Alton Giant

One of the oddest episodes in all medical history was the effort of an 8 ft. 4 in. Irishman named Charles Byrne to escape the dissecting knives of John Hunter, great 18th Century anatomist. Hunter wanted the giant's bones for his medical museum. Byrne opposed the idea and, anticipating an early death as all giants do, planned cunningly to outwit the scientist. When he drank himself to death in London in 1783, aged 22, a London newspaper reported that "the whole tribe of surgeons put in a claim for the poor departed Irishman and surrounded his house, just as harpooners would an enormous whale." But Byrne had arranged with friends to cart his body to the Irish Sea, to weight it and sink it in deep water. Hunter, a Scotsman, learned of this, pursued the undertakers, cannily bought the body from them for -L-500. Now Charles Byrne's mounted skeleton stands in London's Royal College of Surgeons, next to the skeleton of a dwarf once named Caroline Crachami, who does not reach up to his kneecap.

Last week this adventure was on U. S. doctors' tongues, for the Journal of the American Medical Association had just published a lengthy thoroughgoing account of Robert Wadlow of Alton, Ill. who, the author asserted, "exceeds . . . every other documented case of gigantism on record in medical literature." Last Monday, when Robert Wadlow celebrated his nineteenth birthday, he was 8 ft. 6 in. tall, weighed 435 lb., was still growing.

Harold Wadlow, an Alton engineer, and his wife had no intimation that this first of their five children was going to be extraordinary. They and all their known ancestors were of normal size. Their firstborn, who arrived on Washington's Birthday, 1918, weighed only 8 1/2 lb. at birth. He began to grow fast at once. At six months he weighed 30 Ib. Year later he weighed as much as a normal six-year-old boy. When he was six years old and in the first grade he had to put on long pants because the biggest boys' suits (size 17) were too small.

When Robert Wadlow was 9 years old he was taller than his father and could toss him around. He stood 6 ft. and weighed 178 Ib. The "express wagon" he played with was guaranteed to support the weight of three grown men.

At 11, Robert Wadlow could look down at Primo Camera, gargantuan prizefighter.

He continued to gain about three inches every year. At one time his mother, by standing tiptoe, could touch his shoulder, and his older sister could walk hand-in-hand with him without making him stoop. But no longer. Only comfortable way for him to motor is astride the car or in a truck. His suits require nine yards of cloth. Shoes, haberdashery and suits all must be specially made for him. His shoe size is 36 and shoemakers make much of him at their Chicago conventions.

Mentally and emotionally, Robert Wadlow seems to be a normal 19-year-old smalltown boy. He was a star basketball player at Alton High School. He swims well. He does not go boating because the only time he entered a rowboat he foundered it, almost drowning his father and himself. Nor can he join in social sports like tennis. He is too big to go out with girls, so he entertains himself with photography. He likes to have his little sister and brother clamber over him. He helps his mother around the house with such tall chores ar washing windows and wiping ceilings clean of dust. Ceilings in the Wadlow home are only a fraction of an inch above the boy's blond head. His bed measures nine feet. For breakfast he eats a dozen eggs.

Robert is now a freshman at Shurtleff College in Alton. He hopes to become a lawyer and escape the curiosity of normal size people. Frequently he exclaims: "It's not my fault that I'm this way. ... I didn't have anything to do with my getting this way."

Cause of his condition is hypertrophy of his pituitary gland. This endocrine body, situated under the brain, controls growth. Usually when it goes awry it affects the individual either at puberty or after he reaches maturity. Adolescent pituitary trouble makes the victim exceedingly tall and lanky. Later it makes the hands, feet and head (especially the chin) vast and ponderous. Robert Wadlow's condition started at birth. Hence his 8 ft. 6 in. and his 435 Ib. are in fairly good proportion.

Many doctors have tried to measure this giant for medical records. He resents them. Nonetheless last June he let Dr. Charles Dean Humberd measure him for the recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Dr. Humberd is the coroner of Nodaway County in northwest Missouri and the only doctor in the village of Barnard, where he was born. In Barnard lived a minor politician who weighed 427 lb. when he died last year, and a 19-year-old boy who was 7 ft. tall when he went to a CCC camp last season. Those divergents from the norms of humanity started Dr. Humberd, 40, a curly-headed bookworm, on a study of gigantism. He has hats, shoes, rings and other souvenirs of most of the circus giants of the U. S. (see p. 45), but nothing so meticulous as his record cf Robert Wadlow, which he obtained only after "a lavish and continued expenditure of much cajolery, flattery, servility, wheedling and exaggerated politeness and persistence."

The Alton Giant, reports Dr. Humberd, has good posture for his size and weight, but droops when he sits. The boy's voice "is a weak bass, thick, husky, mumbling and comparable to the enunciation of a patient with an acute quinsy."

The boy's nose is 2 in. wide. His hands are a foot long. His fingers are double jointed and, comments Dr. Humberd, "curl themselves up in bizarre positions and assume ungainly and gruesome postures." His feet "are disproportionally large and he is very flatfooted. His toes are misshapen."

All giants have trouble with their feet. Robert Wadlow has no sensations of touch, pain or temperature in his feet. Says Dr. Humberd: "He is unaware of a wrinkle in his sock or a foreign body in his shoe until a blister, followed by an ulcer, is formed." His ears are oversize, his heart in proper proportion, genitalia small but normal.

Concludes Dr. Humberd: "I think that the lad's height is still actively increasing."

By asserting that Robert Wadlow exceeds all giants in Medical History, Dr. Humberd escapes giving a direct lie to the Bible (Goliath, 9 ft. 9 in. ; KingOg of Bashan, 9 ft.) ; to Roman Pliny (who reported that an Arabian giant brought to Rome was 9 ft. 9 in. tall) ; to Jewish Josephus and Roman Vitellius (both reported a Jew named Eleazar as 10 ft. 2 in.).

In the U. S. an El Paso Jew named Jacob Ehrlich, who calls himself Jack Earle when on exhibition, claims to be 8 ft. 6 in. That height seems to be a favorite among sideshow giants. John G. Tarver of Alba, Tex., claims it. Clifford Thompson of Stevens Point, Wis. claims an inch more. Dr. Humberd frankly does not believe them. He insists that they fake their real heights by wearing high-heeled shoes and tall hats.

Tallest current tale of the tall comes from Teheran, capital of Iran (Persia). There, one Siah-Khan, at 18, is reported to be almost 12 ft. tall. His arms are supposed to be so long that he must wrap an arm once around his head to put food in his mouth.

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