If anything, the 19th century English paleontologist Gideon Mantell is known for his contributions to our understanding of dinosaurs. His most famous accomplishment was the description of Iguanodon, but Mantell has another legacy that is not as well-known. It was his last contribution to science, though it was not made willingly.
Like many other early paleontologists Mantell had to carve out his own career, and he studied fossils when not busy with his duties as a surgeon in the Lewes countryside. As Mantell began to gain recognition for his work on fossils, though, his passion for paleontology became so consuming that it nearly bankrupted the family. His wife Mary could not take it anymore, and she ultimately left her husband in 1839, just one year before their daughter died.
This marked the more difficult portion of Mantell's life, made all the worse by increasingly severe health problems. As Mantell went about his work he often felt acute leg and back pain which he attributed to various causes. Maybe it was the long hours spent hunched over patients, his weight, or some other factor, but in the fall of 1841 things got a lot worse.
On October 11, 1841 Mantell was forced to leap from his coach when the driver tangled the reins and crashed the carriage. Now Mantell's was in even more pain than before, and towards the latter part of the month he was effectively paralyzed from the waist down. Even as he regained feeling legs they would sometimes go numb when he leaned the wrong way or made too strenuous an effort. Mantell knew something was wrong with his back, but he was not sure what it was.
By the fall of the following year a tumor-like swelling appeared on the side of Mantell's spine. He suspected that it was some kind of abscess, and he consulted his friends within the respected community of surgeons. The leading hypothesis was that Mantell's vertebrae had become diseased, but they differed as to what method of treatment would heal the paleontologist. One recommended that a topical ointment might help while another advised that "gentle carriage exercise" and some "sarsaparilla" would be just the thing. This difference of opinion frustrated Mantell, but for a few years afterward the pain subsided enough to let him get on with his work.
Mantell's reprieve was relatively short-lived. In 1849 the pain intensified but almost nothing could make it better. Mantell experimented with painkillers to try to soothe the injury, but this would ultimately prove to be his undoing. On November 11, 1852 Mantell took opium on an empty stomach and overdosed. He was 62 years old when he died.
Given that Mantell's poor condition was well known among academics an autopsy was performed by a Dr. Hodgkin and William Adams on November 11, 1852. What they found was that Mantell had been suffering from a severe case of scoliosis in his lumbar vertebrate (or those in the lower back above the pelvis). This part of Mantell's backbone was distorted, yet the medical experts Mantell saw about his condition could not have seen this if they examined Mantell while he was standing up straight or lying down flat. The curvature of the spine only became visible when the back was bent forward, an observation that Adams would use to establish the forward-bending test to detect cases of scoliosis in living patients.
(I recall performing this test during physical checkups as a child. As far as I am aware it is still used today.)
After Adams and Hodgkin completed their examination they removed the diseased portion of Mantell's spine for preservation in the Hunterian Museum (which was under the care of Mantell's bitter academic rival Richard Owen at the time). No mention of this was made in the obituaries of Mantell, but surely his friends and colleagues would have known about it. What they thought of a bit of Mantell being on display among the numerous medical abberations and "monstrosities" of the Hunterian Museum, I do not know.
If you want to find Mantell's bones today, though, you are out of luck. The portion of Mantell's spine and the plaster cast made of his diseased bones were destroyed in 1969 citing "lack of space." This was an unfortunate loss for historians of science and medical practitioners curious about the condition which led to the founding of the "Adams forward bend test", and I still have to wonder what those who survived Mantell thought of the fate of his remains.
[This account was primarily derived from Fairbank, J.C.T. (2004) "William Adams and the spine of Gideon Algernon Mantell." Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. Vol 86, pp. 349-352.]
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They still make you hunch over and touch your toes for the scoliosis test--I just did one earlier this year. I'd also like to comment that "Gideon Mantell" is a kind of badass name.
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"Destroyed in 1969 citing 'lack of space'" is an oversimplification -- Tony Brook contacted the Hunterian Museum and got the following reply: "I can confirm that the preparations of Gideon Mantell's spine did survive the War, but both were subsequently disposed of. According to our Register books, the [plaster] cast (4802.2) was discarded in 1945. The actual specimen survived until 1970 when it, too, was discarded. There is no record of why they were disposed of: lack of space is a plausible explanation. It is also possible that, when the specimen was discarded, nobody recognised its connection with Mantell: although the [plaster] cast was listed as 'Cast of Mantell's Spine, the specimen was described in the Register only as 'Lumbo-dorsal spine: lateral curvature'. A check of the earlier Catalogues would have revealed its origin, but perhaps nobody thought to do this---or, if they did, they did not feel that the connection was important. Either way, a regrettable loss."
Thank you for the post. This type of narrative puts a human face on science and I learned something.
Fascinating case, thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Of course, it's difficult to make a diagnosis from a distance, but still, I see some things here that just don't fit this being a straightforward scoliosis. First, the curvature in the drawing isn't all that severe. Here are two quotes from the article:
On 11 October 1841, he reports that he jumped from his carriage when his coachman tangled the reins, narrowly escaping serious injury as the wheels just missed his head. On 27 October, he was âill with symptoms of paralysis, arising from spinal diseaseâ.
...
On 18 September 1842, he records: âtumour of considerable size has gradually made its appearance on the left side of the spine; it now evidently contains fluid â probably a lumbar abscess: ...
So it seems he was asymptomatic until the traumatic episode in 1841, and over time he developed a fluid-filled lateral mass.
My guess is that he had an asymptomatic scoliosis possibly related to a midline developmental defect (in the family of tethered cord or spina bifida), and developed a post-traumatic meningocele. In that condition, the meninges herniates thru an enlarged foramina. The meningocele fills with cerebrospinal fluid, and its presence is associated with nerve root compression and tension on the spinal cord (resulting in dysfunction of legs and viscera). The fact that he lived 10 years after this developed argues strongly against it being either a malignancy or an abscess.
Just a thought.
"What they thought of a bit of Mantell being on display among the numerous medical abberations and "monstrosities" of the Hunterian Museum, I do not know."
Well, hopefully they would have been proud, as Hunter Collection was primarily a scientific resource rather than a freakshow.
I remember when I visited there was a pathological specimen from a Bishop , so his remains would have been in good company ;)
I reccomend 'The Knife Man' by Wendy Moore if anyone wants to learn more about Hunter and his museum.
As The Earth becomes overcast via the 'biblical-plague' of religious fantasizers, (some of who can't or don't understand why most of their children are 'jumping ship', like stowaways on the Titanic), it is refreshing to see an article like this.
...One more person I would like to meet, if the ease of 'time travel' (in science fiction) were ever to be translated to reality!
I totally agree: What a loss to science, (this researcher's bones & plaster-casdt being destroyed to make room for...?), on both a (mere) 'specimen' level and of course, a historical level. As a child, I remember nearly swooning the first time I encountered the 'T-Rex' skull in a case, the jaws of which, at the time, were bigger then I was...
Like the outhouse-located 'lawyer' in Jurrasic park...
crunch-crunch-crunch!
The nerve of the pseudo-pietistic to allege humans & T-rex's cohabited!
By some miracle of fate, I continue to have food in my gut, a roof over my head, an internet connection...I continue to search for employment, (despite) being an American citizen in the north east portion of America, (which makes my effort analogous to what used to be called a 'felony'!).
...Please continue to shine a light, however small, in the encrouching ('S. Palin-esque') darkness!
BTW: I am religious; I must be a 'bad' religious person because I would never consider resorting to violence to motivate others to...'believe'!