The remains of human bones, found in tombs and Egyptian mummies, demonstrate this fact most clearly; and the armour, helmets, and breastplates of the ancients confirm it. Their swords were as light, nay, much lighter in many instances, than those of the present day; and those enormous ones of the times of chivalry were only wielded to inflict one overwhelming blow with both hands, and could scarcely be recovered for protection.

Ancient writers corroborate this opinion. Homer, when speaking of a fine man, gives him four cubits in height and one in breadth. Vitruvius fixes the usual standard of man at six Roman feet: the giant Gabbarus mentioned by Pliny did not exceed nine feet. Aristotle's admeasurement of beds was six feet; and certainly the doorways of ancient edifices by no means indicated taller inmates than our present generation. It is therefore pretty clear that the supposed fossil remains of gigantic human bones belonged to the _Megatherium_, the _Palaeotherium_, and other individuals, which certainly prove that in remote ages there existed animals of much larger dimensions than any now in being, though we have no reason to suppose that this variety extended to our species.[2]

The origin of the fabled giants has led to marvellous disquisitions. Many fathers of the church, amongst whom we may quote St. Cyprian, St.

Ambrosius, St. Chrosostom, St. Cyrillius, Tactantius, Tertullian, and several others, gravely maintain that giants were the favoured offsprings of holy maidens and angels. This may seem an impious conclusion, since the gigantic monsters of sacred history were any thing but angelic; for the Canaaneans, the Moabites, and the sons of Anak, descended from giants, (compared with whom the Israelites seemed as gra.s.shoppers,) were most ferocious, and their land devoured its inhabitants; (though Neuman gives a different signification to the scriptural pa.s.sage, which according to his paraphrase merely meant "that the number of inhabitants was so great, that they eat up all the land;") Og, king of Bashan, whose country was delivered into the hands of Israel, had an iron bedstead nine cubits in length and four cubits in breadth; and Goliath, the reproach of Israel, was six cubits and a span (which according to c.u.mberland makes eleven feet English) in stature. It is therefore difficult to imagine why so many saints considered giants as an angelic progeny.

To the present day, however, we find various races distinguished by their elevated stature. Humboldt says, that the Guayaquilists measure six feet and a half, and the Payaguas are equally tall, while the Caribbees of c.u.mana are distinguished by their almost gigantic size from all the other nations he had met with in the New World. Hearne saw in the cold regions north of Canada individuals of six feet four inches. The Patagonians, or Tehuels, were stated by Pigafitta and the Spanish early navigators as measuring seven feet four inches; and although it appears that this account is exaggerated, more recent travellers, amongst whom we may name Bougainville, Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Carteret, and Falkner, affirm that their height ranges from six to seven feet.

From the best authenticated observations, it appears that the tallest persons on respectable record, did not, according to Haller, exceed nine feet. A young man from Huntingdons.h.i.+re was exhibited in London, and measured about eight feet at the age of seventeen; he was, as usual, born of the ordinary size, but began to grow most rapidly; his sister was of great height, and all his family were remarkably tall.

Dwarfs generally die from premature old age, and giants from exhaustion. A curious instance of marvellous growth is recorded in a tract called "_Prodigium Willinghamense_," or an account of a surprising boy who was born at Willingham, near Cambridge, and upon whom the following epitaph was written:--"Stop, traveller, and wondering, know, here buried lie the remains of Thomas, son of Thomas and Margaret Hall; who, not one year old, had the signs of manhood; at three, was almost four feet high, endued with uncommon strength, a just proportion of parts, and a stupendous voice; before six, he died as it were at an advanced age." Mr. Dawker, a surgeon of St. Ives, Huntingdon, who published this account, viewed him after death, and the corpse exhibited all the appearances of decrepit old age. This is a confirmation of the case of the boy of Salamis, mentioned by Pliny as being four feet high, and having reached p.u.b.erty at the age of three; and may also confirm the account of the man seen by Craterus, the brother of Antigonus, who in seven years was an infant, a youth, an adult, a father, an old man, and a corpse.

The experiment of Dr. Berkeley, bishop of Cloyne, to ascertain the influence of food in promoting extraordinary growth, is curious. He selected for this purpose an orphan child of the name of Macgrath; and, by dint of feeding, at the age of sixteen he had grown to the height of seven feet; but his organization had been so exhausted by this forced process, that he died in a state of moral and physical decay at the age of twenty.

