While Joseph Merrick was alive, physicians believed that he suffered from a condition known as elephantiasis. In 1971 Ashley Montagu suggested that Joseph Merrick suffered from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder also known as von Recklinghausen's disease, and this disease is still connected with Joseph Merrick in the mind of the public. However, in 1979, Michael Cohen first identified a condition that was named Proteus syndrome by Rudolf Wiedemann in 1983. In 1986 it was argued that it was the condition from which Joseph Merrick actually suffered. Proteus syndrome (named for the shape-shifting god Proteus), unlike neurofibromatosis, affects tissue other than nerves, and is a sporadic rather than familially transmitted disorder.
