The freak-show act: Science and spectacle in the nineteenth century

The exhibition of the physical Other – in its broadest sense – has a long tradition. Cave paintings of the Stone Age depict human anomalies and suggest their singular status within society (Garland-Thomson, 1996a, p. 1). Deformity features prominently in several ancient myths, such as in the Odyssey, that include Cyclops and giants (see Neumann, 2005, pp. 23–26 for a brief discussion). During the Middle Ages, monsters were imagined to inhabit the outskirts of the world. Maps or treatises testify to that tradition, exhibiting drawings of fantastic bodies (see Daston and Park, 1998, pp. 21–66.). The cabinets of curiosities, popular collecting houses of the Renaissance, entertained Europe's nobility with unusual objects and people (see Arnold, 2006), and during the Enlightenment the tradition of displaying the extraordinary body ¹ continued, for example, as part of the growing science of medicine where those bodies became part of anatomical museums (e.g., Zürcher, 2004, pp. 66–82).