In the development of organized bodies, the effects of light contribute materially. Dr. Edwards, an English physician in Paris, and one of our most distinguished physiologists, has shown that by excluding tadpoles from the light, they will grow to double and triple their ordinary size, but are not metamorphosed into frogs. He thinks that the _Proteus Anguinis_ is the first stage of an animal prevented from growing to perfection by inhabiting the subterraneous waters of Carniola.

The influence of food on the changes of animals is further shown in the aphidivorous flies, that are larvae for eight or ten days, pupae for about a fortnight, and perfect insects in about the same time, in the whole living about six weeks; whereas a pupa deprived of food underwent no change, and lived for twelve months. Rapid development of the organism invariably brings on premature dissolution. A case is recorded of a girl who cut four teeth at the end of the first fortnight; walked about, and had hair reaching to the middle of her back after the seventh month; exhibited signs of p.u.b.erty at the ninth month, but perished in a state of exhaustion in her twelfth year. Dr. Comarmond, of Lyons, relates the case of a female infant, who was perfectly developed at the age of twenty-seven months, but she sank under rachitis when she had attained her twelfth year.

Precocious mental attainments are frequently as destructive of life as a rapid growth. The wonderful Baratier, at the age of four, spoke and read Latin, French, and German; was an excellent Greek scholar at six; and when ten years of age, translated the Scriptures from the Hebrew; at nineteen he died of exhaustion. The vulgar saying, "The child is too clever to live," is founded upon observation. These early specimens of superior intellect are sometimes followed by a state of imbecility. Antiochus tells us that Hermogenes, who was a celebrated rhetorician at fourteen years, was ignorant in the extreme at twenty-four; and of him it was said,

In pueritia senex, in senectute puer.

Tall men generally produce children of high stature. The celebrated grenadier guards of Frederick William, in the words of Dr. Johnson, "_propagated procerity_;" and the inhabitants of Potsdam are remarkable for their height. Haller states that his own family were distinguished by their tallness, without excepting one single grandchild, although they were very numerous.

In the hereditary transmission of physical and moral qualities, many curious observations have been made. Women of high mental attainments have been known to produce children of genius, more frequently than men of a superior intellect; although Haller relates the singular case of two n.o.ble females who married wealthy idiots on account of their fortunes, and from whom this melancholy defect had extended for a century into several families, so that some of all their descendants still continued idiots in the fourth and fifth generation. Horace had observed this tendency to produce offsprings resembling their parents,

Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis: Est in juvencis, est in equis patrum Virtus: nec imbellem feroces Progenerant aquilae columbam.

This remark, however, is more applicable to physical transmissions, and certain peculiarities characterize whole families. Pliny mentioned examples of six-fingered families, who bore the name _Sedigita_. C.

Horatius had two daughters with a similar deformity. Mr. Carlisle knew a family in which supernumerary toes and fingers were observed for four generations: they were introduced by a female who had six fingers on each hand, and as many toes on each foot. From her marriage with a man naturally formed, were produced ten children, with a supernumerary member on each limb; and an eleventh, in which the peculiarity existed in both feet and one hand, the other hand being naturally formed. The latter marrying a man of ordinary formation, they had four children, of which three had one or two limbs natural, and the rest with the supernumerary parts; while the fourth had six fingers on each hand, and as many toes on each foot. The latter married a woman naturally formed, and had issue by her eight children; four with the usual structure, and the same number with the additional fingers and toes: two of them were twins, of which one was naturally formed, and the other six-fingered and six-toed.--The well-known porcupine family, that were exhibited in London and elsewhere, is a remarkable example of hereditary transmission of organic peculiarities. They were all covered with dark-coloured h.o.r.n.y excrescences, which they shed annually in the autumn or winter. Their names were Lambert. Two brothers, John and Richard, grandsons of the original porcupine men, were shown in Germany.--One of these unsightly individuals, who was exhibited some time ago in Bond-street, stated that he was descended from the fourth generation of a savage found in the woods of America; and he further a.s.serted that the females of the family were exempted from this lucrative but uncomfortable peculiarity: all the males had them, and shed them regularly until the thirty-sixth year, when these species of quills grew to a considerable length. We have examples of bristly hair being shed in a whole family every autumn.

Amongst animals, gigantic races no longer inhabit the regions which bore them in ancient times. An extensive whale-fishery was once carried on at Biariz, in the Gulf of Gascony; and the hippopotamus is no longer to be seen on the banks of the Nile.

