How do changing notions of beauty and ugliness affect attitudes toward physical deformities? To what extent was the birth of a dwarf, a giant or a hirsute child thought to reflect the depraved imagination of the mother and classify her child as a monster or freak of nature? The Remarkables: Endocrine Abnormalities in Art addresses these questions and others in the context of medical, social, intellectual and art history from antiquity to the twentieth century in Western Europe. In five chapters the authors review endocrine abnormalities whose physical, and sometimes mental, signs appear in European paintings and sculpture: diffuse and disfiguring goiter, Graves’ disease, thyroid cancer, disorders of the pituitary, adrenal and parathyroid glands and the gonads. Each chapter includes a detailed discussion of the medical history of the disorders: the etiology, epidemiology, and history of treatment followed by a discussion of pertinent examples of art presented thematically to reflect the influence of geography, religion, social politics, cultural traditions and aesthetic theories on each artist’s representation of endocrine disease. The book’s comparative study examines the development of empirical knowledge and scientific discovery that inspired parallel experimentation in both medicine and art. With their focus on the important intersection of the two disciplines throughout history, the authors consider a variety of paintings that demonstrate the artist’s skill of observation manifested in accurate illustrations of disease. Although neither artists nor physicians understood the causes and manifestations of endocrine disease until the late nineteenth century, the book’s examples document that artists were often the more astute observers of the “human condition.”

Carol Clark (BA, Barnard College , MA in English, San Francisco State University) taught high school English at the Crystal Springs Uplands School, Hillsborough, CA from 1980-2005 and was English Dept. Chair from 1989-98. The co-author of three poetry anthologies, she has also edited several art catalogues for the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco.

Orlo H. Clark, M. D. is Professor of Surgery at UCSF Medical Center. A graduate of Cornell University and Cornell Medical School, Dr. Clark joined the UCSF Department of Surgery in 1973 and was Vice Chair of the department and Chief of Surgery at UCSF/Mt. Zion Hospital from 1990-2003. A founding member and past president of the International Association of Endocrine Surgeons and of the American Association of Endocrine Surgeons, he has also been president of the American Thyroid Association, the Pacific Coast Surgical Association and the San Francisco Surgical Society. The author of over 450 peer reviewed articles, sixteen books and numerous book chapters, Dr. Clark has been the recipient of several teaching awards at UCSF and of the AAES Oliver Cope Meritorious Achievement Award.