WEBVTT - Joseph Merrick, aka "The Elephant Man" 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.280 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.800 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.920 and there's Charles w Chuck, Brian over there, and Jerry's 0:00:17.920 --> 0:00:21.440 out there floating in the ether like the omniscient green goddess, 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:25.720 salad dressing that she is. This is stuff you should know. 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:28.600 Why do you work on that, buddy? That is off 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:31.240 the cuff? Don't you know me? By now? Off the dome? 0:00:31.320 --> 0:00:33.440 As they say, I don't see that. I say off 0:00:33.440 --> 0:00:36.080 the cuff. It's not cool enough to say off the dome. 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:39.920 But you're shirtless, so there is no cuff. That's that 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:43.440 is true? Man, I hadn't thought about all this. Maybe 0:00:43.440 --> 0:00:47.680 I should changed off the dome. Speaking of domes, Chuck, Yeah, 0:00:47.960 --> 0:00:49.680 what were you gonna say? I was going to talk 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:53.960 about Thunderdome? Were you really? I'm always this close to 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:57.840 talking about Thunderdome? Yeah. I guess that's that's a pretty 0:00:57.880 --> 0:01:01.600 way to be, isn't it. Sure? So who's who? Chuck? 0:01:01.640 --> 0:01:05.320 Am I master or blaster? And are you master or blaster? 0:01:05.840 --> 0:01:08.160 Are we both blaster and both master? I'm not sure 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:09.759 who was who? But I would prefer to ride around 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.520 on your shoulders. That's fine. I prefer to be a 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:17.680 giant shirtless man wearing nothing but a leather daddy across 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:21.520 belt across my chest, which I guess I could probably 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:24.240 do that anyway. You know, why not, I'm Tina Turner. 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:30.720 Oh so you're Tina Turner writing on blasters shoulders? Yes, 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:34.399 what happened to master? Uh? That was? That was? We 0:01:34.440 --> 0:01:36.520 don't like to talk about it. Two men entered, that's 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:40.720 all I'll say. Okay, he was suffocated by Tina Turner 0:01:40.760 --> 0:01:45.080 sitting on him. That's right. So UM, obviously, Chuck, we're 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:49.560 talking about one of the most in my opinion, admirable, 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:55.520 brave human beings to ever walk the face of the earth. UM, 0:01:55.560 --> 0:01:59.240 and a man named Joseph Merrick, who a lot of 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:04.720 people UM no of his John Merrick incorrectly, but probably know. 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.800 I'm even better as the elephant man. That's right. And uh, 0:02:07.960 --> 0:02:10.360 you know we have to use those words because that's 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:15.160 how he was referred to. Um. We'll get into the 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:19.040 reasons why, but we're gonna call him Joseph Merrick mainly 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:23.359 because that's the man's name, and we don't like to 0:02:23.360 --> 0:02:27.840 to call somebody by their sideshow name. It's a rule here, sure, no, 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.480 but it should be noted that um, he was uh 0:02:31.480 --> 0:02:33.640 And it's really I think a lot of people probably 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:37.120 don't realize this, but he um was an active, willing 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:40.640 and initiating participant, founding member, you could say, of his 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:43.720 own sideshow act. Um. So he was fully on board 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:46.520 with the idea of being called the elephant man um, 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:51.480 which is just another facet of this extremely complex person, 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:53.760 you know who. I think it's painted with a very 0:02:53.800 --> 0:02:56.560 simple brush sometimes. But the great thing is is a 0:02:56.560 --> 0:03:00.239 lot of times when you when you look into a 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:08.360 widely misunderstood, wildly oversimplified person, you very frequently find that 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.000 there's a lot of like really terrible stuff to them, 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:14.480 Like they you know, like, um, they were fine with 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:16.480 with hitting women. They thought that that was like a 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:21.799 totally fine thing to do, like Sean Connery, right, and instead, Um, 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:24.320 when you look into Joseph Merrick, you find, oh my gosh, 0:03:24.320 --> 0:03:26.760 like he was even he was an even better person 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:29.679 than I I dared hope, you know, like he was 