WHAT ARE MARVELS FOR?

Basically entertainment. However, the modern writers of books of marvels are supposed to pay homage to the facts, which theoretically are our god. We are imbued with the idea that facts are true and that we are being frivolous if we don't kiss their ring. To the contrary, nonfact facts are worthy of great consideration. These non fact facts reveal something more important to us than the outside world; they reveal the inner world, our soul, whether it be a religious soul, a literary soul or a mythological soul. Sometimes non fact facts go to the very heart of this soul. It is an artifact of Puritanism and the hardheadedness of the 18th Century mercantile class that they are not worthy of consideration. It is bizarre how often this raises its head in an era that, by that definition, is nothing but frivolity. In which fact has dissolved amid images and buzzwords. And New Age (Newage?) management nostrums.

To illustrate how non fact facts hit our soul, I am going to use Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle (1896). One reason, I will not deny, is the many fond memories I have of reading this on my father's overstuffed chair in his home office. Lapping up the facts, both fact and nonfact, like mother's milk and wincing at ghoulish pictures only a physician could love.

There are, however, three additional reasons which the reader can better appreciate. First, it is supposed to be a scientific work; and Gould and Pyle, being physicians, do take some pains with their non fact facts. At least they do at times. The main criteria is that something is a fact if it was observed by a physician. An age old criteria. They would doubt, they say, the hearsay of the surgeon Ambroise Paré (1510-90), and even more so of his illustrators; but they do not doubt what Paré has personally observed. While this criteria is snobbish, more scientific criteria may not have been available to them. You need research money for double blind tests of modern medical research, or even to do the research the Guinness Book of World Records does. Money which was lacking in those days

In addition, Gould and Pyle are more knowledgeable than the average author of books of marvels and know alternate explanations for phenomena that would seem strange to laymen. It occurs to them that large bones may not come from semi mythological cyclopes but the fossils of mastodons. Some of this knowledge may come from their personal experience as physicians. For instance, they know patients of the time did all sorts of things with their thermometers when physicians were not watching. And that may have been responsible for temperatures of 148 F.

In one way, Gould and Pyle were more lenient with the facts than others in their time. They credited the ancient physicians and those in centuries past, like Browne and Della Porta do. As I said, they seem to like the French surgeon Ambroise Paré. In fact, given the knowledge explosion of the 19th Century, they can cite sources much farther back than Della Porta and Browne can. For instance, they can cite the ancient Babylonian seers on people with deformities. Since the wedge shapes of Cuneiform had only recently been deciphered in Gould and Pyle's time, this was a path not open to Browne or Della Porta.

I have a second additional reason for choosing this book. No doubt about it, that they deviate from their modest and snobbish criteria very very often. Accepting the work of anonymous authors, and for what, to them, would be the old wives' tales of peasants and hearsay of hearsay of hearsay. Or they disbelieve physicians no matter how careful or learned they admit them to be. Something hits their soul quite frequently. A third additional reason is even more important than the other two. When something hits their soul, unlike other authors, they usually explain why and in some detail. Thus, we can see how their nonfact facts affected their soul and their time. They give us the inner facts as well as the outer facts.

Let us get down and dirty to specifics. More than the facts were involved when Gould and Pyle talk about longevity. Mere report that someone was that old is often enough. For their all round champion longevist, a man living to two hundred and seven, they do not even have that. Gould and Pyle report there was a 16th Century story of him, and nothing more. In addition, there is another defect in their 'facts.' At best, the observations of physicians came only after these centenarians had supposedly attained their great age. And even here, there could be another interpretation. In the 17th Century, the body of Thomas Parr, who supposedly lived to 152, was examined by the famed Dr. Harvey. Who found no sign of his great age. This was seen as evidence that he had kept his youthful state. Of course, to a skeptic, that would mean that he hadn't attained the great age claimed. However, no skeptic ever commented.

A "witness" claimed that a South American Black woman lived to 174. His proof? Her knowledge of events. Of course, if he knew about those events, why shouldn't she? We don't even know if the witness was a physician. More likely some sort of local aristocrat.

Gould and Pyle defend many of these examples this way:

"We by no means assume the responsibility of the authenticity of the cases to be quoted, but expressing belief in their possibility."

Still sometimes, other evidence is mentioned, town registers and censuses. These, one would think, would be better than hearsay. Or were ancient records very often hearsay? In any case, Gould and Pyle assert the registers in a town in Vera Cruz, Mexico, were kept more carefully than usual. And one recorded that a man there lived to 192. They also use national censuses. The Ancient Roman census of 76 A.D. recorded that there were three people between the Po and the Apennines who had lived to 140. In the 18th Century, the writer, Albertus Haller, claimed, presumably based on census data, six people were living between 150 and 160. And one had lived to 169.

