History
Perhaps the most famous person who exemplified the appearance of untreated congenital growth hormone deficiency was Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838–1883), who was exhibited by P. T. Barnum as General Tom Thumb, and married Lavinia Warren. Pictures of the couple appear to show the typical adult features of untreated severe growth hormone deficiency. Despite the severe shortness, limbs and trunk are proportional.
One of the most well known people to have suffered from this deficiency is F.C. Barcelona striker Lionel Messi. Diagnosed at age eleven, his family could not afford the treatment, but that cost was covered by Barcelona in exchange for Messi joining the team's youth department.
Like many other 19th century medical terms which lost precise meaning as they gained wider currency, "midget" as a term for someone with severe proportional shortness acquired pejorative connotations and is no longer used in a medical context.
Read more about this topic: Growth Hormone Deficiency
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