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:33.320 a really great guy who went through just hell on 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:37.000 Earth in the twenty seven years that he was alive. Yeah. So, um, 0:03:37.680 --> 0:03:41.000 you may have heard of the story of the Elephant 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:45.120 Man from UM a few things in pop culture, namely 0:03:45.160 --> 0:03:50.000 the David Lynch movie UM or perhaps the various Broadway 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:53.440 shows UM. I watched a few of those, like clips 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.880 from a few of those. He's been played by David Bowie, 0:03:57.520 --> 0:04:01.560 Billy Crudup, recently by Bradley Cooper, and I was kind 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:04.600 of Bradley Cooper said that the movie caused him to 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:07.680 want to become an actor, so it's actually pretty apropos 0:04:07.760 --> 0:04:10.840 that he played him. Eventually, Well, we can all thank 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:16.520 Joseph Merrick for Bradley Cooper's success, That's right. But yeah, 0:04:16.560 --> 0:04:18.400 I was kind of curious because I was like, did 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.920 they undergo prosthetics? Like how do they pull this off? 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:24.640 But UM, I'm sure you looked at some of the clips. 0:04:24.760 --> 0:04:27.320 No one does that. When you play Joseph Merrick. You 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:32.400 just embodied the man. You um, sort of contort your 0:04:32.400 --> 0:04:36.240 body in certain ways and you just sort of play 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:38.479 the person. And I think that's a good way to 0:04:38.520 --> 0:04:42.000 go about it, rather than just you know, throwing some 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:49.320 uh some big mask over David Bowie or something like that. Right. Yeah, Yeah, 0:04:49.320 --> 0:04:52.040 they just kind of contorted their body, they altered their 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:56.440 speech and just affected they like they Yeah, I think 0:04:56.480 --> 0:04:58.000 it was a good way to go to And apparently 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:00.159 I don't remember the guy's name, but the guy the 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:03.920 first guy to play Joseph Merrick in the stage version 0:05:03.920 --> 0:05:06.600 and when that came out and I think seventy nine 0:05:06.680 --> 0:05:09.560 or eighty, Um, he he was the one who started 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:11.919 that trend and really kind of came up with this 0:05:11.920 --> 0:05:14.560 this embodiment that everybody else has has kind of followed 0:05:14.600 --> 0:05:17.159 suit with afterwards. And I don't know, I didn't catch it. 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:19.000 Did you say Mark Hamill was one of the people 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:23.039 who played him, Yeah, Luke Skywalker he uh yeah, he 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:28.440 used the force, he did. So there's something really weird 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:31.440 that happened in the late seventies, and I am not 0:05:31.520 --> 0:05:34.760 quite sure what it was. But in nineteen seventy nine, 0:05:34.800 --> 0:05:38.479 the stage play based on Joseph Merritt came out. In 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:42.640 nineteen eighty, David Lynch released the Just the legendary film, 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:46.640 one of the best films ever made about um Joseph Merrick. 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:49.839 And then there was a definitive book that was written 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:54.240 as well by a pair of authors. Um, one of 0:05:54.279 --> 0:05:56.400 whom I believe was like a doctor who had like 0:05:56.440 --> 0:05:58.560 all this great research, but his writing was a little 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:01.960 over the top, so they assigned a ghostwriter with him, 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:06.559 and they basically wrote the definitive book on Joseph Merrick's life, 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:10.320 UM and medical condition. And all three of these projects 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:13.560 happened independently, like one wasn't adapted from the other or 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:15.839 anything like that, and they all came out at around 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:19.040 the same time, which is really strange in and of itself. 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:21.760 But it's even stranger to think that all of this 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:26.039 happened um centered on a character who had been largely 0:06:26.120 --> 0:06:29.599 forgotten by this time, you know, like there was really 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:34.559 only two surviving um pieces of literature about him, about 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:39.599 Joseph Merrick, the man um that that that anyone was 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.880 aware of, and they had been written in the nineteenth century. 