Anomalies of Stature, Size, and Development : General Opinions

Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
by George M. Gould, M.D., Walter L. Pyle, M.D.

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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.