Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1891 — People With Horns. [ARTICLE]

People With Horns.

Human freaks in all imaginable shapes are well known to the frequenters of the dime museums. However, notone person in 1,000, perhaps in 10,000, knows that human beings with horns like an ox or a unicorn have Jcequently been exhibited ip the cities of England and continental Europo during the past 500 years. The first of these rare specimens of the homo of whom an authentic written account has been preserved, one Piet Darnelo, was up before the town tribunal of Lisbon in 1306 on a charge of being an offspring of the devil. When born Piet had two horns grown from his head, one over his left ear about one and one-half inches in length, the other almost exactly in the centre of his forehead nearly three inches lcng. At first both were covered with a sou, downy fur like that onthie new horns of animals of the deer species, but this soon cracked and peeled off, leaving •horny excrescences which in the quaint language of the account ‘*did much resemble the spurs of ye male b-irne-yarde fowls.” The horn near the ear was immovable from the first, being firmly attached to the skull. The larger the forehead seemed only in the sxin, and could be pressed down until the point touched the nose without causing the owner the least apparent pain. At the age of three years the larger horn was removed. During that short time it had grown from less than three inches to nearly seven inches in length, and had given evidence of becoming permanently attached to the frontal bone. Within the year following % soft tumor appeared over the right ear of little Piet conforming in position almost exactly to that of the smaller permanent horn over the other ear, which hud at this time attained a length of near five inches. From the tumor there sprang a horn which grew with alarming rapidity for tbrec‘or~ftrar r months, or until it had grown to be about the length of the one over the left ear.