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:45.400 But then suddenly, for some reason in the late seventies, 0:06:45.600 --> 0:06:49.520 three different projects started up about Joseph American kind of 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:54.760 made him a icon for humanity that is still, you know, 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:59.160 lasting today. Yeah. I think the seventies spawned Disco Fever 0:06:59.279 --> 0:07:02.680 and Elephant man Fever. Sorry, and they were both rather 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:07.520 unlikely considering uh, both Disco and Joseph Merrick were born 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:12.600 in the eighteen hundreds, specifically in England on August five, 0:07:12.760 --> 0:07:15.440 eighteen sixty two. So I meant to look it up. 0:07:16.040 --> 0:07:18.280 I don't know if it's Is it Leicestershire like the 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:22.560 sauce Leicester Lester Lester? Right, yeah, you have that last time. 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:25.760 It's just Lester from what I understand. Okay, So he 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:29.680 was born in Leicester, England, on August five, eighteen sixty two. 0:07:30.520 --> 0:07:33.360 And UM, we'll talk a little bit about what they 0:07:33.680 --> 0:07:37.400 are pretty sure his condition was. But being eighteen sixty 0:07:37.400 --> 0:07:41.480 two at the time, Um, after he started developing, um, 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:44.720 some very strange symptoms at the age of five, doctors 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:49.840 back then we're pretty flummixed. Yeah, yes, yeah, So. UM. 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:52.360 The reason why is, we'll see, is because they think 0:07:52.400 --> 0:07:55.360 he's one of maybe a hundred people in the entire 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:58.160 history of the world, or at least as far as 0:07:58.160 --> 0:08:01.080 people have been writing stuff like this down on um, 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:04.800 to have this condition that he had. So it's not 0:08:04.840 --> 0:08:09.480 like he started developing strangely and they were like, oh, well, 0:08:09.520 --> 0:08:11.120 you know, this is what's going on, this is what's 0:08:11.120 --> 0:08:14.320 to be expected. Instead, just a little by little his 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:20.160 body started taking on these odd differing forms. Um. And 0:08:21.200 --> 0:08:22.640 like you said, I think it was around the age 0:08:22.640 --> 0:08:25.360 of five that he really started to to show that 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:28.840 he was going to be rather different. Yeah, it was five. 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:32.440 His father Joseph and his mother Mary Jane noticed he 0:08:32.440 --> 0:08:36.360 had swollen lips, and then a lump started to form 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.920 on his forehead. His skin started to kind of get 0:08:39.960 --> 0:08:43.240 loose and rough. Um, And this was just sort of 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:47.880 the beginning. His face became spongy, his jaw started to deform, 0:08:48.080 --> 0:08:51.760 his speech was impaired. Um. The right side of his 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:54.480 body was, or at least upper body was a little 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:57.319 more or I guess a lot more affected, because it 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:01.120 seemed like his left arm in hand stayed kind of 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.480 as is, but the right side arm became sort of 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:09.439 like this giant fin right. So. Um. The the thing 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:11.959 that I guess kind of gave him the moniker the 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:16.560 elephant man was growth that started protruding from from what 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:19.800 I saw beneath his upper lip. So the way that 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:22.520 I read that, Chuck, is that like when you pull 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:25.600 your your top lip up, that part of your gums 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:28.440 right there above your teeth, that he had like a 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:31.920 growth start that started there and it got pretty big. 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:34.120 I think it got up to about eight inches long, 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:37.240 and that I guess you would just look at it 0:09:37.280 --> 0:09:38.679 and be like wow, that looks a lot like an 0:09:38.679 --> 0:09:41.880 elephant's trunk. This this strange growth that's growing up from 0:09:41.920 --> 0:09:44.760 under this poor man's top lip um, and he later 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:46.560 had it removed so it doesn't show up in any 0:09:46.559 --> 0:09:51.040 photographs of him. But that supposedly is um one of 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:53.680 the places where the idea that he was an elephant 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:57.360 man came from. Yeah. So as far as his family goes, 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.360 he had a couple of younger siblings. It seems like 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:05.079 both of them passed away. William Arthur Um succumbed to 0:10:05.160 --> 0:10:10.120 smallpox and Marian Eliza. It just says on her death 0:10:10.160 --> 0:10:13.880 certificate that she was crippled from birth with an unknown ailment. 