Yet, even giving them the benefit of the doubt with records and censuses, we have to ask what in the soul of Gould and Pyle caused them to throw their criteria to the winds here? The theory that degeneracy is caused by the luxury and the worry of modern upper class life. As they put it, the strain of nervous energy predisposes people to premature decay. That is definitely in their soul. That is why they attribute 152 years to Old Paar. For instance, they believe frugal diets extend life. They give as examples the many long lived Scots were supposed to have subsisted on porridges. They give as another example a long lived Danish laborer Stender, who subsisted on oatmeal and buttermilk. Saint Anthony was said to have lived to 105 on twelves ounces of bread a day. This theory is an age old one that the common folk who sweat in the fields or rigging ships live healthier lives and the life span of the rich and jaded in their sedan chairs are less healthy.

What is our attitude toward this sort of thing now? I am not talking about the medical profession. Let us talk about the media for a reflection of our true Zeitgeist, our soul. For a reflection of an age characterized by Yeti sightings, and flying saucer abductees who report the saucerers are morbidly obsessed with our genitals.Yet we are completely skeptical about the claims of centenarians and bicentenarians. In fact, probably too skeptical. Gould and Pyle give the example of Christian Draakenburg, a Danish seaman, who claimed to have lived to 146, dying in 1772. His life apparently is very well documented. But his claim has been rejected because of a twenty year gap, where the documents say he was a slave of the Turks. Commander Rupert Gould in his Oddities (1928) protested not accepting this evidence was close minded, but he made ne'er a nick in this prejudice.

Here is my reason for our attitude. Unlike Gould and Pyle we no longer believe that health and long life are the equivalent of the simple life, of peasants, seamen, soldiers, etc. We no longer believe, as physicians did from ancient times to 1900, that worldly luxury is detrimental to good health. If anything, it encourages it. The most beautiful people are the healthiest. The only caveat is that they must be thin and jogging freaks, and eat their veggies. The poor and humble, on the other hand, are regarded as eating too many Big Macs and lounging too long with pop corn in front of the boob tube.

Gould and Pyle accept another type of tale we would not. They credit tales of wolf children. They several times state that there may have been some truth to the myth of Romulus and Remus. They have a semi-rational explanation for wolf children too. How if the whelps do not eat the wolf child immediately, he could grow to be accepted by the pack.

Once again, there are more than facts here. All the tales come from nonphysicians as far as I can see. And almost all come from hearsay. Even when reprinted in a scientific magazine, The Zoologist, the information came from an anonymous pamphlet attributed to a Colonel Sleeman. All the tales are the same. They all take place in India. A wolf child is captured. He cannot be made to speak. He prefers raw meat to cooked. Usually, he acts wild. Almost always he dies within a couple of years after being captured, even though his constitution presumably was strong enough to survive in the wild for more than that. Sometimes parents recognize the child as their own but cannot civilize them with carrot or stick, or club even.

In addition to these tales from India, Gould and Pyle give as evidence the Classics, like 16th Century authors, specifically the Tale of Romulus and Remus. Though Romulus and Remus grew up sane and cunning and the India wolf children barely human, they still assert that this Classical tale has some bearing on these modern tales.

What in their soul attracted Gould and Pyle to these tales? People at the time were obsessed by the fear that we were very close to being animals. Fear because there was a hierarchy of things and animals were very low. H.G. Wells was very concerned with this in his War of the Worlds (1898) and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1895) In the first, humans become animals, the lap dogs of Martian invaders before the microbes, the lowliest creature in the hierarchy, get the invaders. In the second, animals vivisected in a special way become altogether too human.

Why then are wolf children no longer entertaining, what have we lost in our soul? The idea these days is not the fear of degenerating into animals, but the fear that we are not sufficiently like animals, who are our moral superiors: they are natural. In the '40s or '50s, this explanation seems to have gained universal acceptance: the wolf children were severely retarded and had been abandoned by their parents recently rather than had been living in the woods for years with wolves. Since then, the tale has disappeared from view.

