Nor is this modest eight feet of stature, after Sir Ferumbras and Angolafre, the most disheartening thing about giants.
For the cold-hearted biologists who have specialized on the subject want to steal even the word and make “gigantism” signify a diseased condition!
There is, alas! a good deal of justification for this iconoclastic position. The exact observations are not yet numerous enough to enable us to generalize; but it is all too evident that the vast majority of these tallest men and women are suffering from an obscure malady, which produces a disharmony of the bony structure, and also causes various functional disorders. Generally the giant shows obvious signs of what the pathologists call acromegaly—where there is a great enlargement of head, feet and hands.
We do not know just what causes this abnormal growth. It seems usually associated with ailments of one of the remarkable “ductless glands,” the pituitary body, which clearly has some direct connection with the growth of bones and tissues.
Oddly enough, many of the characteristics of the giants of legend fit only too well with this modern theory that the giant is diseased.
Perhaps, after all, it is just as well that Roland and Launcelot and Amadis and Guy of Warwick exterminated the poor creatures.
We can for more reasons than one afford to smile at that solemn French Academician, who just two centuries ago worked out a table to prove the shrinkage of the human stature since ancient times. Said M. Henrion, here is the tabular record:
| Adam | measured | 125 | feet 9 inches | | Eve | measured | 118 | feet 9 inches | | Noah | measured | 103 | feet | | Abraham | measured | 28 | feet | | Moses | measured | 13 | feet | | Hercules | measured | 10 | feet | | Alexander | measured | 6 | feet | | Julius Caesar | measured | 5 | feet |
And he strove to convince the world that men for their wickedness must have shrunk to nothing at all in a few more centuries; but the appearance of the Messiah during the epoch of the Roman Emperor stopped the degeneration and fixed the normal height at what it then was!
However, if our bodies today cannot be more than nine feet tall at the uttermost—there is no limit on our minds. They can scale the heavens where the giant brood failed. They can be as lofty as we really desire.
It remains quite open to us moderns to be giants in intellect, and energy, and true progress, and helpfulness toward our weaker brethren.
Transcriber’s Notes: Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. Ellipses match the original.