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:18.200 And he Um he went to school like he Like 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:20.160 I said, it didn't start happening un till he was five, 0:10:20.800 --> 0:10:23.439 and it wasn't so severe right away that he couldn't 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:27.840 go to school like any other kid would his age. Um, 0:10:28.000 --> 0:10:30.680 things really took a turn though, when his mom died 0:10:31.360 --> 0:10:33.800 when he was eleven years old. Things went really bad 0:10:33.840 --> 0:10:37.520 for him. Yeah, so there's like a few things that 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:40.640 you should know about his mom. So his his mom 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:45.400 was vilified by his biographer, who also would turn out 0:10:45.440 --> 0:10:48.120 to be a surgeon. Um who will talk about later. 0:10:48.160 --> 0:10:53.200 Frederick Treeve's um as as a terrible woman who abandoned him, 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:55.640 and um, that doesn't seem to be the case at all. 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:58.839 And in fact, Um Joseph recalled his mom is a 0:10:58.960 --> 0:11:02.800 very saintly sweet woman who was basically his only friend. 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:07.839 Because when you're you know, starting around five and uh 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:10.720 you and you, you are having trouble keeping up with 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:13.040 other kids. Something else happened in when he was five 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.720 two Chuck, he injured, He felt really hard and injured 0:11:15.760 --> 0:11:19.200 his hip, and that injury became infected, so he became 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:21.800 um what at the time they would have called lame 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:25.160 or crippled in his I believe his left leg. So 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:27.240 he had trouble walking from the age of five. In 0:11:27.280 --> 0:11:31.800 addition to his genetic condition, um that was making him 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:34.400 look more and more different. So he became further and 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:37.480 further alienated from his friends. I saw a quote that 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:42.199 said that he was becoming a lonely, introspective child, increasingly 0:11:42.240 --> 0:11:45.960 dependent on his mother for company. And luckily, his mother 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.800 seems to have been a very sweet woman who, again 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:52.199 in the vertacular, was crippled. That's how she was described. 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:56.320 So we have no idea in what way, But today 0:11:56.360 --> 0:11:59.360 you would describe her as without the use of say 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:02.000 one or more of her limbs. So they had like 0:12:02.080 --> 0:12:04.840 that kind of connection. But she also was very protective 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.559 of Joseph two. So when she died it was more 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.320 than him just losing his mother at age eleven. It 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:15.280 was him losing like his best friend, his his main companion, 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:19.040 um and the source of like basically anything good in 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:21.400 his life was was taken from him at a very 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:25.560 young age. Yeah, his father remarried and by all accounts 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:27.800 his father and stepmother were not very kind to him 0:12:27.800 --> 0:12:33.520 at all. They were emotionally abusive, uh could be physically abusive. Um. 0:12:33.640 --> 0:12:37.720 He left school at age thirteen, which is um about 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:40.640 when kids left school back then, and got a job 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.920 at a cigar factory and Um worked there for a 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:47.000 couple of years until his left arm got to the 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:49.400 point in hand such that he couldn't do the job anymore. 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:51.920 So at that point he got what they called a 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:56.040 hawker's license in order to help his dad, who had 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:58.040 a couple of small businesses. But he helped his dad 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:03.160 sell stuff from his hab a dashery in England there 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:08.679 and then eventually went to work at the Lester Union workhouse. Uh. 0:13:08.880 --> 0:13:10.840 He ran away from home a couple of times. It 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:14.160 was just a really bad scene and eventually landed with 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:18.920 his uncle, who was a barber named Charles, and he 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:21.760 was a good guy and he um, he felt bad 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:23.800 for what Joseph was going through and sort of his 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:26.040 home life, so he took him in and that ended 0:13:26.120 --> 0:13:28.760 up being um, after a couple of really bad years 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:30.680 with his dad and stepmother, a really nice place to 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:34.120 be for a little while. Yeah, stepmother was just pretty evil. 