December 17, 1891] 



NA TURE 



147 



But so long as steel is the strongest material of which 

 the body — the gun — can be constructed, makers of 

 powder and explosives, new and old, must be content to 

 moderate and regulate the strength of their compounds. 

 Much was expected of gun-cotton in its early days as a 

 propulsive agent, but these hopes were falsified by the 

 uncertainty of its action. 



Again, with the vast extent of our Empire, climatic con- 

 ditions have to be considered in their bearing on the 

 action and preservation of explosives, conditions which 

 do not affect French or German artillerists, who know 

 the exact limits over which their warlike operations must 

 take place. A. G. G. 



GIANTS AND ACROMEGALY. 

 The Skeleton of the Irish Giant, Cornelius Magrath. 

 By Dr. D. J, Cunningham, F. R.S. (Dublin : Published 

 by the Royal Irish Academy, 1891). 



NOTWITHSTANDING the close attention which 

 has been applied to the clinical aspects of 

 disease during so many centuries, every now and then 

 some observer, more acute than his brethren, recognizes 

 a morbid condition which had not previously been satis- 

 factorily discriminated, and gives to it a name. Al- 

 though in some cases the form of disease is thought to be 

 new, and is described as such, it is generally found, when 

 the records of medicine are examined, that correspond- 

 ing cases and symptoms had been noticed previously, 

 although their import had not been properly understood, 

 and they had not been distinguished by a special name. 



Amongst the latest contributions in this direction is 

 a memoir published in 1886 by M. Pierre Marie, in 

 which he described a morbid condition where the hands 

 and feet were enlarged out of proportion to the rest of 

 the body, chiefly due to a hypertrophy of the soft parts ; 

 and where the face had become remarkably elongated 

 and deformed, partly from hypertrophy of the soft parts, 

 but more especially from an increase in magnitude of the 

 bones of the face, of the glabella and supraciliary ridges 

 of the frontal bone, and of the pituitary fossa. To this con- 

 dition M. Marie gave the name of Acromegaly. The 

 attention of physicians and pathologists having thus been 

 directed to the subject, several similar cases were described 

 in the course of the next three or four years ; and a few 

 other cases and specimens previously recorded in medical 

 literature were recognized as having been similarly 

 affected. One of the most important of these was a 

 skeleton in the Anatomical Museum of the University 

 of Edinburgh, which was determined by Dr. H. 

 Alexis Thomson to be a case of acromegaly, and the 

 giant characters of the skeleton were associated with the 

 peculiarly hypertrophied condition of the soft parts above 

 referred to. 



It was the perusal of Dr. Thomson's account of 

 the Edinburgh skeleton which led Prof. Cunning- 

 ham to pay especial attention to the characters dis- 

 played by the skeleton of the Irish giant Cornelius 

 Magrath, which has been in the museum of Trinity 

 College, Dublin, for 131 years, and to conclude 

 that it also was an example of acromegaly. Dr. 

 Cunningham's memoir, in addition to the anatomi- 

 NO. I 155, VOL. 45] 



cal description of the skeleton, contains much interesting 

 information relative to Magrath himself, which he has 

 collected from various quarters. Magrath was born in 

 Tipperary in 1736, and died in Dublin in 1760, at the 

 age of 23. He seems to have attained a height of 6 feet 

 8| inches when he was only sixteen years old ; and for 

 several years he travelled about as a show, and visited 

 many of the great cities of Europe. The accounts which 

 were given of his height in the periodical literature of the 

 day, after he had reached his full dimensions, varied 

 considerably ; and a most exaggerated statement, that he 

 was 8 feet 4 inches, made apparently with the view of 

 out-rivalling the altitude of the skeleton of another Irish 

 giant, Charles Byrne, in the Hunterian Museum, London, 

 has found its way into anatomical literature. Dr. Cun- 

 ningham has subjected all these statements to a careful 

 analysis, and has studied and examined the skeleton 

 itself, from which he concludes that the articulated 

 skeleton is only 7 feet 2] inches high, and that this in all 

 probability expresses the maximum height during life. 

 Magrath is thus by no means the tallest giant whose 

 height has been put on record. Charles Byrne was 

 three or four inches taller ; and Topinard, Ranke and 

 Virchow have recorded examples of persons who ranged 

 in height from 7 feet 3I inches to 8 feet \\ inches. From 

 an examination which Prof. Cunningham has made of 

 the skeleton of Byrne in the Hunterian Museum, he has 

 come to the conclusion that in certain particulars, eg. the 

 magnitude of the lower jaw, the dilated pituitary fossa, 

 and the great size of the feet, it presents some of the 

 characters of acromegaly. It must not, however, be 

 supposed that giant growth is necessarily associated 

 with the condition of acromegaly ; for although it is not 

 unusual to find the lower jaw disproportionately large in 

 giants, yet it by no means follows that the other signs of 

 acromegaly should be present. 



Dr. Cunningham suggests that the morbid condition 

 which M. Marie christened acromegaly should be known 

 by the more etymologically correct term of " megalacria." 



PEAKS AND PASSES IN NEW ZEALAND. 

 With Axe and Rope in the New Zealand Alps. By 

 George Edward Mannering. With Illustrations. (Lon- 

 don : Longmans, Green, and Co., 1891.) 

 TEN years ago the ice scenery of the New Zealand 

 Alps was almost unknown even to the colonists. 

 But in 1882 the Rev. W. S. Green, with two first-class Swiss 

 guides, explored the glacierregion beneath the highest peak 

 — Aorangi,or Mount Cook — and arrived, after a long, diffi- 

 cult, and dangerous climb, on the summit of that mountain. 

 His delightful volume " The High Alps of New Zealand," 

 and the laborious explorations of Dr. von Lendenfeld in 

 the following year, indicated that a region, certainly not 

 inferior in grandeur and beauty to the Alps of Europe, 

 could be reached in a journey of little more than two 

 days from Christchurch. Since then the " Britain of the 

 South " has become proud of possessing the " playground 

 of Australasia " ; the number of visitors has been rapidly 

 increasing ; an hotel has been built in a convenient 

 situation near the foot of one of the glaciers ; surveys 

 have been undertaken ; and the author of this volume, 

 with one or two friends — inexperienced in mountain craft 



