Joseph Merrick, the "Elephant Man," was the most shockingly disfigured person in history. Parts of his body were grossly enlarged. Huge folds of warty skin dangled from his chest and back. He was constantly wracked with pain.
For more than a century Merrick's terrible condition has baffled medical science and cast a shadow of fear over descendants of the Merrick family. Merrick died in 1890 at the age of 27. Now, a distinguished cast of experts from three continents will try to solve the mystery of his disease and answer two intriguing questions: what was the awful affliction, and could it happen again?
The Curse of the Elephant Man is a compelling detective story that uses the disciplines of forensic archaeology, genetics, genealogy, and imaging science to provide insights never revealed about one of history's most tragic figure.
We spoke to the executive producer of the program, Mark Poertner, to find out how it all came to fruition:
Of course, I had heard of him. I had seen the stage play with David Bowie as the Elephant Man. But I never thought much about the medical aspect of his condition.
So when I started working on the project it was fascinating to discover that people today still didn't know the cause of his affliction. Also, it was intriguing that we could go on a scientific journey to unravel this medical mystery and help solve the 100-plus-year-old question of what Joseph Merrick suffered from and what eventually killed him.
The exciting thing was to be able to extract DNA and that the technology now available to us finally made that very difficult task a possibility.
There was a lot of coordination between the production company and the doctors because they had to verify the results. The doctors were very cooperative. They saw this as a unique opportunity as well. Coordinating between the doctors wasn't as big an issue as the actual extraction of the DNA and the analysis. Our production led to the DNA extraction. We were in development for a long time trying to get the go-ahead from the curator that controls Merrick's remains, so until the curator and family agreed to let us move forward, we had no show.