Very often Gould and Pyle reject anomalies and curiosities when they violate a modern scientific theory. For instance, unlike Della Porta, they doubt humans and animals can be interbred. And unlike their favorite 16th Century author, Ambroise Paré. They characterize such claims with the Mary Toft hoax. She lived in the 18th Century in the town of Godalming in Surrey, England; and claimed to have given birth to rabbits. However, she was closely watched and it was found to be an imposture. Also, they doubt that in 1493 a dog boy, the supposed product of "illicit" intercourse between a woman and a dog, was born. That, in 1110 at Liège, a "creature" was born with the head, hands and feet a man's, and all of the rest of his body a pig's. That, in 1557, a woman gave birth to a serpent. Of course, Gould and Pyle doubt that in 1520 at Rome a child was seen with a fish's ears (?) and feet. The child had somehow lived five or six years. They doubt that in 1547 at Krakow, a man was born with an elephant's trunk, hand and feet like a goose's feet, and a tail with a hook on it. And they doubt a "creature" was born in 1512, after the Battle of Louis XII. It had wings, crest and the feet of a bird. Also it was hermaphroditic and had an extra eye on its knee.

I wish Gould and Pyle had told what sexual athletics were used to explain the more bizarre 'man/beast matings.' But that man and beast cannot mate is sufficient. Mind you they do not claim that physicians of the past saw nothing. They suspect many of these deformities, like some 19th Century dog headed children, are a mistaken identification between certain types of human 'deformity' and a hybrid 'monster'.

Why Gould and Pyle differ from physicians of the past is simple. The prestige of the Classics had waned by the late 19th Century and they had, unlike Paré, no desire to prove the possibility of satyrs and centaurs.

However, not only do Gould and Pyle throw evidence to the winds when their soul calls; they throw scientific theory to the winds as well. Sometimes it doesn't matter whether the bee is aerodynamically sound as long as it can fly; sometimes it depends on which way the soul blows. For instance, in many examples of fasting, which they seem to accept. These must violate the laws of thermodynamics: there is no way you can get energy from nothing. And that is what the longest of the fasters apparently did. They mention Janet MacLoad, who supposedly fasted four years without emaciation. They credit a woman who claimed to have lived for ten years on a pint of tea. They credit from the 17th Century a woman who was said to have fasted three years. And these are just a few of the many instances of long term fasting they accepted.

It is true Gould and Pyle doubt many past records of fasting. They doubt, for instance, the case of a man in 1460 who claimed to have lived fifteen years without food or drink. Or a girl at another time who claimed to have fasted eight years. They further doubt the report of a Johnston who in the 17th Century claimed one man lived 40 years on air alone. Why they doubt these older instances, and not others, is unclear.

What makes it worse is they admit the field was rife with fakers. A fellow named Hammond had written a treatise very effectively exposing the "Fasting Girls." According to him, an Ann Moore gained sustenance by having her daughter "wash" her face with a towel wet with gravy, milk and meal. From other sources as well, Gould and Pyle report fasting hoaxes. For instance, a Signor Succi claimed to have gone fifty days without food. Later, it was found a confederate had fed him.

In view of this faking, what in the soul of Gould and Pyle caused them to throw such obvious scientific principles as the laws of thermodynamics to the winds? The same reason why a few people then purposely tried to fool the public into thinking they never took any food. The idea was that we could somehow rise above our animal needs and instincts and become more spiritual beings. Sex and eating were seen as animal.

Now in the late 20th Century, it is certainly in our soul to prize small repasts. And, more so, the svelte bodies that such a spartan regime brings. Yet we have no notion of going beyond our animal natures, and doing without food altogether. In fact, we seek to imitate the animals, who do things naturally. Anorexia nervosa shocks us as it does not seem to shock Pyle and Gould, who knew of the disease. The medical fraternity nowadays even frowns on fasting by average people. In fact, such a widespread belief is it, that doing without food will kill you, fasting is a weapon of passive resistance.

Sometimes a phenomena does not have to violate scientific principles, like with man-beast unions, to arouse Gould and Pyle's skepticism; only not finding the same phenomena in the modern West. This contradicts their earlier intentions to use the testimony of physicians of past centuries. For instance, Gould and Pyle go beyond their criteria for facts when they reject giants over nine feet in ages past because individuals over nine feet had not been found in modern times. They demand all claiming to be such giants be scientifically measured, precision. In making this demand, they reject the scholarship of the Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753), whom they admit was very learned and careful. Of course, their criteria eliminates, from the Middle Ages, Saxo the Grammarian's giant estimated as being 13 feet high. And from ancient Rome, Pliny's and Josephus' giants. In addition, it eliminates the estimates of Buffon, a well known 18th Century naturalist, of men reaching 15 feet. It eliminates the estimates of the 16th Century Becanus, physician to Charles V, who claimed he saw a woman almost 10 feet tall.