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:36.720 She she um. She was the one that made him 0:13:36.760 --> 0:13:39.360 drop out of school at thirteen and go get a job. 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:42.880 And when he was hawking stuff from his father's shop, 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:47.000 if he didn't come home with uh, you know, enough money, um, 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:48.679 she wouldn't give him a full meal. I guess she'd 0:13:48.720 --> 0:13:51.040 give him enough food to sustain him, but she if 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:54.440 he couldn't pay for the meal that she had on 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:57.480 offer with the proceeds from what he sold that day, 0:13:57.720 --> 0:14:00.600 she wouldn't give him that meal. And then his father 0:14:00.640 --> 0:14:03.280 would frequently beat him too, So it's no wonder that 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:05.320 he he tried to run away, but then his father 0:14:05.320 --> 0:14:08.320 would go get him and bring him back home. So 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:10.600 he had a terrible life. And yeah, luckily he had 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:12.960 the uncle named Charles who who took him in for 0:14:12.960 --> 0:14:15.160 a little while. But even he was like, I can't 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:19.000 support you anymore, kid, because after a little while, very sadly, 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:23.080 Joseph actually had his hawker's license revoked because he was 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:25.960 deemed a menace to the community because he was scaring 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:28.760 people when he was going door to door trying to 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:31.880 sell stuff. His appearance scared people and there were enough 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:35.640 complaints that the city revoked his license. So at the 0:14:35.800 --> 0:14:38.920 at the end, by the time he was seventeen, he 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:41.640 had no choice but to go to the Union Workhouse, 0:14:41.680 --> 0:14:45.520 which is a poorhouse. It's what Dickens described in Oliver 0:14:45.600 --> 0:14:48.720 Twist and some of his other stories, where you went 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:52.480 there if you were either unable or unwilling to support 0:14:52.520 --> 0:14:55.560 yourself through honest work, and they would put you to 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:59.280 work and it was basically like a prison for poor people. Um, 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:01.200 they'd fee you and they give you a bed, but 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:03.360 it was a very cruel place to live. And that's 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:07.640 where he spent a little while, I think five years um, 0:15:07.680 --> 0:15:10.120 because he had no other choice, and then finally chuck 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:12.280 out at one point towards the end of his stay 0:15:12.840 --> 0:15:15.760 at the union workhouse. He said, you know what, there's 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:18.040 an alternative for me, and I'm going to take it. 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:22.000 And we should probably take a break now and uh, 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:25.000 maybe come back and talk a little bit about his 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:28.560 this mystery illness that he had that we now sort 0:15:28.600 --> 0:16:01.200 of understand. Yea, So he referred to himself as the 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:04.680 elephant boy and then the elephant man. Um. This was 0:16:04.880 --> 0:16:09.640 a moniker that was uh, he he sort of embraced. 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:14.040 But he thought his whole life that he was this 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:18.520 way because of something called maternal impression, which was still 0:16:18.560 --> 0:16:21.320 a common belief back then, which was that something could 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:25.760 happen to a mother while pregnant that would affect the baby. 