As I write this I am at Charleston, South Carolina, and I see how hard
it will be for an American to understand the possibility of such a
motley assembly being reasonable or even proper. It seems to me down
here that there must have been odd feelings sometimes in those days. I
can only say, however, that I never personally even thought of it.
East London is so democratic that one's standards are simply those of
the value of the man's soul as we saw it. If he had been yellow with
pink stripes it honestly would not have mattered one iota to most of
us.
It so happened that there was at that time in hospital under my care a
patient known as "the elephant man." He had been starring under that
title in a cheap vaudeville, had been seen by some of the students,
and invited over to be shown to and studied by our best physicians.
The poor fellow was really exceedingly sensitive about his most
extraordinary appearance. The disease was called "leontiasis," and
consisted of an enormous over-development of bone and skin on one
side. His head and face were so deformed as really to resemble a big
animal's head with a trunk. My arms would not reach around his hat. A
special room in a yard was allotted to him, and several famous people
came to see him--among them Queen Alexandra, then the Princess of
Wales, who afterward sent him an autographed photograph of herself.
He kept it in his room, which was known as the "elephant house," and
it always suggested beauty and the beast. Only at night could the man
venture out of doors, and it was no unusual thing in the dusk of
nightfall to meet him walking up and down in the little courtyard. He
used to talk freely of how he would look in a huge bottle of
alcohol--an end to which in his imagination he was fated to come. He
was of a very cheerful disposition and pathetically proud of his left
side which was normal. Very suddenly one day he died--the reason
assigned being that his head fell forward and choked him, being too
heavy for him to lift up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account