Gigantic bones having been occasionally discovered with the remains of men and horses and fragments of armour, it has been imagined that in ancient times armies were attended by terrific giants; but it is more than probable that these large fragments of departed warriors belonged to their war-elephants, which with their horses were not unfrequently immolated on their master's tomb.

Skeletons of giants were considered by the ancients as curious as in the present day; and those of Secondilla and Pusio were carefully preserved in the gardens of Sall.u.s.t.

Some naturalists have maintained that giants had more numerous vertebrae than ordinary men; but this has not been confirmed by observation, nor has it been found that the spinal bones of dwarfs are in smaller number.

Schreber, who has collected the description of the princ.i.p.al modern giants, found few above seven feet and a half; although he mentions a Swedish peasant of eight feet Swedish measure, and one of the guards of the Duke of Brunswick eight feet six inches Dutch. Not so Hakewell, who informs us, from the testimony of Nannez, that the Emperor of China had archers and porters fifteen feet high. Howbeit, Ol. Magnus's account surpa.s.ses his; for he tells us of a "_puella--in capite vulnerata, mortua induta chlamyde purpurea, longitudinis cubitorum 50, lat.i.tudinis inter humeros quatuor_!"

UNLAWFUL CURES.

One can scarcely credit that at any period there could have existed men of science and genius who believed that there were supernatural means of curing disease, did we not even to the present day find imbeciles who verily dread the malpractices of the devil and his vicarious agents.

Ancient writers divided their cures into _lawful_ and _unlawful_. The former were obtained from divine aid; the latter from sorcerers, witches, magicians, wizards, and cunning men, who treated all maladies by spells, cabalistic words, charms, characters, images, amulets, ligatures, philters, incantations, &c.; by which means, according to Cardan, Artesius, Picatrix, and sundry wise men, the aforesaid sorcerers and witches could prevent fire from burning, find out thieves and stolen goods, show absent faces in a gla.s.s, make serpents lie still, stanch blood, _salve_ gout, biting of mad dogs, toothache, _et omnia mundi mala_. "Many doubt," says Nicholas Taurellus, "whether the devil can cure such diseases he hath not made, and some flatly deny it; however, common experience confirms, to our astonishment, that magicians can work such feats, and that the devil, without impediment, can penetrate through all the parts of our body, and cure such maladies by means to us unknown."

Some of these means were rather singular; for St. Austin mentions as one of these processes, "_Agentes c.u.m patientibus conjungunt, colligere semina rerum eaque materiae applicare_;" and learned divines, moreover inform us, that to resist exorcisms these witches and magicians had St. Catherine's wheel imprinted on the roof of their mouths, or on some other part.

Taurellus a.s.serts, that to doubt it is to run into a sceptical extreme of incredulity. G.o.delman affirms that Satan is an excellent physician; Langius maintains that Jupiter Menecrates was a magician; and Marcellus Donatus pays the same compliment to Solomon, who, he says, "cured all the diseases of the mind by spells, charms, and drove away devils, and that Eleazar did the same before Vespasian." Galen, in his book "_de Medicamentis facile purandis_," observes after a preparation, "_haec enim suffita, daemonus abigunt_."

This fact being clearly ascertained, the next question was whether it was lawful in a desperate case to crave the help of the evil one on the principle

Flectere si nequeunt Superos, Acheronta movebunt.

Paracelsus rather impiously argues that we might, as it matters not, he says, "whether it be G.o.d or the devil, angels or unclean spirits, (_immundi spiritus_,) that cure him, so that he be eased. If a man fall in a ditch, what matter is it whether a friend or an enemy help him out? If I be troubled with such a malady, what care I whether the devil himself, or any of his ministers, by G.o.d's permission, redeem me?"--and he therefore concludes, that diseases brought on by _malefices_ can only be cured by _incantations_. However, this doctrine was denounced as abominable by Remigius, Bodinus, G.o.delmannus, Erastus, and various divines and schoolmen; and Delrio plainly declares, "_mori praestat quam superst.i.tiose canari_." Therefore pontificial writers and sages recommend adjuration and exorcism by "fire, suffumigations, lights, cutting the air with swords (_gladiorum ictus_), sacred herbs, odours," &c., though some hungry devils can only be cast out by fasting.

