The Massachusetts spy, and Worcester County advertiser. [volume] ([Worcester, Mass.]) 1825-1831, 1828-02-13
PORCUPINE MEN


The following remarkable example of the &C.
currence OF singular organic peculiarly, and
OF Its hereditary transmission, afforded by the
English family Of Porcupine Men, is extracted
from Mr.. Lawrence Lecture on the oririn and
transmission of varieties in FORM
"The family of porcupine men derived
that name from the greater part of the body
being covered by hard dark -colored excre-
SCIENCES Of a horny nature. The whole sur
face, excepting the head and face, the
palms and soles, is occupied by this unnat-
ural kind of integument. The first account
OF this family is found in the Philosophical
Transactions, No. 424, and consists of the
description of boy, named Edward Lam
bert, fourteen years old, born in Suffolk, and
exhibited to the Royal Society in 1871. by
Mr.. Machin, one of the Secretaries. ait
was not easy to think of any sort of skin or
natural integument that exactly resemble it..
Some compared it to the bark of tree :
others thought it looked like seal skin /:
others, like the skinof an elephant. or the
skin about the legs of rhinoceros; some
took it to be great wart, or number of
warts uniting and overspreading the whole
body. The bristly parts, which were chief
ly about the belly and tanks, looked and
rustled like the bristles or quilts of hedge
hog, shorn off within an inch of the skin. %
These productions were hard, callous, and
lnsensible. Other children of the same
parents were naturally formed.
In subsequent account presented to the
society twenty five years afterwards by Mr..
II. Baker, and illustrated with figure ofthe
hands, this man is said to continue iii the
same state. He was good looking person,
and enjoyed good health every thing CON
nected with his excretions was natural and
he derived no inconvenience from the state
of his skin, except it would crack and bleed
after very hard work. He had now been
shown in London under the name of the
Porcupine man. "The covering" says Mr..
Baker, =" seemed most nearly to resemble an
innumerable company of warts, of a dark
brown color, and cylindrical figure, rising
to like height ian inch at their full size
and growing as close as possible to one a.
mother, but so stiff and elastic, that when
the hand is drawn over them they make a
rustling noise"
They are shed annually, in the autumn or
winter, and succeeded by fresh growth.
which at first are Of paler brown He has
had the small pox and been twice salivated.
in hopes of getting rid of this disagreeable
covering during which disorders the warts
came of, and his skin appeared white and
smooth, like that of other people but on
his recovery it soon became as it was be-
fore. His health at other times has been
very good during his whole life. "He has
had six children, all with the same rugged
covering as himself; the first appearances
whereof in them, as well as in him. came
on in about nine weeks after the birth,
Only one of them is living, very pretty
boy, eight years of age, whom I saw and
examined with his father, and who is exact
| ly in the same condition."
Two brothers, John Lambert, aged %,
and Richard, aged Ia, who must have been
grandsons of the original porcupine man.
Edward Lambert, were shown in Germany,
and had the cutaneous incrustation already
described. A minute account of them was
published by DIR. w. G. T'ilesius.
Let us suppose that the porcupine family
had been exiled from human society, and
obliged to take up their abode in some soli-
tary spot on desert island. BY matching
with each other, race would have been
produced, more widely different from us in
external appearance than. the negro. If
they had been discovered at some remote
period, our philosophers would have ex-
planned to us how the soil, air or climate,
had produced so strange an organization
or would have demonstrated that they must
have sprung from an originally different
race for who would acknowledge such
bristly beings for brothers.