Was not Margaret Griffith, wife of David Owen of Llan Gaduain in
Montgomeryshire shown in London, because a crooked horn four inches
long grew out of the middle of her forehead? “A miraculous and
monstrous, but yet most true and certain account” of her, with her
rude portrait affixed, was imprinted at London by Thomas Owen, in the
year of the Spanish Armada, and sold by Edward White, at the little
north door of St. Pauls Church at the Sign of the Gun. And in the
British Museum there is not only the picture of another horned woman,
Davies by name, who was born at Shotwick in Cheshire, but one of the
horns also which she shed.
There was a Mistress Bomby, (not the Mother Bombie of the old play,
but a person of our own times,) who having been a schoolmistress till
the age of fifty, married at that age, and on the day of her marriage
became deranged. She never recovered her reason, but she lived to be
fourscore; and in the latter year of her life a crooked horn sprouted
from the side of her forehead, and grew to the length of nearly six
inches. Another made its appearance, but its growth was stopped. It is
to be regretted that the person who recorded this did not say whether
the second horn made its appearance on the other side of the forehead,
so as to correspond with the former and form a pair.
Blumenbach had three human horns in his collection, all the growth of
one woman. She had broken her head by a fall and the first of them
grew from the wound; it continued growing for thirty years, till it
was about ten inches long, then it dropped off; a second grew from its
place, this was short thick and nearly straight, and she shed it in
less time; the third was growing when she died, and the Professor had
it cut from the corpse. The first was completely twisted like a ram's
horn, was round and rough, of a brownish colour, and full half an inch
in diameter at the roots. All three appeared to be hollow and were
blunt and rounded at the termination. It has been said that all the
cases of this kind which have been observed have been in women; the
remark whether it were made by Blumenbach, or by the intelligent
traveller who describes this part of his collection, would if it were
true be unimportant, because of the paucity of cases that have been
recorded: but there is a case of a male subject, and it is remarkable
for the circumstances attending it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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