Unicorn Wang and the phenomenon of horned people (8 photos)

Horned people and gods are characters in a large number of legends and myths. But if in mythology horns are more symbols that were deliberately or mistakenly misinterpreted, then in real life such people already existed.





While not technically horns, humans have been known to develop horny growths, some of which were located on the head. The earliest reliable description can be found in the report of the German surgeon Fabricius Hildanus. In the late 1500s, he met a man with horns protruding from his forehead.



Still from the film "Horns"

Several other cases have been documented by renowned naturalists and medical experts. In his book Anatomicae Institutiones Corporis Humani, the Dutch naturalist Bartholinus mentions a patient with a 30-centimeter horn, and in 1696 a case was described of an elderly woman from France who presented her amputated horn to the king. Around the same time, there is a story about the removal of a horn almost 25 centimeters long from the forehead of another French woman, Madame Dimanche, 82 years old.



Still from the series "Sweet Tooth: boy with deer antlers"

In 1886, the famous dermatologist Jean Baptiste Emile Vidal presented a twisted horn from a woman's head at the Academy of Medicine. The length of this formation was 25 centimeters. Several surgeons and naturalists recorded similar cases, and many subsequently removed and collected the antlers. One human horn, 30 centimeters long, is currently in the collection of a London museum.



Pan - ancient Greek god of shepherding and cattle breeding

In total, before 1900, more than a hundred cases of horned people were confirmed. The connection with age and gender is obvious: older women were most often cuckolded. Remarkably, the horns often began to grow back after they were removed. One genetic case of a defect was also recorded: a horn grew in both father and son.



Robert Ripley

Perhaps the most famous of all the horned wonders was Ripley's "Human Unicorn". In 1930, a Chinese peasant from Manchukuo was discovered by a banker. The man managed to photograph him, and he sent the picture to Robert Ripley, a famous amateur anthropologist and creator of the show Believe It or Not!, dedicated to all sorts of rarities and wonders. Known as Wang, or Wen as he was sometimes called, the farmer was normal in every way except for the fact that he had a 35-centimeter spire-like horn growing from the back of his head.



Van's only photo

Ripley offered a huge cash reward to anyone who could get Wang to perform and even went to Manchukuo himself. However, Wang disappeared from public view in the early 1930s and was never heard from again.



Character from the movie Ripley

The reasons for the appearance of human horns are varied. Most often this is associated with benign tumors. But in about 20% of cases, malignant formations also occur.

The so-called horns can grow anywhere in the human body. And cases with the head are the exception rather than the rule. The exact reason for the growth of keratin on such a scale is unknown, but so far the main culprits are considered to be radiation and human papillomaviruses.



Wax figure of Wang

Over the past hundred years, very few such cases have been recorded, since modern medicine makes it possible to diagnose and eliminate the situation before it develops into a real problem. However, isolated similar cases, although rare, do occur today.