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:29.000 And that's not to say, you know, she drank or 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:32.480 smoked and had a literal, um literal effect on the 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:35.720 development of the of the baby. Um. What they meant 0:16:35.880 --> 0:16:39.720 was she was knocked over by an elephant when she 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:44.080 was pregnant, and that is what caused his illness. And 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:46.280 he believed that his whole life and the whole notion 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:50.640 of maternal impression obviously something in the late eighteen hundreds 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:55.200 mid eighteen hundreds was um, it's kind of crazy to 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:57.720 think about now, but they actually thought that in utero 0:16:57.800 --> 0:17:01.200 it could have an effect like that. Yeah, yeah, so, 0:17:01.240 --> 0:17:03.600 I mean, but it also kind of makes sense. Don't 0:17:03.600 --> 0:17:06.159 you think that if he started to basically grow, what 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:08.640 you'd be like that looks like an elephant's trunk. Your 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:11.800 mom was knocked over and almost stomped by an elephant 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:14.240 once when she was pregnant with you. We have no 0:17:14.320 --> 0:17:17.800 idea what genetics are yet. I mean, you could see somebody, 0:17:18.080 --> 0:17:21.480 you know, making sense of it that way. Maybe. I 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:23.960 guess it's hard to kind of put my head in 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:26.920 that mindset back then. But um, what we now think, 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:31.080 and what doctors now think, is that he had either 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:37.920 UH a case of neurofibro mitosis or UH and or 0:17:38.400 --> 0:17:42.000 something called proteo syndrome. And it really seems like proteo syndrome, 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:45.120 as rare as it is, is probably what he suffered from. Yeah, 0:17:45.119 --> 0:17:49.879 I saw that. Experts in neurofibromatosis have categorically ruled that 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:53.959 out is what he had, because with neurofibromatosis you have 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:56.920 all sorts of tumors that actually grow on your nerve tissue, 0:17:57.000 --> 0:18:02.080 so your nerve endings, your spine, brain, and he may 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:04.560 have had those, so it's possible he did have a 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:06.719 case of that, but like you said, it's much likelier 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:11.480 as proteus syndrome, which is characterized by basically an overgrowth 0:18:11.720 --> 0:18:16.720 of tissue of bone of organs even um and and 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:19.200 I looked into this. So it has a genetic basis, 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:21.320 as I kind of mentioned a couple of times, Chuck, 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:25.879 But it's based on this idea of mosaicism, which is 0:18:25.920 --> 0:18:30.200 where you end up after you're conceived in your cells 0:18:30.240 --> 0:18:34.520 start dividing um. At some point, there's a mutation that 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:39.800 occurs and your cells start dividing differently in in that 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:42.080 they have two different sets of chromosomes. So you have 0:18:42.119 --> 0:18:44.879 two different sets of cells with different sets of chromosomes, 0:18:45.440 --> 0:18:49.000 and they start doing their own thing and in building 0:18:49.640 --> 0:18:53.800 a human body, but it becomes incoherent. Whereas it would 0:18:53.840 --> 0:18:55.960 if they were uniform and all the cells shared the 0:18:56.000 --> 0:19:00.360 same set of of DNA or the same gene set um, 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:02.880 they would build a coherent human But in this case 0:19:02.920 --> 0:19:06.040 it's incoherent. And it's kind of like if you gave 0:19:06.720 --> 0:19:10.840 two different building plans to two different construction companies and 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:12.960 told them to build on the same site at the 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:16.240 same time and just ignore each other. That's what you 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:19.560 would produce. But in this case, it's not a building, 0:19:19.600 --> 0:19:22.840 it's a human body. Yeah, I've heard of mosaic downs 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:25.240 is the only time I've heard that used, and I 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.200 think it's sort of similar in that case. But as 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:33.240 far as proteosyndrome goes UM, it's progressive UM. Your body 0:19:33.280 --> 0:19:38.200 could be covered with um tumors, either benign or malignant. UM. 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:41.640 It can malform blood vessels, you can have skin lesions, 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:46.399 you can have blood clotting which results in all kinds 0:19:46.440 --> 0:19:52.120 of problems like deep vein thrombosis or maybe pulmonary embolism. 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:56.000 It can affect basically any kind of tissue from fat 0:19:56.119 --> 0:20:01.440 to skin to your central nervous system. It's really depends 0:20:01.480 --> 0:20:05.040 on the patient UM and who's afflicted how it can 0:20:05.080 --> 0:20:08.280 affect you. And uh, it usually I mean his was 0:20:08.480 --> 0:20:11.439 onset pretty late. If it started, I guess outwardly at 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:14.800 least at five years old, because it typically starts anywhere 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:19.080 from six months to eighteen months of age. Right. Um. 0:20:19.119 --> 0:20:22.879 But that's another thing about neurofibromatosis is that it um. 