THE BRITISH EXHIBITION at Wembley

Recently received a visit from a tourist who did not fail to attract all eyes. He's a Dutchman, named John Van Albert, Lofty, in private. Only twenty-three years old, this giant is 2.84 meters tall, the height of an ordinary apartment.

As soon as he arrived in London, journalists besieged his door to interview him. We thus learned that he was the only one in his family to possess such a gigantic size; that, as a precaution, he never traveled without his bed and his bathtub that he could not get into a car and always sat on the seat and that, finally gifted with a formidable appetite, he usually swallowed, for his breakfast, fifteen eggs, three slices of smoked fish, five chops, twelve rolls and eight cups of tea.

Solicited by a music hall director, Lofty will soon appear on stage. For giants, as for dwarves, it is an ideal career.

Professor Pierre Marie was the first to study the real causes of gigantism. This condition, commonly linked to an alteration of the pituitary gland, occurs in normally constituted beings. This first notion of an existing relationship between the development of the individual and the functioning of its internal secretion glands has, since then, been so well clarified that today everyone agrees to consider gigantism as a pathological result.

Not all tall people are giants. Medically speaking, giants are beings in whom the epiphyseal cartilages of the bones, contrary to what generally happens, do not allow themselves to be invaded by ossification.

This ossification, usually completely completed for normal subjects between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age, is not completed until much later, and sometimes even never, for those who become giants. In them, the cartilages persist and the elongation of the body occurs mainly through the long bones, so that they usually have an ordinary bust perched on large legs. The result is not aesthetically pleasing. Often this growth is also accompanied by deformity of the legs, mental debility and impotence.

The giants, as we see, are hardly to be envied. Furthermore, in life they experience incessant difficulties when it comes to moving among the furniture and apartments created for the use of ordinary mortals, that is to say, for them, pygmies. In short, gigantism is a sign of decline rather than progress.

However, in the 18th century, there was a scholar who claimed the opposite. Nicolas Henrion, professor of Syriac at the Royal College, asserted, in fact, that the human race had only declined. And, taking as an example the main characters of the Bible or of history, he fixed their size as follows:

Adam: 40m. 69
Eve: 38m. 47
Noah: 33 m. 37
Abraham: 9m. 09
Moses: 4 m. 22
Hercules: 3 m. 24
Alexander: 1 m. 98
Julius Caesar: 1 m. 62

According to Henrion, the fault of the first man was the cause of this decline and the coming of the Messiah alone was able to stop this unfortunate decline. There was a lot of laughter at the time at the Syriac professor's assertions. Today, we can just smile. Giants are phenomena, nothing more. Great men, they never counted great men among them and their name, celebrated one day on circus or music hall posters, falls, immediately after their death, into oblivion.

Should we mention the giant Winkelmeir, who measured 2m. 27; the giant Hugo (nothing in common with the poet), who measured 2 m. 30; the giant Lady Aana, who measured 2 m. 44? None of these, however, reached the size of the Dutchman who is currently showing in London.

At the time of his splendor, William II liked to surround himself with a bodyguard made up of soldiers of imposing size. But the largest of these white cuirassiers did not exceed 2 m. 06. France, finally, also possessed, among its origins, a giant of whom we have spoken.

It was in 1914. This giant, named Eugène Arceau, was born in Thorigny, in Vendée. At the age of 19, he was 2 m tall. 35 and weighed 145 kilos. His glove size was No. 15; that of his shoes, number 62. To lie down, he needed a bed 3 meters long. Its growth has remained a real enigma for science; it was accomplished while he slept. He would sometimes sleep for more than thirty-six consecutive hours and, when he woke up, you would see that his waist had lengthened by around ten centimeters.

During a tour he made in Europe, with a circus, Eugène Arceau was introduced to King Alphonse XIII, and the latter immediately found a joke: You are not Spanish, he said, but that didn't stop you from growing up!

Claude FRANCUEIL.