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Elephantiasis Therapy, Causes and Healing
contents
- Elephantiasis tropica
- tumors
- Elephantiasis congenita hereditaria
- diagnosis
- treatment
- The elephant man
- A "monster" at the fair
- No mental disorder
- Jack the Ripper - An elephant man?
- Wrong projections
- Propaganda and lies
- The evil has no face
- What was Merrick suffering from??
- A gene mutation?
The disease may be acquired or innate. Strictly speaking, acquired and congenital elephantiasis are not the same disease, but a collective term for similar symptoms of various diseases.
Elephantiasis tropica
Elephantiasis tropica is an advanced stage of various infections. The cause is often roundworms such as Filaria malayi, sometimes leprosy. The worms are transmitted by mosquitoes. With the mosquito bite, they enter the lymphatic system, settle in and trigger a chronic inflammation, which in turn leads to a lymph congestion. Through this lymphatic stasis hardens the skin and its surface increases extremely.
In the acquired forms of elephantiasis, for example, the conspicuous swellings develop after infection with roundworms of the genus Filaria malayi. Initially, the swellings remain moderate before the extreme physical changes that gave the disease its name. (Image: vchalup / fotolia.com) Especially in tropical African countries, it is therefore essential to sleep under a mosquito net and to wear a mosquito hat in the wetlands, where a net covers the facial skin. At the same time you protect yourself against malaria and the sleeping sickness transmitted by tsetse flies.
tumors
Cancer can also lead to an "elephant skin". The tumors close the lymphatic vessels directly in the lymphatic system, and the same can happen through metastases from primary tumors elsewhere. Indirectly, cancer treatment can lead to elephant disease. Often the lymphatics must be removed with the surgeon cutting out metastases.
Caution is advised: If an elephantiasis develops as a result of cancer therapy, carcinomas can again form on the occluded lymph. Such carcinomas usually grow very quickly, and physicians can save patients' lives by amputating the affected limb, if at all. This form of cancer following an elephantiasis quickly forms many metastases, and so often only palliative medicine is possible.
Elephantiasis congenita hereditaria
This form of elephant disease is innate. In infants, body parts swell here, because those affected genetically caused hardly any lymph drains.
diagnosis
An elephantiasis can usually be recognized by the doctor at a glance, but not its cause. If thread worms are the trigger, the doctor takes a tissue sample and can identify it at the latest under the microscope, but also with naked eyes.
In case of elephantiasis, sufferers have to undergo lymph drainage several times a week and wear compression bandages permanently. (Image: vpardi / fotolia.com) treatment
Neither acquired nor congenital elephantiasis is contagious. The advanced damage can often not be corrected, but the symptoms of lymphatic drainage can be alleviated. However, a therapy is uncomfortable: sufferers have to undergo lymph drainage several times a week and permanently wear compression bandages. If the skin is overstretched by the swelling and now sags limp, often only helps the plastic surgery. However, this does not bring optimal results: even if it succeeds to tighten the skin, it does not regain its old "freshness" and elasticity, but remains hardened.
The elephant man
The symptoms summarized under Elephantiasis were known by the Englishman Joseph Carey Merrick (1862-1890). Sufferers of this disease were presented at the time as questionable "sensations" in freak shows alongside women with "ladybeards" or short statures, between the "thickest man in the world" and the "polar bear, the horror of the Eskimos".
Merrick looked completely normal as a toddler. Since the age of five, however, his skin deformed. As a teenager, Joseph worked at Messrs. Freeman's Cigar Manufacturers, but had to quit the job because soon he could no longer turn cigars with his deformed right hand.
A "monster" at the fair
With his "manager" Tom Norman he made his suffering for a living. The two were tinkering over the fairs, where Merrick presented himself as a "monster". The physician Fredrick Treves saw him in 1886 in London, examined him and published an article about the "elephant man" in the British Medical Journal. The British authorities forbade Merrick to exhibit himself as a monster, so he traveled to Belgium, but returned back in December 1886. In London street thieves robbed him of his income of 50 pounds, today this would be several thousand euros. He turned to Treves when he needed it, and he got him a place at the London Hospital. Merrick was a celebrity now, and a Joseph Merrick find was founded. This financed him a long-term stay in the clinic.
