5/23/14: THE ELEPHANT MAN

I recently watched David Lynch's 1980 film The Elephant Man, which is a biographical story of a young English man in the late 1800's, John Merrick.

The thing about Mr. John Merrick was that he developed from a young age a rare mutation that eventually made him terribly deformed. From the on, he became a freak show exhibit in London, then was rescued by Frederick Treves, a surgeon at the London Hospital.

Merrick's condition made him resemble that of an elephant, although after watching the movie and seeing pictures of him like this:

John Merick, 1889

he doesn't really resemble an "elephant" to me.

But nevertheless, he was known as "The Elephant Man," a public "curiosity" in the area, who was constantly used as a "slave" or a "showcase" for people to get easy money, treated like a circus animal, when in fact, he was an intelligent and kind human being.

Only a few people in his life, such as Dr. Treves and other hospital staff, cared about and for him, ignoring the outside and seeing the inside.

John Merrick died on April 11, 1890 at the young age of 27 in his bed at the London Hospital from a broken neck. Merrick had to sleep sitting up because his head was too big to support his neck if he laid down. Unfortunately and sadly, Dr. Treves figured that he wanted to be a "normal human being," therefore tried sleeping lying down, resulting in a broken neck.

From many years after, doctors tried to figure out the cause of his deformalities, eventually diagnosing it as a mix between neurofibromatosis type 1 (a disorder which cases tumor growth, especially in areas of the nervous system, like the spine and head) and Proteus syndrome (works alongside with neurofibromatosis type 1, causing abnormal skin and bone development).

Like I said earlier, Director David Lynch made a film centered around John Merrick, which is called The Elephant Man (1980), and even though the movie is probably spoiled for you after hearing his biography, it does contain a significant moral.

Don't judge a book by it's cover or don't judge someone just by the way they look, but by their personality. It's what it's the inside that matters.

I remember having a dishwasher mechanic come to our house, and he must have been in a chemical accident or been burned, because he had a deformed face. I didn't really know what to think, I was nine, but I admit that I was curious in observing him closely just to see how deformed he was. My parents and I didn't mention anything about his face as he fixed our dishwasher, but we did talk about it afterwards. But looking back, he was actually a very nice and helpful man, ignoring the abnormality of his face and just enjoying his duties.

I just wanted to give these examples today, because it's an important life lesson that is commonly used. We constantly torment each other by the way we look, and to be honest, it's very prejudical. We just go ahead and judge someone just by their exterior, not bothering to examine what's inside.

In Merrick's case, he intimided and wrongly-intrigued people, ut in the film, as we get a closer look at him, he see that he's smart and caring, complimenting others, building his own model church, and memorizing passages of the Bible.

So take the time and get to know someone, that may not be very appealing to you on the outside, but may be the best person you've ever met in the inside.