Detail of the King's Grand Staircase at Kensington Palace, designed and painted by William Kent in the 1720s. The portraits depict George I's Hanovarian court. On the far left are Dr John Arbuthnot and Peter the Wild Boy.
Peter the Wild Boy was a feral child found in the woods of Germany, taken to England and into the household of King George I. The story of his life is summarized in a Roger Moorehouse article.
In the spring of 1726, after briefly escaping back to the forest, Peter was brought to London, where his tale had aroused particular interest. As in Hanover, he caused a sensation and his carefree nature provided an amusing antidote to the stultifying boredom and decorum of court life...Now a historian and a genetic professor have ascertained his proper diagnosis:
Peter quickly became a celebrity. On one level, tales of his antics busied the London gazettes. Jonathan Swift, whose fictional 'Yahoos' Peter appeared to personify, noted sourly that "there is scarcely talk of anything else". But, Peter also became the subject of much educated enquiry into the nature of mankind. Daniel Defoe was inspired to write the pamphlet Mere Nature Delineated, which mused on Peter's 'humanity' and whether he could possess a soul. Peter soon became the 'talk of the town', and his portrait soon graced the walls of Kensington Palace and an effigy of him was erected in a waxworks on the Strand...
But Peter could not to live up to the popular interest invested in him and a fickle public quickly abandoned him in favour of the next unfortunate... Though still only an adolescent, Peter faded into provincial obscurity and thereafter rarely troubled the gossip columns. He developed a taste for gin and loved music... he was fitted with a heavy leather collar bearing the inscription: "Peter, the Wild Man of Hanover. Whoever will bring him to Mr Fenn at Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, shall be paid for their trouble." He finally expired, aged around 72, in 1785.
Beale ran the symptoms through his database of chromosomal disorders, and came up with a diagnosis of Pitt-Hopkins syndrome, which was identified in 1978, centuries after Peter's death.More at both links. And, BTW, this is the "Cupid's bow" which was so prominent in his case:
Its most distinctive effect is clearly shown in Peter's portrait, his curvy Cupid's bow lips. Other Pitt-Hopkins symptoms shared by Peter included short stature, coarse hair – the portrait shows him with a thick, curly mop – drooping eyelids and thick lips.
He was also said to have two fingers fused together, which may have been clubbed fingers, also sometimes a symptom.
Minnesotastan, both links go to the Guardian article. I suspect you meant to have a URL for Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome for the first one, no?
ReplyDelete--Swift Loris
Actually, no. I accidentally reverted to using the links for the highlights instead of the boldface.
ReplyDeleteMonnesotastan--I meant the second and third links from the bottom. They're both to the Guardian article, and there's no link to anything explanatory about Pitt-Hopkins syndrome.
ReplyDelete--Swift Loris
That's what I meant too. I didn't have a link for the syndrome; it was mentioned in the Guardian article and I was using the link command to highlight the term.
ReplyDeleteFixed.