This collection of essays illustrates various anomalies of human development, the lives of the remarkable individuals concerned and social reactions to the extraordinary bodies. Jan Bondeson examines historical cases of dwarfism, extreme corpulence, giantism, conjoined twins, dicephaly and extreme hairiness; his broader theme however, is the infinite range of human experience. The dicephalous Tocci brothers and Lazarus colloredo (from whose belly grew his malformed conjoined twin), the Swedish giant and the king of Poland's dwarf - Bondeson considers these individuals not as "freaks" but as human beings born with sometimes appalling congential deformities. He makes use of original French, German, Dutch, Polish and Scandinavian sources and explores elements of ethnology, literature and cultural history in his diagnoses. The heavily illustrated book combines a scientist's scrutiny with a humanist's wonder at the endurance of the human spirit.