Joseph Carey Merrick (August 5, 1862 in Leicester, † April 11, 1890), elsewhere, John Merrick was in the Victorian era known as the Elephant Man.
From birth he suffered from severe deformities of his body, his form and his face completely disfigured. He was in the Victorian era as the worst example of the abnormal deformation of the human face.
After suffering in school and work was Merrick as a “monster” is issued at fairs and treated like an animal. The name Elephant Man, he received, allegedly because his mother in the fourth month of pregnancy by a circus elephant had been attacked.
The young physician and surgeon Frederick Treves discovered Merrick, freed him and brought him to the hospital 1884. “Such a perverted version of the people I was never challenged,” wrote Treves later. Since the hospital only cured the sick were allowed to be met with resistance Merricks presence. Through intervention of Queen Victoria, which talks about the fall of the London society, was to stay there permanently, however, assured.
Reasons for the deformation
Merricks in his own lifetime, the doctors assumed that he suffered from elephantiasis. 1971 Ashley Montagu suggested before that it is the hereditary disease neurofibromatosis (Recklinghausen’s disease) could have acted. 1983 Michael Cohen discovered the rare Proteus syndrome, which in 1986 as a reason for Joseph Merricks deformation was identified. Unlike Recklinghausen’s disease are of Proteus syndrome are not nervous, but tissue cells affected. A DNA analysis of bones and hair Merricks confirmed in July 2003 that he actually suffered from Proteus Syndrome. However there were also hints at the Recklinghausen’s disease. Merrick suffered from a genetic disorder that is not only enormous changes in the skin produced, but also the bones of buoyancy. In this way, were the head, arms and legs oversized enlarged, only the right hand of the disease had not been affiziert.
Icon for the posterity
The example of the “elephant man” today is like the theme of social outsider status and the need for tolerance.
