Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineGould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Science
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
Gould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Abnormalities, Human; Medicine -- Anecdotes
Fournier speaks of a cranium in the cabinet of the Natural History
Museum of Marseilles of a man by the name of Borghini, who died in
1616. At the time he was described he was fifty years old, four feet in
height; his head measured three feet in circumference and one foot in
height. There was a proverb in Marseilles, "Apas mai de sen que
Borghini," meaning in the local dialect, "Thou hast no more wit than
Borghini." This man, whose fame became known all over France, was not
able, as he grew older, to maintain the weight of his head, but carried
a cushion on each shoulder to prop it up. Fournier also quotes the
history of a man who died in the same city in 1807 at the age of
sixty-seven. His head was enormous, and he never lay on a bed for
thirty years, passing his nights in a chair, generally reading or
writing. He only ate once in twenty-four or thirty hours, never warmed
himself, and never used warm water. His knowledge was said to have been
great and encyclopedic, and he pretended never to have heard the
proverb of Borghini. There is related the account of a Moor, who was
seen in Tunis early in this century, thirty-one years of age, of middle
height, with a head so prodigious in dimensions that crowds flocked
after him in the streets. His nose was quite long, and his mouth so
large that he could eat a melon as others would an apple. He was an
imbecile. William Thomas Andrews was a dwarf seventeen years old,
whose head measured in circumference 35 inches; from one external
auditory meatus to another, 27 1/4 inches; from the chin over the
cranial summit to the suboccipital protuberance, 37 1/2 inches; the
distance from the chin to the pubes was 20 inches; and from the pubes
to the soles of the feet, 16; he was a monorchid. James Cardinal, who
died in Guy's Hospital in 1825, and who was so celebrated for the size
of his head, only measured 32 1/2 inches in head-circumference.
The largest healthy brains on record, that is, of men of prominence,
are those of Cuvier, weighing 64 1/3 ounces; of Daniel Webster,
weighing 63 3/4 ounces (the circumference of whose head was 23 3/4
inches); of Abercrombie, weighing 63 ounces, and of Spurzheim, weighing
55 1/16 ounces. Byron and Cromwell had abnormally heavy brains, showing
marked evidence of disease.
A curious instance in this connection is that quoted by Pigne, who
gives an account of a double brain found in an infant. Keen reports
finding a fornix which, instead of being solid from side to side,
consisted of two lateral halves with a triangular space between them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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