The "Ossified" Man.

Manawatu Herald, 16 May 1899, Page 3

The " Ossified " Man.

For the last 12 or 15 years there has been on exhibition in the various " museums " throughout the United States a living example of an "ossified man." That is to say, the whole of his body, with the exception of the internal organs, the eyes, and the palate, are completely and effectually ossified, or turned to bone. The result is by no means pleasant to contemplate, for the creature has the appearance of a slightly better class of skeleton. He can move neither hand nor foot, his arms being fixtures by his side ; while every necessary action for the purposes of nutrition, &c, has to be performed by an attendant. The very muscies of his mouth are rigid, by reason of ossification, so that being unable to masticate solid food, he has to be fed with beef-tea and other like forms of diet. When he smokes (a habit he is very fond of), the cigar has to be placed in his mouth, and removed therefrom by an attendant, the smoke being emitted by a curions action of the tongue. The mode of his exhibition is by means of a specially constructed bed, which he never leaves, living, moving (?), and having his being upon it from year's end to year's end. When it is desired to show him to the audience in an upright position, the part of the bed upon which he lies, and which is worked upon a centre cross swivel-bar is tilted up, he having his feet resting upon a projection at the foot. The first time the writer saw him was in 1889 at the " museum " on the corner of Ninth and Arch-streets, Philadelphia ; the following year again coming across him in New York at " Worth's," then on Fourteenth-st., near the Broadway. At the end of last year a gentleman, but now just returned from America, tells the writer that the "ossified one" was still holding his daily " levee," this time at " Huber's," on Sixth-avenue, so that his apparently unenviable bodily state appears, on the whole, to have agreed with him. — The People.