Abstract
David Lynch’s The Elephant Man is the story of a patient, Joseph Merrick (1862–1890), who suffered from an extreme and rare deformity now understood to be caused by Proteus Syndrome, characterized by atypical growth of the bones, skin, head and a variety of other symptoms. This condition was first identified by Michael Cohen Jr. in 1979 (Cohen 1986; Cohen 1988a, Neurofibromatosis 1:260–280, b), inspired by a resurgence of medical interest in the Merrick case in the 1970s. The case history of Joseph Merrick was fully documented by Merrick’s physician, Sir Frederick Treves, in his memoir 45. Treves (1923).
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Rosenthal, M.S. (2018). “Am I a Good Man, or a Bad Man”? The Elephant Man (1980). In: Clinical Ethics on Film. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90374-3_8
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