Horned Woman

Horned

It seems this lady had become so ‘attached’ to her horned appendage (and vice versa!), that she was determined to keep it.

‘Copy of a letter addressed to Dr. B. Rush, an eminent American physician, by Mr. Geo. R. Morton, a medical practitioner at Marlborough in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, dated July 18th, 1826, and published in the American Medical Review for October. – “I take the liberty to forward for you the following case of a horned woman, hoping that, from its very rare occurrence, it may not prove unacceptable. The account may be relied on, as many others besides myself have seen her, and as she resides but five miles distant from this place – Mrs. B—- aged about 76 years, the wife of a farmer of Bucks County, of a robust constitution, was affected, four years ago with a troublesome itching over the centre of the parietal bone of the left side. In a short time she perceived a hard tumour of a horny structure occupying the place thus affected, which continued to increase, so that, by the end of 12 months, it was one inch in length. Without any great pain, it has progressed in growth an inch every year, and is at present four inches in length, and as thick as one’s little finger. It is not attached to the bone, but is evidently an affection of the cuticle, commencing with a granular hour glass- shaped tumour of three eighths of an inch in length, from which the horn abruptly rises.

After growing straight for one inch and three-quarters, it takes a sprial direction, and has completed nearly a circular turn and a half horizontally about the diameter of a quarter dollar piece. In appearance it so closely resembles the horn of a buck sheep, that was it placed near a real sheep’s horn, it would be difficult to distinguish between them. It is of the same colour, a dingy yellow; is as perfectly hard; and has all the rings natural to a horn of that animal, tapering also, as it does, to the end. As is occasions no pain,excpet when a blow compresses its heavy base between the horn and the bone – as it is perfectly concealed by her head-dress, and on account of what is of far more moment with her, a superstitious belief that it is a judgement from above for some of her manifold sins, she persists all persuasion to have it removed.”‘

The Stamford Mercury, 24th November, 1826.