Human-made Monsters

Human-made Monsters Human-made Monsters by http:www.articledashboard.comprofileSam-Vaknin104Sam VakninHumans made monsters by inhuman treatment abound in literature. In The Man Who Laughs, published in 1869, the French author, Victor Hugo 1802-1885, described the comprachicos thus: The comprachicos child buyers were strange and hideous nomads in the 17th century. They made children into sideshow freaks. To succeed in producing a freak one must get hold of him early; a dwarf must be started when he is small. They stunted growth, they mangled features. It was an artscience of inverted orthopedics. Where nature had put a straight glance, this art put a squint. Where nature had put harmony, they put deformity and imperfection. The child was not aware of the mutilation he had suffered. This horrible surgery left traces on his face, not in his mind. During the operation the little patient was unconscious by means of a stupefying magic powder. In China since time immemorial, they have achieved refinement in a special art and industry: the molding of living man. One takes a child two or three years old and puts them into a grotesquely shaped porcelain vase. It is without cover or bottom, so the head and feet protrude. In the daytime the vase is upright, at night it is laid down so the child can sleep. Thus the child slowly fills the contours of the vase with compressed flesh and twisted bones. This bottled development continues for several years. At a certain point, it becomes an irreparable monster. Then the vase is broken and one has a man in the shape of a pot. The Kyrgyz writer, Chingiz Aitmatov or Aytmatov 1928 - recounts in The Day Lasts More than One Hundred Years 1980 the legend of the Ana-Beiit cemetery and the zombies known as mankurts. According to tradition, the nomad Zhuan