Joseph Carey Merrick, who died 120 years ago, was an individual with extreme disfigurements that could cause any person to run in fear, or even become ill, at the sight of him. Joseph Merrick was an inspiration to many, whether it was to people who saw him in sideshows, in the hospital, or to doctors who were baffled by his condition. Many questions were asked about Merrick; many refused to believe that he was even a human. Some thought he was alien, some thought animal, or, in the case of Frederick Treves, just a misunderstood man with nowhere to turn.
Joseph merrick had a very hard childhood with his worsening condition and the death of loved ones. Merrick was born on August 5, 1862 to his mother, Mary Jane Merrick, and his Father, Joseph Rockley Merrick. At this time they lived in a small townhouse located in Leicester, England. When Mary gave birth to Joseph, she noticed no fault in her perfect newborn. However, this joy Mary felt wouldn’t be long-lived, for her son would begin to grow grotesquely deformed, with each year of his life showing an increase of distortion and affliction. When Joseph was 21 months old, Mary noticed a significant lump on his lower lip. Over the next few months, this swelling increased in size and started to spread into his right cheek as a hard tumor, pushing his upper lip outward. Next came a bony lump on his forehead, which also increased in size as he aged. Over the years, his skin became loose and rough. The proportion of his extremities were becoming marred by enlargements of the right arm and each of his feet. One of the most bizarre distortions that was afflicting Merrick was the large mass of flesh that continued to force its way from under the upper lip. Eventually, it was ...
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...ularly of the hands and feet, including plantar hyperplasia, lipomas, and other unspecified subcutaneous masses. Merrick has still not been diagnosed with a for sure disease, although almost all are certain it is Proteus syndrome.
In conclusion, Merrick lived a very hard life, with the death of both his mother and brother in his younger years. However, he stayed strong through it all, never giving up. After turning to side-shows, Merrick was saved by Treves and given a second chance at life in the London Hospital. It was there were he changed lives. Not only those who just came to visit, but also others who were affected with such a disease either then, or later in life. His story helped doctors and scientist with the diagnosis of others with Neurofibromatosis and Proteus syndrome. Joseph to this day is still a medical mystery, but a miracle one at that.
Joseph Louis Barrow was born May 13, 1914. Being the son of a sharecropper, Joseph was brought up in a cotton-field near Lafayette, Alabama. Growing up as the eighth child in a small household, inevitably financial struggle is bound to happen. An example of this was that the kids had to sleep three to a bed. Joseph received little schooling and after his mom, Lillie Barrow, remarried (learning that her husband, Munroe Barrow, and Joseph’s father died in the Searcy state hospital for the Colored Insane) the family moved to Detroit, Michigan. Since moving to Detroit was the first major change in Joseph’s life, Joseph was unprepared for school. He was often mistaken for being dumb because of his social awkwardness as in being shy and quiet. In order to “change” this, his mother paid for violin lessons.
Within Oliver Sacks, “To See and Not See”, the reader is introduced to Virgil, a blind man who gains the ability to see, but then decides to go back to being blind. Within this story Sacks considers Virgil fortunate due to him being able to go back to the life he once lived. This is contrasted by Dr. P, in “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat”, Sacks states that his condition is “tragic” (Sacks, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat (13) due to the fact that his life will be forever altered by his condition. This thought process can be contributed to the ideas that: it is difficult to link physical objects and conceptualized meanings without prior experience, the cultures surrounding both individuals are different, and how they will carry on with their lives.
In conclusion, there are many connections to be made between the life of Joseph and Jesus. They both encountered much adversity which then in turn resulted in the redemption of many. The difference is Joseph was able to help some and Jesus was salvation for
Rush, Benjamin. Medical Inquiries and Observations, upon the Diseases of the Mind. Diss. Philadelphia: Kimber and Richardson, 1812. Print.