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.960 It usually starts at like the get it's onset is 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:30.040 at birth or before birth, so that's another reason another 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:35.640 strike against it. So UM, so it's pretty clear they 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:38.920 think that that he he had proteus syndrome. And it's 0:20:38.920 --> 0:20:40.840 actually a pretty recent thing, like I think it was 0:20:40.880 --> 0:20:45.440 first described in ninety nine and they said there's probably 0:20:45.440 --> 0:20:47.800 about two hundred people who have ever appeared in the 0:20:47.840 --> 0:20:50.879 medical literature that had it. And then some other reviewers 0:20:51.080 --> 0:20:55.119 in two thousand eleven did another survey of of the 0:20:55.200 --> 0:20:59.040 medical literature and paired it down to basically one people 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:03.199 in the history of medicine whoever had proteus syndrome. And 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:06.600 the thing is is Joseph Merrick may have had the 0:21:06.640 --> 0:21:12.840 most pronounced advanced case of proteus syndrome ever of anybody. Um. 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:18.600 He he had basically every every symptom you can possibly have. 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:22.800 But the big problems that he suffered from where like 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:26.479 you said, his his right hand was was UM, he 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:29.080 couldn't use it because it had kind of fused into 0:21:29.280 --> 0:21:32.720 a fin like appendage. UM. He had joints that he 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:36.680 couldn't move because the bones had had overgrown. He couldn't 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:39.440 hear out of his right ear because his skull had overgrown. 0:21:39.760 --> 0:21:43.680 And actually, if you see pictures of his skull today. Um, 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:46.800 he's it's just huge and massive, and apparently it weighed 0:21:46.880 --> 0:21:50.640 something like twenty pounds and got to something like three 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:53.880 ft in circumference, which is about a foot and circumference 0:21:53.920 --> 0:21:57.840 more than the average human man's head. Um. So it 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:00.639 was just enormous. And all it was was he had 0:22:00.840 --> 0:22:03.639 cells that were that didn't know when to stop growing, 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:07.560 whether it was bone or tissue or skin or whatever. 0:22:07.760 --> 0:22:09.960 He also had problems inside of his mouth with bony 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:14.480 growths too, which affected his speech. Yeah. He um, he 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:17.320 couldn't sleep laying down. Uh, he had to sleep. I 0:22:17.359 --> 0:22:20.800 think one of his associates later in life he he 0:22:20.840 --> 0:22:22.680 liked to draw a curtain around himself when he slept. 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:24.919 But one of his associates, um, kind of peeked in 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:27.520 one night and saw that he slept sitting up with 0:22:27.560 --> 0:22:30.280 his knees drawn into his chest, with his head resting 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:32.840 forward on his knees. So if you can imagine like 0:22:32.880 --> 0:22:35.919 sleeping like that every night of your life. Because his 0:22:36.000 --> 0:22:38.960 head was so strong and so big that he would 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:42.080 risk waking up with a broken neck and it affected 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:46.160 his breathing. Um. I just I wonder if the late 0:22:46.200 --> 0:22:50.040 seventies when they first described proteo syndrome with that coincided 0:22:50.080 --> 0:22:54.240 with the interest in Merrick's story. Maybe we solved it. 0:22:54.640 --> 0:22:56.960 That's weird. Yeah, that would be weird. But I haven't 0:22:56.960 --> 0:23:00.160 seen anybody mentioned that. It's almost like he just you're 0:23:00.240 --> 0:23:03.720 in the zeitgeists somehow around then. I don't I don't 0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:06.240 get it. But yeah, maybe that was it. But um, 0:23:06.280 --> 0:23:08.600 but no, it couldn't be Chuck because it wasn't until 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:13.040 night six that some geneticists said that he probably had 0:23:13.160 --> 0:23:16.480 proteus syndrome for the first time, so it would have 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:20.040 been after that. Yeah, it's just strange. So one one 0:23:20.080 --> 0:23:22.520 thing I want to say though about about proteo syndrome 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:28.600 and mosaicism, um mosaicism, that mutation happens after conception. So 0:23:28.680 --> 0:23:32.560 the weird cosmic irony of this whole thing is it's 0:23:32.760 --> 0:23:38.320 entirely possible that that mutation did happen around the time 0:23:38.400 --> 0:23:40.960 that his mother was pushed down in front of that elephant. 0:23:41.080 --> 0:23:42.960 It would have had nothing to do with the elephant, 0:23:43.040 --> 0:23:45.639 like she she wouldn't have been frightened into this mutation 0:23:45.720 --> 0:23:48.119 or anything. But how ironic would it be if it 0:23:48.320 --> 0:23:53.679