Medicine: Rare Disease

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To the University Hospital at Iowa City, Iowa, recently came a woman suffering from a disease so extraordinary that it appalled the physicians, surgeons, who attended her. She, a certain Mrs. Mary McCormick from Cedar Rapids, had for six years suffered from a form of neuritis. She had journeyed from specialist to specialist without avail. When she entered the hospital, she regarded her death as a matter of weeks. Her originally large body (223 Ibs.) ossified, shrunk to almost nothing (40 Ibs.), the withered flesh hardened, taking on a stony texture; her jaws set, it became impossible for her to eat. Last week she died.