Disease historiography

India Rubber Men and elastic performers in travelling shows

Late nineteenth-century travelling shows featured performers whose extreme flexibility and skin elasticity were their livelihood — James Morris at Barnum and Bailey earned $150 per week in the 1880s. Medical literature of the era (Wile 1883, Gould and Pyle 1897) documented some of them. Retrospective attribution to EDS is plausible for some performers and unprovable for most; the record documents the social niche, not a diagnosis.