Pachyderm Post-Mortem

A few weeks ago Duchess, an elephant presented by the late Mr. P. T. Barnum to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, died of what newspapers reported to be an inflammation of the bowels caused by eating peanuts. It occurred to Dr. Antoine Kolodny of the University of Illinois College of Medicine to make a post-mortem examination. The body of the elephant, which weighed some 3,000 pounds, had been transferred for destruction to a plant in Gary, Ind. Arming himself with a pair of rubber hip-boots and a ten-inch butcher knife, Dr. Kolodny, accompanied by two students, went to Gary. The carcass was opened, the ribs broken with an ax, the dissection begun. It was found that the elephant had an inflammation of the bowels, but the actual cause of death was a wasting of the body resulting from degeneration of the adrenal glands, a condition called Addison's disease, after the British physician who first described it. One of the prominent symptoms is a bronzing of the skin, but the proverbial thickness of the elephant's hide had prevented this symptom from becoming apparent. The heart of the elephant weighed 75 pounds, and its main blood vessels were like steampipes. It was apparently only 95 years old. It's life having been cut off during it's prime by this unusual disease. Its Iife expectancy would ordinarily have been about 200 years.