The last century has already solved most of the mysteries. It is interesting to note, for example, that the weighty tome Abnormal Phenomena and Interesting Cases in Medical Practice, written by Drs. George M. Good and Walter L. Pyle in 1896, included a section on human allergic reactions. This disease is so common today that it is not considered supernatural, and then it stood on a par with such natural phenomena as a man who was able to produce milk and feed a child, and a woman who had regular menstrual flow from the eyes, ears, breasts and old wounds.
Of course, a modern catalog of medical anomalies would look much thinner. But people still carry many mysteries, and it would be unwise to ignore them. As Goode and Pyle suggest, it is possible that it was anomalous phenomena that once awakened human thought in ancient times, an interest in the unknown, and the study of such phenomena over time turned into a complex of knowledge, called today science.
Girl without a skeleton
The young lady, known as Serpentina (serpentine), was born without a skeleton, only with a skull, and was truly an unusual creature. Perhaps there was an exaggeration here to enhance the dramatic effect, for in the advertising photograph she coquettishly rests on a suspiciously hard elbow. If she wanted to, she could become a star on some show, demonstrating, for example, how she overcomes a vent.
Charles Warren
In the 80s of the XIX century, any deviation from the physical norm was a pass to the then show business. Charles Warren was born with a skeletal anomaly: his joints did not fit together well. Eyewitnesses said that "when he was a child, he constantly fell as his thighs slipped out of the joint capsule." Eight-year-old Charles was dubbed "Rag Yankee." He joined a company of itinerant acrobats and artists. We must give him his due, he had amazing control of his muscles, much better than a normal person. And he could not only walk well, making incredible efforts so that the bones on his legs did not fall out of the glenoid cavities, but also move any bones at will - which was very useful for his craft.
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Charles was examined many times, but doctors did not find any reasonable explanation for his anomaly. It should be noted that he had two children, and both could move the thigh bones - clear evidence that the defect is inherited.
In the 1930s, both doctors and the public were already satiated with such demonstrations of various ugliness. The doctors said that nothing new can be learned from this. Ordinary people believed that if they once saw how joints were twisted, consider: they had seen everything in the world. If you are lucky enough to have an unusual skeleton, the only one who will pay attention to you is Robert Ripley, a leading newspaper columnist with his Believe it or Not! Column. But even to get on the pages of the newspaper, you need to have something truly special, unique. Ripley has collected a huge collection of quite stupid and even meaningless achievements of quite normal people with a sense of their own dignity. This includes tricks such as the ability to twist the arm twice, kneel with the feet forward,turn your body or legs 180 degrees. All this is harmless and funny in its own way, but sometimes you wonder: is it not in vain that humanity has ceased to wonder why some can do this and others cannot?
Supernatural abilities should also include unusual strength. Training is not that popular these days, but strong men are by no means uncommon among people. If you are a tough guy and want to get into "Believe It …", you have to demonstrate some unusual trick, for example, raise a chair while someone is sitting on it (it will be more effective if he also plays the mandolin). And in this field there are records.
Alice Penfold
In 1953, Alice Penfold, a 21-year-old girl from Bury, England, lifted the chair her older sister was sitting on with her teeth. 10 years earlier, 8-year-old strongwoman Patricia O'Keefe had been gathering crowds on the beaches of California, walking with a man on her back weighing four times her own, but, as always, everyone was only amused, and no one wondered where such an outlandish force in a fragile creature came from.