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 £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 8½ 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.