ELEPHANT MAN

born Aug. 5, 1862, Leicester, Leicestershire, Eng. died April 11, 1890, London byname of Joseph Carey Merrick disfigured person who, after a brief career as a professional freak, became the best-known resident patient of London Hospital from 1886 until his death. He is sometimes erroneously referred to as John Merrick. Merrick's mother was slightly crippled, but otherwise his parents and brother appeared normal. He was apparently normal until about the age of five, when he began showing signs of a strange disorder that caused overgrowths over much of the skin and bone surfaces. His head became enormous (3 feet in circumference), with large bags of brownish spongy skin hanging from the back of his head and across his face; deformation of the jaws rendered him incapable of showing facial expression or speaking in more than a splutter that was difficult to understand. Although his left arm was normal, the right arm was discoloured and grotesque, ending in a 12-inch wrist and a finlike hand. The legs imitated the deformed arm, and a defective hip caused such lameness that Merrick could walk only with the aid of a stick. Merrick was confined to a workhouse at age 17, then escaped four years later to join a freak show (1883). While on exhibition, he was discovered by a London physician, Frederick Treves, and admitted to London Hospital (1886). He remained there until, at age 27, he died in his sleep of accidental suffocation. The disorder from which Merrick suffered was long thought to be an extremely severe case of neurofibromatosis, but in the late 20th century researchers concluded that probably Merrick's remarkable deformities had been the result of an extremely rare disease known as the Proteus syndrome. A successful play about Merrick, The Elephant Man, by Bernard Pomerance, appeared in 1979; an unrelated motion picture based on Merrick's life was released in 1980.