Joseph Merrick

Joseph Merrick (1862-1890), known as "The Elephant Man", is a man who gained the sympathy of Victorian age Britain because of his grotesque deformity. His life story became the basis of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play and a film, both called The Elephant Man.

While Joseph Merrick was alive, physicians believed that he suffered from a condition known as elephantiasis. In 1971 Ashley Montagu[?] suggested that Joseph Merrick suffered from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder also known as von Recklinghausen's disease, and this disease is still connected with Joseph Merrick in the mind of the public. However, in 1979, Michael Cohen first identified a condition that was named Proteus syndrome[?] by Rudolf Wiedemann in 1983. In 1986 it was argued that it was the condition from which Joseph Merrick actually suffered. Proteus syndrome (named for the shape-shifting god Proteus), unlike neurofibromatosis, affects tissue other than nerves, and is a sporadic rather than familially transmitted disorder.

Books about or inspired by Joseph Merrick

• The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity - Ashley Montagu
• The True History of the Elephant Man - Michael Howell, Peter Ford
• The Elephant Man - Christine Sparks
• Elephant Man - Bernard Pomerance
• Articulating the Elephant Man: Joseph Merrick and His Interpreters - P. W. Graham, F. H. Oehlschlaeger