Witches and impostors, says Lord Bacon, have always held a compet.i.tion with physicians. Galen complains of this superst.i.tion, and observes that patients placed more confidence in the oracles of Esculapius and their own idle dreams than in the prescriptions of doctors. The introduction of precious stones into medical practice owed its origin to a superst.i.tious belief that, from their beauty, splendour, and high value, they were the natural receptacles for _good_ spirits. Mystery, in the dark ages, and, alas! even now, increases the confidence in remedial means; reveal their true nature, the charm is dissolved: "_Minus credunt quae ad suam salutem pertinent si intelligunt_," said Pliny. One cannot but wonder when we behold men pre-eminent in deep learning and acute observation becoming converts to such superst.i.tious practices. Lord Bacon believed in spells and amulets; and Sir Theodore Mayence, who was physician to three English sovereigns, and supposed to have been Shakspeare's Dr. Caius, believed in supernatural agency, and frequently prescribed the most disgusting and absurd medicines, such as the heart of a mule ripped up alive, a portion of the lungs of a man who had died a violent death, or the hand of a thief who had been gibbeted on some particular day. Nauseous medicines have ever been deemed the most efficacious, on the reasoning that as every thing medicinal is nauseous, every thing that is nauseous must be medicinal. The ancients firmly believed that blood can be stanched by charms; the bleeding of Ulysses was stopped by this means; and Cato the Censor has given us an incantation for setting dislocated bones. To this day charms are supposed to arrest the flow of blood:

Tom Pots was but a serving-man, But yet he was a doctor good, He bound his kerchief on the wound, And with some kind words he stanch'd the blood.

Sir Walter Scott says, in the "Lay of the Last Minstrel,"--

She drew the splinter from the wound, And with a charm she stanch'd the blood.

The strength of imagination in effecting wonderful cures has been observed in all ages; and Avicenna declares, "that he prefers confidence before art, precepts, and all remedies whatsoever." Our learned Burton says, "that this strong imagination or conceit is _Astrum Hominis_, and the rudder of this our s.h.i.+p, which reason should steer, but overborne by phantasie, cannot manage, and so suffers itself and the whole vessel of ours to be overruled and often overturned."

Nothing could be more absurd than the notions regarding some of these supposed cures: a ring made of the hinge of a coffin had the power of relieving cramps; which were also mitigated by having a rusty old sword hung up by the bedside. Nails driven in an oak-tree prevented the toothache. A halter that had served in hanging a criminal was an infallible remedy for a headache, when tied round the head; this affection was equally cured by the moss growing on a human skull, dried and pulverized, and taken as a cephalic snuff. A dead man's hand could dispel tumours of the glands by stroking the parts nine times, but the hand of a man who had been cut down from the gallows was the most efficacious. To cure warts, one had nothing to do but to steal a piece of beef from the butcher, with which the warts were to be rubbed; then inter it in any filth, and as it rotted, the warts would wither and fall.

The chips of a gallows on which several persons had been hanged, when worn in a bag round the neck, would cure the ague. A stone with a hole in it, suspended at the head of the bed, would effectually stop the nightmare; hence it was called a _hag-stone_, as it prevents the troublesome witches from sitting upon the sleeper's stomach. The same amulet tied to the key of a stable-door, deterred witches from riding horses over the country.

Rickety children were cured by being drawn through a cleft tree, which was afterwards bound up, and as the split wood united, the child acquired strength. Creeping through a perforated stone to cure various disorders was a Druidical rite, still practised in the East. In the parish of Marden there is a stone with a hole in it, fourteen inches in diameter, through which children are drawn for the rickets; and, in the North, infants are made to pa.s.s through a hole cut in a _groaning_ cheese the day of their christening.

Second sight, which, as an hereditary faculty, was deemed a malady, was cured in the Isle of Man, according to Mr. Aubrey's account, by baptizing a child upon the first sight of its head. This ceremony exempts the succeeding generation from the troublesome gift.

It is a melancholy reflection that, at various periods, impostors have impiously called in Scriptural aid to promote their sordid or ambitious views. Chiromancers have quoted the Bible in support of their doctrines and adduced the following lines of Job,--"He sealeth up the hand of every man, that all men may know his works:" while, in the like manner, the Holy Inquisition of Spain and Portugal justified their atrocities on the score of the parable of the marriage of the king's son, in the 22nd of St.

Matthew.