<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" how lonely can a person be >? </h1>
On August 5, 1862, a baby named Joseph Merrick fell to the ground and came into this world full of hope. But soon, his joy, smile, innocence, and kindness were locked in by his terrible body and became the loneliest and melancholy person in history.
At the age of 27, Merrick was tired of sitting on the ground day after day, sleeping on his head and knees, and for the first time in his life he tried to lie down and rest like a normal person, but the next day he never woke up again—his neck dislocated in his sleep, causing him to suffocate and die, completely liberated, leaving a terrible world that he should not have come to, which had devastated his body and mind.
Merrick suffered from a mysterious and rare disease, and today, more than one hundred and fifty years later, no one can fully explain his illness, but his desolate and miserable, lonely and melancholy life reflects all kinds of beautiful, ugly, good and evil souls, and his story has been circulating in the world, making good people cry and sigh.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" > a happy childhood</h1>
Merrick comes from an unfortunate family where his mother, Mary Jane, suffers from some sort of disability and has given birth to three children. Merrick was the eldest, his younger brother was born 4 years later but died of scarlet fever at the age of 4; his younger sister was born 5 years later but was also born with a disability and died a year after his death.
Merrick was normal until he was 5 years old and lived a happy life. But at the age of 5, everything changed, and Merrick's body began to appear large chunks of thick skin, and the subcutaneous tissue also thickened significantly, especially on the hands and feet.
However, there are also articles that Merrick began to swell his lips at 21 months, and then a bone lump appeared on his forehead. As Merrick grew older, his left and right hands began to appear asymmetrical, and his feet were significantly larger than ordinary people. To make matters worse, Merrick also fell as a child, causing injuries to his left hip and becoming disabled. He had thick gray skin everywhere, his head was unusually swollen due to bone deformities, the head circumference reached a staggering 91 centimeters, and the protrusions in his mouth grew longer and longer, looking more and more like an elephant. Later examinations showed that Merrick's appearance seemed to be rarely unaffected, but the reproductive organs appeared to be normal.
At that time, there was a popular saying in The United Kingdom that some emotional experiences after pregnancy will affect the fetus, so Merrick firmly believes that the pain of his life is caused by the shock caused by the elephant in the circus when his mother was pregnant with him.
Although Merrick is disabled, he has a deep relationship with his mother and has always insisted on going to school. However, at the age of 11, Mary died of bronchopneumonia, and everything changed from then on, and Merrick's sky began to collapse.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" > his sky began to collapse</h1>
His father took him and his sister to marry a widow, and his family life turned into a "perfect" tragedy, dropping out of school at the age of 12 and working in a cigarette factory at the age of 13 due to his lack of hospitality from his stepmother. But three years later, Merrick's deformity in his right hand became more and more severe, preventing him from working, and his father gave him a hawker license that allowed him to go door to door to sell men's clothing. However, his facial deformity became more and more serious, his speech became more and more unclear, and his terrible appearance made people daunted, few people dared to buy his things again, and Merrick fell into an increasingly lonely world.
Finally, at the age of 15, Merrick had a conflict with his father that led him to run away from home, and after his uncle found him, he let him live in his own home and continue to work as a peddler in Leicester. Unfortunately, two years later Merrick's hawker's license expired, his renewal application was not approved due to his appearance negatively affecting the public, and at this time his uncle also had children of his own, and Merrick had to live in a workhouse in Leicester, where he spent 4 years.
As the protrusions in the mouth had grown to 22 cm long and it had become extremely difficult to eat and speak, Merrick underwent surgery at the Royal Leicester Clinic during his time, removing most of the vegetation.
At the age of 22, Merrick met Sam Thor, the owner of the juggling theater, and left the workhouse to begin a tour, where he was named the Elephant Man and advertised as a half-human, half-elephant. Because Merrick's appearance was so terrifying, his performance was not watched by many people, but the pamphlet telling his story was more attractive, thus accumulating a fortune of 50 pounds (equivalent to 4,000 pounds in 2010). As Merrick's performances were often driven away by the police, they had to travel around Europe, performing everywhere, but still being driven around for their terrible appearance, and finally while in Brussels, Merrick was abandoned by the new manager and stole his £50 savings.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" > the last dignity and self-confidence</h1>
Merrick had a hard time getting back to London, when he had nowhere to go, but when he performed two years ago, he met a sympathetic doctor named Frederick Treves, who was notified by the police that Dr. Treves had taken him to the Royal London Hospital and placed him in a separate room in the hospital's attic. Fearing that he would frighten the patients in the hospital, Merrick was not allowed to go out, and even if he ran out, he would be persuaded to return, and his heart became more and more lonely.
Treves examined Merrick in detail, and his condition worse than it had been at his first examination two years earlier, with worse physical deformities and disabilities, and possibly a heart attack with only a few years to live. And Merrick often felt lonely and bored, showing signs of depression. Since then, through media reports, many people have begun to fund Merrick so that he can spend the rest of his life in the hospital, and some celebrities have also visited him, including Princess Alexandra of Wales, and even shook hands with him and sent him Christmas greeting cards every year.
Merrick's long-closed heart was finally touched, and he felt respected, so he regained some self-confidence, and even hoped to live in a blind institution and interact with women who could not see his appearance. Merrick lived in the Royal London Hospital for four years, his condition gradually deteriorated, and the deformity of the skull continued to grow, becoming more and more swollen and heavier.
On April 11, 1890, Merrick was found dead in bed, and the autopsy results showed that it was an accidental death. Since Merrick had been sleeping sitting, with his head on his knees, Dr. Treves thought he wanted to try to sleep normally like everyone else, but the heavy head slipped off the edge of the bed, causing the neck to dislocate and suffocate to death.
Merrick's skeleton has since been preserved at the Royal London Hospital, but skin samples were lost during World War II. Although medical experts have always had a keen interest in his illness, to date, no expert has come to a definitive conclusion about his condition, and it is now widely believed that he may have Protis syndrome.
Merrick's life was full of pain, misery and misfortune, but it also had a lot of human brilliance, and many people were doing their best to help him, especially in the last years of his life, gaining more respect and regaining self-confidence.
Since then, many books and movies have conducted in-depth analysis of the life and personality of the subject, and tried to restore the vague historical truth, of course, due to the differences in people's thoughts, cultures, and cognitions, the subject Merrick and the stories and characters surrounding and around him have various different and even diametrically opposed interpretations. But I have always believed that human beings evolved from barbarism to goodness, and that with the enrichment of material life, we will be more tolerant spiritually and better able to accommodate everything.