They limit themselves to 18th and 19th Century giants. Winkelmeyer who was said to be 8 foot 6 inches, Marianne Web 8 foot 4 inches. I would imagine they would have accepted Robert Wadlow (1918-40), who was 8 foot 11 inches, and died decades after Gould and Pyle published their book.

Why are they skeptical when it comes to giants? Apparently, these tales of giants are a little too close to fairy tales, mythology, legend and old wives' tales for their blood. They complain in the beginning of their account that they are associated with ogres. Also, they give numerous fabled giants whose height is inferred by their fabulous powers, like the ability to heap up mountains and scale the sky. They also reject the less metaphorical estimates of more serious folk for Adam being 123 feet and Eve 118. Goliath being 11 feet. The King of Basham being 16 feet.

A story does not even have to violate scientific principles or be by a layman, or be old, or from isolated regions, for Gould and Pyle's soul to reject it. About one, they say

"[this story] is given not because it bears any resemblance of possibility, but as a curious example of the realms of imagination in medicine."

What in Gould and Pyle 's soul makes them reject this story? Beyond it being farfetched, I get the impression it sounds too much like a dirty joke. And, unlike Della Porta, they don't want to get caught taking a dirty joke seriously. This seems merely a matter of not smirking. Even though they are writing in the 19th Century, they do not seem at all fearful of the subject of sex, devoting a massive portion of their book to it.

So much for the facts that Gould and Pyle's soul makes them reject. Some of their non fact facts would not be our facts to be skeptical or unskeptical of. In some cases, what is in the soul creates the facts to begin with. Maybe in all cases. This can be seen when Gould and Pyle talk about body builders. Their idea of body building is not our idea, man mountain. Arnold Schwartzenegger might not make the bill for them. While muscle tone was fashionable, like it is today, large muscles were not. Men did not try to expand their chests or shoulders to boulder like proportions. No way were they going to award most perfectly built man to the palooka with the 60 inch chest. What was in their soul was the ancient Greek ideal, where the male chest was symmetrical with the waist and hips, just like the Venus De Milo's for women. And the body looked more like a human's and less like a boulder. While they rejected the Classics for monstrous bodies, giants and man-beasts, they accepted it for the bodily ideal.

One of Gould and Pyle's great pictures of a muscle man is Sandow. A man most celebrated in his time. As I said, his height and width are not that different from an ordinary man on the bus. Sandow does not even look tall; in fact, he looks short. However, he is well toned and his proportions of course are of a very athletic ordinary man on the bus. You cannot mistake the fact that Sandow is trying for the Greek ideal; in fact, he is trying to look like one of the many neo-Classical specials erected in the 19th Century. Given his body, Sandow is carrying it off very well. To top off the effect, he wears what every respectable Greek statue did in Victorian times, a fig leaf.

On the other hand, while Gould and Pyle would have no place for an Arnold Schwartzenegger, they had a place for what no modern book would mention. None, even on Teratology were they still written, would contain even a hint about precocious pregnancy. It would not be in our soul. Chances are it would be cultural dynamite to our soul today. What makes it worse is, for the most part, Gould and Pyle are uninterested in the fathers of girls as young as six. This probably reflects the fact their sources rarely mention them. There is an exception: at one point, they mention that one adult spent five years for statutory rape in one of these precocious pregnancies. In several other cases, they claim that the father was a young adolescent boy.

Today they would open themselves up for firebombs in the mail. I am certain to them, as to us, it was the worst of crimes that any adult would have sex with a child. Also, to them, any decent human being would find it an abomination. But we have two additional incubi in recent decades that we must carry around on this subject. First, to many people, this act is extra iniquitous because it awakens children prematurely to the corrupt adult world. Second, many suspect that adult sexual abuse of children ubiquitous. Accusing young adolescent boys of the crime, like Gould and Pyle do, would only be another example of abuser denial, often satanic abuser denial.

Of course, it makes sense that young adolescent boys, mischief makers that they are and close in age to their victims, would be the most likely culprits

What have we learned having seen how Gould and Pyle handle age and sex, 'monsters' and paragons, giants and children, the gluttonous and the spartan? Where Gould and Pyle deviate from the beaten path of their method, it yields the gold of myth and sensibility. It reflects their time. This was not so wed to Classical myth and medicine as in past Centuries, but it was wed to it in philosophy and beauty. Much of this has gone by the boards by the late 20th Century, which is busily creating its own mythology, philosophy and beauty.

Continued