Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineGould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Science
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
Gould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Abnormalities, Human; Medicine -- Anecdotes
The "turtle-woman" of Demerara was so called because her mother when
pregnant was frightened by a turtle, and also from the child's fancied
resemblance to a turtle. The femur was six inches long, the woman had a
foot of six bones, four being toes, viz., the first and second
phalanges of the first and second toes. She had an acetabulum, capsule,
and ligamentum teres, but no tibia or fibula; she also had a defective
right forearm. She was never the victim of rachitis or like disease,
but died of syphilis in the Colonial Hospital. In her twenty-second
year she was delivered of a full-grown child free of deformity.
There was a woman living in Bavaria, under the observation of Buhl, who
had congenital absence of both femurs and both fibulas. Almost all the
muscles of the thigh existed, and the main attachment to the pelvis was
by a large capsular articulation. Charpentier gives the portrait of a
woman in whom there was a uniform diminution in the size of the limbs.
Debout portrays a young man with almost complete absence of the thigh
and leg, from whose right hip there depended a foot. Accrell describes
a peasant of twenty-six, born without a hip, thigh, or leg on the right
side. The external genital organs were in their usual place, but there
was only one testicle in the scrotum. The man was virile. The rectum
instead of opening outward and underneath was deflected to the right.
Supernumerary Limbs.--Haller reports several cases of supernumerary
extremities. Plancus speaks of an infant with a complete third leg, and
Dumeril cites a similar instance. Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire presented to
the Academie des Sciences in 1830 a child with four legs and feet who
was in good health. Amman saw a girl with a large thigh attached to
her nates. Below the thigh was a single leg made by the fusion of two
legs. No patella was found and the knee was anchylosed. One of the feet
of the supernumerary limb had six toes, while the other, which was
merely an outgrowth, had two toes on it.
According to Jules Guerin, the child named Gustav Evrard was born with
a thigh ending in two legs and two imperfect feet depending from the
left nates.
Tucker describes a baby born in the Sloane Maternity in New York,
October 1, 1894, who had a third leg hanging from a bony and fleshy
union attached to the dorsal spine. The supernumerary leg was well
formed and had a left foot attached to it. Larkin and Jones mention the
removal of a meningocele and a supernumerary limb from an infant of
four months. This limb contained three fingers only, one of which did
not have a bony skeleton.
Pare says that on the day the Venetians and the Genevois made peace a
monster was born in Italy which had four legs of equal proportions, and
besides had two supernumerary arms from the elbows of the normal limbs.
This creature lived and was baptized.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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