Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by George M Gould and Walter L Pyle

Original Copyright 1896 by W.B. Saunders

Gould cites the instance of a horn growing from an epitheliomatous penis. The patient was fifty-two years of age and the victim of congenital phimosis. He was circumcised four years previously, and shortly after the wound healed there appeared a small wart, followed by a horn about the size of a marble. Jewett speaks of a penile horn 3 and a half inches long and 3 and three quarter inches in diameter; Pick mentions one 2 and a half inches inches long(picture below).

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There is an account of a Russian peasant boy who had a horn on his penis from earliest childhood. Johnson mentions a case of a horn from the scrotum, which was of sebaceous origin and was subsequently supplanted by an epithelioma. Ash reported the case of a girl named Annie Jackson, living in Waterford, Ireland, who had horny excrescences from her joints, arms, axillae, nipples, ears, and forehead. Locke speaks of a boy at the Hopital de la Charite· in Paris, who had horny excrescences four inches long and 1 and a half inches in circumference growing from his fingers and toes. Wagstaffe presents a horn which grew from the middle of the leg six inches below the knee in a woman of eighty. It was a flattened spiral of more than two turns, and during forty years' growth had reached the length of 14.3 inches. Its height was 3.8 inches, its skin-attachment 1.5 inches in diameter, and it ended in a blunt extremity of 0.5 inch in diameter. Stephens mentions a dermal horn on the buttocks at the seat of a carcinomatous cicatrix. Harris and Domonceau speak of horns from the leg. Cruveilhier saw a Mexican Indian who had a horn four inches long and eight inches in circumference growing from the left lumbar region. It had been sawed off twice by the patient's son and was finally extirpated by Faget. The length of the pieces was 12 inches. Bellanly saw a horn on the clitoris about the size of a tiger's claw in a woman of seventy. It had its origin from beneath the preputium clitoridis. Horns are generally solitary, but cases of multiple formation are known. Lewin and Heller record a syphilitic case with eight cutaneous horns on the palms and soles. A f'emale patient of Manzuroff had as many as 185 horns. Pancoast reports the case of a man whose nose, cheeks, forehead, and lips were covered with horny growths, which had apparently ,undergone epitheliomatous degeneration. The patient was a sea-captain of seventy-eight, and had been exposed to the winds all his life. He had suffered three attacks of erysipelas from prolonged exposure. When he consulted Pancoast the horns had nearly all fallen off and were brought to the physician for inspection; and the photograph (below) was taken after the patient had tied the horns in situ on his face.