January
19
/ 2023
While the fairytale Beauty and the Beast has a happy ending, the tragic true story on which it was based most certainly did not. Published in France as La Belle et la Bête, it seems that the 1740 children’s story was partly inspired by the gut-wrenching life of a so-called wild man known as ‘Petrus Gonsalvus’ and his marriage to a beautiful young woman named Catherine. Born in Tenerife in 1537 and given as a gift to King Henry II of France in 1547, Pedro González suffered from an unknown condition now known as hypertrichosis, or Werewolf Syndrome, which caused his face and body to be covered in excess hair. To date there have been less than 50 cases documented
