Ranke measured Marianne Wehde, who was born in Germany in the present century, and found that she measured 8 feet 4 1/4 inches when only sixteen and a half years old.
In giants, as a rule, the great stature is due to excessive growth of the lower extremities, the size of the head and that of the trunk being nearly the same as those of a man or boy of the same age.

On the other hand, in a natural dwarf the proportions are fairly uniform, the head, however, being always larger in proportion to the body, just as we find in infants.

Indeed, the proportions of "General Tom Thumb" were those of an ordinary infant of from thirteen to fifteen months old.
Figure 156 shows a portrait of two well-known exhibitionists of about the same age, and illustrates the possible extremes of anomalies in stature.
Recently, the association of acromegaly with gigantism has been noticed, and in these instances there seems to be an acquired uniform enlargement of all the bones of the body.

Brissaud and Meige describe the case of a male of forty-seven who presented nothing unusual before the age of sixteen, when he began to grow larger, until, having reached his majority, he measured 7 feet 2 inches in height and weighed about 340 pounds.

He remained well and very strong until the age of thirty-seven, when he overlifted, and following this he developed an extreme deformity of the spine and trunk, the latter "telescoping into itself" until the nipples were on a level with the anterior superior spines of the ilium.