Thursday, March 03, 2022

What's the most unusual and shocking medical case from history?

Sean Kernan

Lina Medina’s parents knew something was off about her stomach. The swelling was clearly getting worse.

The family lived in a small village in Peru, with Lina being one of nine children.

Doctors ran tests and were stunned to learn she was 6 months pregnant.

The case drew widespread outrage and medical curiosity. It defied physiology that someone so young was pregnant.

More importantly, why was she pregnant?

Many people initially believed the story was fake — until multiple doctors flew in to confirm the case via testing.

In the summer of 1939, Lina gave birth at just five and a half years old, meaning she’d become pregnant at four.

She delivered a healthy son, Gerardo, via C-section. She was nowhere near able to pass a child through her hips.

There have been other young children who got pregnant further back in time.

Their stories are mostly grim, with either the baby dying and/or the child dying in the process (c-sections weren’t widely used until the early 20th century).

The science behind her pregnancy

Most trained pediatricians immediately knew how she could have become pregnant.

There is a rare condition called precocious puberty. Because of genetics, or dysfunction in hormonal glands, the body begins releasing estrogen (or testosterone) very early.

For those who have it, it is often a source of embarrassment and family tension.

Top doctors were assigned to Lina’s case and, during her delivery, they noted she had fully developed sexual organs.

They also learned she’d had her first menstrual cycle at three years of age.

Her condition happens in 1 in 5,000 to 10,000 children but is more common in girls.

Boys experience comparable symptoms, developing adult features like facial hair and lower voices.

Lina is an extremely rare and well-documented case of precocious puberty.

In fact, you will see Lina’s case in many obstetrician textbooks in medical schools around the world.

The ranking of the other youngest reported mothers gave birth at 6, 7, 8, and 9, with one of the mothers becoming a grandmother at just 17.

These cases are all from many decades ago, not because the abuse has stopped, but because we now have treatments to counteract precocious puberty.

Her son, Gerardo, grew up alongside his mother, not knowing she was his mother until he was 10.

Lina with her son just after delivery. (Via Peruvian School of Medicine (public domain))

The aftermath and search for the father

Unsurprisingly, there was international pressure to find the abuser. Police and doctors interviewed Lina repeatedly in hopes of identifying him.

However, Lina could never provide any specifics: she either didn’t know who he was or she’d been coached not to say anything.

There was speculation she’d been abused at an annual festival where rape was common but this theory was later dismissed.

Lina’s father, Tibuerelo, was initially arrested on charges of rape. But after being held for several days, he was released as there was no evidence to tie him to the crime.

Statistically, the odds are high that her abuser was someone close to the family, if not an actual family member.

I suspect her family had a suspicion on who assaulted the girl but chose to keep a lid on it to protect them.

Even if they knew it was the father, convicting him would send the sole earner to prison while the already-poor family had nine mouths to feed.

The family garnered massive amounts of unwanted attention.

It was in newspapers all over the United States in the late 1930s before fading into the backdrop of World War II.

Sadly, stories like Lina’s are all too common. Her pregnancy merely produced an undeniable symptom of her abuse.

Early-onset puberty is more common in modern times and puberty is happening earlier and earlier, largely because of environmental and dietary habits (hormone-filled foods).

Her life after the pregnancy

Fortunately, Lina was able to get an education and secure a stable job as a secretary in Lima, Peru.

She had a relatively-good career, and by most accounts, a good life. She later married and had a second son when she was 40. She was able to provide him an education and better life than the one she was born into.

She is still alive today, at 88 years old. She lives in relative privacy and thankfully, wasn’t ruined by the incident.

We live in a sick world peeps.

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