Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine [132]
Cosnard, one from the bregma; the Ephemerides, from the foot; Borellus, from the face and foot, and Ash, horns all over the body. Home, Cooper, and Treves have collected examples of horns, and there is one 11 inches long and 2 1/2 in circumference in a London museum. Lozes collected reports of 71 cases of horns,--37 in females, 31 in males, and three in infants. Of this number, 15 were on the head, eight on the face, 18 on the lower extremities, eight on the trunk, and three on the glans penis. Wilson collected reports of 90 cases,--44 females, 39 males, the sex not being mentioned in the remainder. Of these 48 were on the head, four on the face, four on the nose, 11 on the thigh, three on the leg and foot, six on the back, five on the glans penis, and nine on the trunk. Lebert's collection numbered 109 cases of cutaneous horns. The greater frequency among females is admitted by all authors. Old age is a predisposing cause. Several patients over seventy have been seen and one of ninety-seven.
Instances of cutaneous horns, when seen and reported by the laity, give rise to most amusing exaggerations and descriptions. The following account is given in New South Wales, obviously embellished with apocryphal details by some facetious journalist: The child, five weeks old, was born with hair two inches long all over the body; his features were fiendish and his eyes shone like beads beneath his shaggy brows. He had a tail 18 inches long, horns from the skull, a full set of teeth, and claw-like hands; he snapped like a dog and crawled on all fours, and refused the natural sustenance of a normal child. The mother almost became an imbecile after the birth of the monster. The country people about Bomballa considered this devil-child a punishment for a rebuff that the mother gave to a Jewish peddler selling Crucifixion-pictures. Vexed by his persistence, she said she would sooner have a devil in her house than his picture.
Lamprey has made a minute examination of the much-spoken-of "Horned Men of Africa." He found that this anomaly was caused by a congenital malformation and remarkable development of the infraorbital ridge of the maxillary bone. He described several cases, and through an interpreter found that they were congenital, followed no history of traumatism, caused little inconvenience, and were unassociated with disturbance of the sense of smell. He also learned that the deformity was quite rare in the Cape Coast region, and received no information tending to prove the conjecture that the tribes in West Africa used artificial means to produce the anomaly, although such custom is prevalent among many aborigines.
Probably the most remarkable case of a horn was that of Paul Rodrigues, a Mexican porter, who, from the upper and lateral part of his head, had a horn 14 inches in circumference and divided into three shafts, which he concealed by constantly wearing a peculiarly shaped red cap. There is in Paris a wax model of a horn, eight or nine inches in length, removed from an old woman by the celebrated Souberbielle. Figure 75 is from a wax model supposed to have been taken from life, showing an enormous grayish-black horn proceeding from the forehead. Warren mentions a case under the care of Dubois, in a woman from whose forehead grew a horn six inches in diameter and six inches in height. It was hard at the summit and had a fetid odor. In 1696 there was an old woman in France who constantly shed long horns from her forehead, one of which was presented to the King. Bartholinus mentions a horn 12 inches long. Voigte cites the case of an old woman who had a horn branching into three portions, coming from her forehead. Sands speaks of a woman who had a horn 6 3/4 inches long, growing from her head. There is an account of the extirpation of a horn nearly ten inches in length from the forehead of a woman of eighty-two. Bejau describes a woman of forty from whom he excised an excrescence resembling a ram's horn, growing from the left parietal region. It curved forward and nearly reached the corresponding tuberosity. It was eight
Instances of cutaneous horns, when seen and reported by the laity, give rise to most amusing exaggerations and descriptions. The following account is given in New South Wales, obviously embellished with apocryphal details by some facetious journalist: The child, five weeks old, was born with hair two inches long all over the body; his features were fiendish and his eyes shone like beads beneath his shaggy brows. He had a tail 18 inches long, horns from the skull, a full set of teeth, and claw-like hands; he snapped like a dog and crawled on all fours, and refused the natural sustenance of a normal child. The mother almost became an imbecile after the birth of the monster. The country people about Bomballa considered this devil-child a punishment for a rebuff that the mother gave to a Jewish peddler selling Crucifixion-pictures. Vexed by his persistence, she said she would sooner have a devil in her house than his picture.
Lamprey has made a minute examination of the much-spoken-of "Horned Men of Africa." He found that this anomaly was caused by a congenital malformation and remarkable development of the infraorbital ridge of the maxillary bone. He described several cases, and through an interpreter found that they were congenital, followed no history of traumatism, caused little inconvenience, and were unassociated with disturbance of the sense of smell. He also learned that the deformity was quite rare in the Cape Coast region, and received no information tending to prove the conjecture that the tribes in West Africa used artificial means to produce the anomaly, although such custom is prevalent among many aborigines.
Probably the most remarkable case of a horn was that of Paul Rodrigues, a Mexican porter, who, from the upper and lateral part of his head, had a horn 14 inches in circumference and divided into three shafts, which he concealed by constantly wearing a peculiarly shaped red cap. There is in Paris a wax model of a horn, eight or nine inches in length, removed from an old woman by the celebrated Souberbielle. Figure 75 is from a wax model supposed to have been taken from life, showing an enormous grayish-black horn proceeding from the forehead. Warren mentions a case under the care of Dubois, in a woman from whose forehead grew a horn six inches in diameter and six inches in height. It was hard at the summit and had a fetid odor. In 1696 there was an old woman in France who constantly shed long horns from her forehead, one of which was presented to the King. Bartholinus mentions a horn 12 inches long. Voigte cites the case of an old woman who had a horn branching into three portions, coming from her forehead. Sands speaks of a woman who had a horn 6 3/4 inches long, growing from her head. There is an account of the extirpation of a horn nearly ten inches in length from the forehead of a woman of eighty-two. Bejau describes a woman of forty from whom he excised an excrescence resembling a ram's horn, growing from the left parietal region. It curved forward and nearly reached the corresponding tuberosity. It was eight