No mental disorder
Like many people who are physically handicapped by an illness, Merrick also found many of his contemporaries mentally deprived or even mentally ill. This was also because his language was very difficult to understand. It was not a developmental disorder, but the malformations of the lymphatic pressure on the tongue and larynx, and therefore he could only laboriously articulate. Treves emphasized that Merrick was a very intelligent person and had a gentle nature.
Merrick died on April 11, 1890, completely unexpected, presumably after a stroke or heart attack. Because of his deformities, he could only sleep squatting. The dead man was lying on his back in bed, which Merrick had never done. In the supine position, his overweight head sank backwards and squeezed the trachea. This was probably the cause of his death. To this day, it is speculated whether Merrick put an end to his life in this way. This will be neither can be refuted nor disproved, however, suffered Merrick despite his deformities not from depression and was considered a joyful person.
Jack the Ripper - An elephant man?
Shortly after his death, the first rumors circulated that it was the London murderer Jack the Ripper was Merrick. These can be booked under the penchant of Victorian England for anything monstrous: Jack the Ripper acted "like a monster", Merrick looked "like a monster" from.
The rumors after the death of the first known elephantiasis patient that he was mentally ill and possibly also Jack the Ripper have been proven untenable today. (Image: pyty / fotolia.com) Wrong projections
On the one hand, the idea that criminals are physically deformed was a literary stereotype: Shakespeare describes the English king Richard III as a born monster in every respect. From birth to a humpbacked dwarf, this horrible look fits into a thoroughly malignant character. While Macbeth becomes a criminal due to his greed for power and ultimately succumbs to his morbid ambition, Richard does not undergo development, but epitomizes the profound evil. The Christian figure of the devil is also characterized by all the attributes that contemporaries regarded as ugly: goat's feet and horns, monkey-like facial features, humpback and hunchback.
Propaganda and lies
However, historical research has shown that Richard III was anything but a cruel king, but imposed social reforms that benefited the poor. He was given the bad image by the Tudors, who literally slaughtered him, the last of his generation - Richard died in battle, and he died as a hero. The Tudors were only able to legitimize themselves - the tyrant murder. That's why they turned good-natured Richard into a despot. Shakespeare then painted a disgusting appearance. A plastic reconstruction of his facial features has recently shown the opposite: Despite a slight hunch, Richard was a very attractive man.
The evil has no face
Assigning a special physiognomy to criminals was and is a fallacy in our associative thinking. There is no connection between physical disabilities and criminal energy. On the contrary, "quick thinking", our wrong projection, means that physically attractive criminals are particularly successful in carrying out their crimes, while good-hearted people with physical deformities also suffer from stigmatization.
The Munkeln about Merrick as Jack the Ripper was in this respect a typical "robber pistol", which lacks any criminal basis. Jack slashed his victims with surgical precision and artificially removed the organs. Merrick was not even able to make cigars because of his disabilities, let alone perform fine cuts with a scalpel. In addition, a person who was a "monster" on the fairs would also be noticed in disguise in Whitechapel, especially since the first killings in London looking for "conspicuous" persons.
What was Merrick suffering from??
Merrick's disease was obviously genetic. The disease changed his skin and deformed his bones. So head, legs and arms became extremely enlarged. The left hand remained normal, so he could get along in everyday life reasonably. At the time the doctors assumed that Merrick was suffering from elephantiasis. As I said, this diagnosis but symptoms of different diseases and until today, it is not clear what disease it was.
Ashley Montagu said in 1971 to have recognized the genetic neurofibromatosis, in 1986, the Proteus syndrome was considered the cause of malformations. The difference to neurofibromatosis is that neurofibromatosis affects only nerve cells. At Merrick's, the tissue was damaged as well.
A gene mutation?
Since 2013, research has been underway on Merrick's genome, led by Michael Simpson at London's Guy's Hospital. Simpson suspected that Merrick had a unique mutation that had not been inherited. More specifically, Merrick is said to have altered the AKT1 gene, a gene that regulates growth and affects cell death. If the gene can no longer fulfill these functions, tissue abnormalities are the result. Simpson will diagnose 20 cases of this extremely rare mutation in three years. (Dr. Utz Anhalt)
Specialist supervision: Barbara Schindewolf-Lensch (doctor)