George Lippert is real proof of many hearts (4 photos)

An angry and cruel person is often called heartless. Although the expression is figurative, it reflects the essence of things very accurately. Meanwhile, there have been cases of multi-heartedness in history - a very rare and very real phenomenon.





George Lippert was born in Germany in 1844. In addition to the fact that the boy became the owner of the dubious joy of three legs, he also had two hearts. Both organs were complete and fully functional, although this feature became known only after death and an autopsy in 1906.



George Lippert

His third leg was fully formed and even had an extra toe, giving Lippert a total of sixteen toes on his lower extremities. The third leg actually turned out to be decorative. Lippert claimed that it was fully functional until he suffered a fracture. He could not move with the help of an additional one. And throughout his entire artistic career, the limb simply hung without movement.

Early in his career, George was called "the only three-legged man on Earth" and proved to be a very interesting subject for the public. Lippert even worked on the show with P. T. Barnum. However, there is evidence that this man was not easy to deal with.

There are no photographs of George Lippert, only an image of Charles Eisenman. It was the only one used by Lippert. Given that his career spanned decades and coincided with a major boom in photography, this is very unusual and raises questions.



Francesco (Frank) Lentini

In 1898, the artist had a competitor - a three-legged boy from Sicily, Frank Lentini. As a result, Lippert's career and popularity quickly declined. One three-legged unique creature was replaced by another.

By 1899, Lippert was left without a livelihood. He eventually found a benefactor in flower girl Mary Riggs, with whom he lived in Salem, Oregon, for seven years.



In the summer of 1906, George Lippert died of tuberculosis at the age of 62. An autopsy revealed that he had two hearts and that one heart had failed a couple of weeks before his death. Doctors said that if Lippert had not had tuberculosis, he could easily have lived many more years. A second healthy heart would keep him alive.