The human brain is a vast, unexplainable, and unpredictable organ. This is the way that many modern physicians view the mind. Imagine what physicians three hundred years ago understood about the way their patients thought. The treatment of the mentally ill in the eighteenth century was appalling. The understanding of mental illness was very small, but the animalistic treatment of patients was disgusting. William Hogarth depicts Bethlam, the largest mental illness hospital in Britain, in his 1733 painting The Madhouse1. The public’s view of mental illness was very poor and many people underestimated how mentally ill some patients were. The public and the doctors’ view on insanity was changing constantly, making it difficult to treat those who were hospitalized2. “Madhouses” became a dumping ground for people in society that could not be handled by the criminal justice system. People who refused to work, single mothers, and children who refused to follow orders were being sent to mental illness hospitals3. A lack of understanding was the main reason for the ineptness of the health system to deal with the mentally ill, but the treatment of the patients was cruel and inhumane. The British’s handling of mentally ill patients was in disarray.
Gage survived a freak accident, but had to live with the negative consequences. He was never the same again and his skull never fully healed. The damage done to his brain altered his personality for good. Although this was a terrible incident, it lead to many medical and psychological conclusions and provided evidence for the functions of the different parts of the brain. Gage’s skull and tampering iron can be found at the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard University School of Medicine (Costandi,
You can read his story in Genesis, Chapters 37-50. The first note of him concerns his ability to dream and interpret dreams. Joseph was a dreamer and he had a dream. His dream took at least two forms. In one version of his dream he was a sheave of wheat and his family were also sheaves of wheat that had been gathered at harvest and were waiting to be carried in to be stored. In Joseph’s dream, all the other bundles of wheat bowed down to his. In another version of his dream he was a star. Again, his family were also stars and heavenly bodies. Again, all the other stars and heavenly bodies bowed down to his star in his dream.
Although the rest of William’s body grew as expected, his head seemed to remain the same. With a tapered cranium and heavy jaw, he caught the eye of agents from a circus in Somerville, New Jersey. His unique characteristics led to many believing he was microcephalic, frequently referred to as a ‘pinhead.’
In The Bible, the story of Joseph is a tale about a seventeen year old young man who was the oldest of his fathers' sons. He was also his father's favorite son. Joseph often had dreams which showed him as being a savior for his people. For this reason, he was sold into slavery by his own envious brothers. Joseph went on to make a better life for himself in Egypt, but it was not long before he was thrown into prison after being
“Out of an Insane Asylum.” The New York Times [Oil City, Penn.] 26 Mar. 1880: n. pag. Web. 30 Mar. 2014.
Jekyll is a successful doctor, who is looked upon with great dignity, “a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty, with something of a slyish cast perhaps, but every mark of capacity and kindness”( Ch: 3 Par: 1). Hidden behind his exterior lies a monster inside him who is dying to get out. Months of isolation pass and the ones nearest him,
Lydenberg argues that in Naked Lunch there is “a basic contempt for human life always initiates the impulse to improve on nature, on the body” (61). One can see that both of the theories refer to improvement of the body. Instead of illustrating the point of body improvement by addressing the surgical aspects of Naked Lunch as Lydenberg does (61), this paper rather explores the theory in connection to simians. The Simopath disorder that Burroughs describes is a condition that is peculiar to the army (23). A person suffering from Simopath disorder is convinced he is an ape or other simian and discharge cures it (23). In this instance both the theories of Foucault and Lydenberg intersect. While Foucault reveals the structure of a system, Lydenberg addresses the life that is affected by it. Lydenberg states that the “truncated creatures who grope blindly around Naked Lunch are dismembered remnants of human life” (61) and that they have been “[d]ehumanized into insects, automatons, or body parts, they have been cut off from human evolution, from the”‘independent spon-taneous action' " (NL,
His medical career began far from the world of mental health. His first post in the medical field came as an ophthalmologist, but he soon switched to general practice, and established his office in a lower-class part of Vienna. His clients included, among others, the performers who worked with the nearby circus and it has been suggested that the extraordinary abilities of the performers le...
...tentially be cured with a one surgery. He uses this story of death to share that life is short. “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by Dogma. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most importantly, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” He uses repetition and parallelism to drive his message home.
Joseph as an individual started as a lost, depressed individual with no insight on what is happening in his life which leads to constant flashbacks to his father. The loss of Joseph 's father pointed out the feeling of how many children across this world might feel especially in places where conflict and war are still existent. This story did have a little bit of the plot focused on racism but the idea of being new and unique dominated the