Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineGould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Science
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
Gould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Abnormalities, Human; Medicine -- Anecdotes
Ziemssen figures an interesting case of naevus pilosus resembling
"bathing tights". There were also present several benign tumors
(fibroma molluscum) and numerous smaller nevi over the body. Schulz
first observed the patient in 1878. This individual's name was Blake,
and he stated that he was born with a large naevus spreading over the
upper parts of the thighs and lower parts of the trunk, like
bathing-tights, and resembling the pelt of an animal. The same was true
of the small hairy parts and the larger and smaller tumors.
Subsequently the altered portions of the skin had gradually become
somewhat larger. The skin of the large hairy naevus, as well as that of
the smaller ones, was stated by Schulz to have been in the main
thickened, in part uneven, verrucose, from very light to intensely dark
brown in color; the consistency of the larger mammiform and smaller
tumors soft, doughy, and elastic. The case was really one of large
congenital naevus pilosus and fibroma molluscum combined.
A Peruvian boy was shown at the Westminster Aquarium with a dark, hairy
mole situated in the lower part of the trunk and on the thighs in the
position of bathing tights. Nevins Hyde records two similar cases with
dermatolytic growths. A sister of the Peruvian boy referred to had a
still larger growth, extending from the nucha all over the back. Both
she and her brother had hundreds of smaller hairy growths of all sizes
scattered irregularly over the face, trunk, and limbs. According to
Crocker, a still more extraordinary case, with extensive dermatolytic
growths all over the back and nevi of all sizes elsewhere, is described
and engraved in "Lavater's Physiognomy," 1848. Baker describes an
operation in which a large mole occupying half the forehead was removed
by the knife.
In some instances the hair and beard is of an enormous length. Erasmus
Wilson of London saw a female of thirty-eight, whose hair measured 1.65
meters long. Leonard of Philadelphia speaks of a man in the interior of
this country whose beard trailed on the ground when he stood upright,
and measured 2.24 meters long. Not long ago there appeared the famous
so-called "Seven Sutherland Sisters," whose hair touched the ground,
and with whom nearly every one is familiar through a hair tonic which
they extensively advertised. In Nature, January 9, 1892, is an account
of a Percheron horse whose mane measured 13 feet and whose tail
measured almost ten feet, probably the greatest example of excessive
mane development on record. Figure 88 represents Miss Owens, an
exhibitionist, whose hair measured eight feet three inches. In Leslie's
Weekly, January 2, 1896, there is a portrait of an old negress named
Nancy Garrison whose woolly hair was equally as long.
The Ephemerides contains the account of a woman who had hair from the
mons veneris which hung to the knees; it was affected with plica
polonica, as was also the other hair of the body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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