e of gigantism. At sixteen years he
measured 7 feet 10 inches.

O'Brien or Byrne, the Irish giant, was supposed to be 8 feet 4 inches
in height at the time of his death in 1783 at the age of twenty-two.
The story of his connection with the illustrious John Hunter is quite
interesting. Hunter had vowed that he would have the skeleton of
O'Brien, and O'Brien was equally averse to being boiled in the
distinguished scientist's kettle. The giant was tormented all his life
by the constant assertions of Hunter and by his persistence in locating
him. Finally, when, following the usual early decline of his class of
anomalies, O'Brien came to his death-bed, he bribed some fishermen to
take his body after his death to the middle of the Irish Channel and
sink it with leaden weights. Hunter, it is alleged, was informed of
this and overbribed the prospective undertakers and thus secured the
body. It has been estimated that it cost Hunter nearly 500 pounds
sterling to gain possession of the skeleton of the "Irish Giant." The
kettle in which the body was boiled, together with some interesting
literature relative to the circumstances, are preserved in the Museum
of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, and were exhibited at the
meeting of the British Medical Association in 1895 with other Hunterian
relics. The skeleton, which is now one of the features of the Museum,
is reported to measure 92 3/4 inches in height, and is mounted
alongside that of Caroline Crachami, the Sicilian dwarf, who was
exhibited as an Italian princess in London in 1824. She did not grow
after birth and died at the age of nine.

Patrick Cotter, the successor of O'Brien, and who for awhile exhibited
under this name, claiming that he was a lineal descendant of the famous
Irish King, Brian Boru, who he declared was 9 feet in height, was born
in 1761, and died in 1806 at the age of forty-five. His shoe was 17
inches long, and he was 8 feet 4 inches tall at his death.

In the Museum of Madame Tussaud in London there is a wax figure of
Loushkin, said to be the tallest man of his time. It measures 8 feet 5
inches, and is dressed in the military uniform of a drum-major of the
Imperial Preobrajensky Regiment of Guards. To magnify his height there
is a figure of the celebrated dwarf, "General Tom Thumb," in the palm
of his hand. Figure 158 represents a well-known American giant, Ben
Hicks who was called "the Denver Steeple."

Buffon refers to a Swedish giantess who