As To Giants

1895

For Some Reason the Big Fellows Are Not Long Lived.

As a rule, giants are not long lived. They have too many gantlets to run. Being giants — that being anything over 6 feet 6 — they naturally drift into the show business and are thenceforth incarcerated in vans, close rooms and in the dingy and effluvia laden air of the exhibition room. Their not overresisting lungs here inhale the combined effluvia and aroma that arise from the lungs, skin and not overclean or over well aired clothes of their many admirers, all of which is not conducive to either health or to long life.

It would seem reasonable to believe that a giant — be, he 7 or 10 feet tall — who is well formed, and who has every organ in a just proportion to his bulk, should live as long as a small man or as long as his heredity might otherwise permit. Reasoning theoretically, this would seem probable, but when we come to well analyze the subject and compare the actual facts we find that something or other always goes wrong, and that, owing to many an "if," we find that our giant dies early, as a rule. Some one organ goes wrong, and the great machine comes to a stop, or some organ does not keep pace with the rest of the increase in bulk, and he goes halting and squeaky, or either an overwork or an underwork here or there, and a physiological inadequacy of some sort is the result, with a general deterioration of the whole structure and with a finally premature death.

In other words, there is sure to be a failing link in the physiological scheme of these abnormal beings which, by giving way, breaks the continuity of the chain of life, and that independent of any of those moral delinquencies which are but too often the cause of an early breakdown. It is simply that the whole structure would not work abnormally in every detail. — National Popular Review.