Topinard measured the tallest man in the
Austrian army and found that he was 8 feet 4 1/2 inches. The
giant Winckelmeyer measured 8 feet 6 inches in height. Ranke
measured Marianne Wehde, who was born in Germany in the present
century, and found that she measured 8 feet 4 1/4 inches when
only sixteen and a half years old.
In giants, as a rule, the great stature is due to excessive
growth of the lower extremities, the size of the head and that of
the trunk being nearly the same as those of a man or boy of the
same age. On the other hand, in a natural dwarf the proportions
are fairly uniform, the head, however, being always larger in
proportion to the body, just as we find in infants. Indeed, the
proportions of "General Tom Thumb" were those of an ordinary
infant of from thirteen to fifteen months old.
Figure 156 shows a portrait of two well-known exhibitionists of
about the same age, and illustrates the possible extremes of
anomalies in stature
Recently, the association of acromegaly with gigantism has been
noticed, and in these instances there seems to be an acquired
uniform enlargement of all the bones of the body. Brissaud and
Meige describe the case of a male of forty-seven who presented
nothing unusual before the age of sixteen, when he began to grow
larger, until, having reached his majority, he measured 7 feet 2
inches in height and weighed about 340 pounds.
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