Scientists still don't know for sure what caused Joseph Merrick's head, arms and legs to grow abnormally and transform him from an ordinary baby into the real-life Elephant Man.
During his lifetime, Merrick's plight was even less understood, so he worked as a sideshow performer, using his disguises as his only means of survival.
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In the tragic story of Joseph Merrick, "The Elephant Man", he wanted to live like everyone else.
A still unexplained condition caused the deformities that transformed Joseph Merrick into the famous Elephant Man of Victorian England.
Imagine a new baby parent having a beautiful and healthy baby boy. At the age of five, your child's appearance begins to change in unexpected ways.
His once perfect lips are swollen. His pink skin thickens and turns a sickly gray. A mysterious lump emerges from his forehead. A sack of meat bubbles from the back of his neck.
Both feet are abnormally large. His right hand is increasingly deformed and gnarled, while his still normal left hand highlights his transformation into what the world sees as a human monster.
This is exactly how a young English boy named Joseph Merrick transformed into a 19th-century freak showman known as the "Elephant Man."
Early Life of Joseph Merrick
The mother of Commons Joseph Merrick believed that a terrifying incident involving an elephant during her pregnancy caused her son's deformities.
Joseph Carey Merrick was born in 1862 in Leicester, England. By 1866, his unusual appearance began to appear, but no one in medicine understood the cause of his condition. Even today, DNA tests on his hair and bones are inconclusive, so his exact status remains a mystery.
Without medical guidance, his mother drew her own conclusions, recalling an incident when she visited a market during her pregnancy.
An unruly crowd pushed her into an oncoming animal procession. An elephant reared and she was briefly pinned down, fearing for two lives. She told this story to the young Joseph, explaining that the incident had caused his deformities and the pain they caused.
In addition to his unusual deformity, he also had an injury to his hip as a child and a subsequent infection left him permanently lame, so he used a cane to help him walk.
His mother, who was close to him, died of pneumonia when he was 11 years old. Tragically, even among all his other troubles, he called her death "the greatest misfortune of my life."
He left school at this time. The pain Merrick felt from having his appearance made fun of by others and now his mother's absence was too much to bear. But how can a boy who called his own face "...an indescribable sight" live in such a cruel world?
Merrick's family disowns him
Because of the weight on his head, Joseph Merrick had to sit up and sleep or he would break his neck.
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