In the entire recorded history of medicine, only one human being has ever been officially classified as both a dwarf and a giant during his lifetime.
His name was Adam Rainer, and his body became a living battlefield between two opposite extremes of human growth.
1899–1918: The Dwarf Years
Adam Raimund Rainer was born in 1899 in Graz, Austria, to parents of completely average height. Nothing in the family suggested anything unusual — until Adam simply stopped growing.
By the time he was 18, in the middle of World War I, he stood only 4 feet 0.4 inches (122 cm) tall. When he tried to enlist, the Austrian army rejected him twice — not because of the war, but because he was far too short and physically frail to carry a rifle. Doctors diagnosed pituitary dwarfism: his pituitary gland, the pea-sized “master gland” at the base of the brain, had failed to produce almost any growth hormone during childhood.
His hands and feet, however, were oddly large even then — an early, almost invisible clue of the catastrophe to come.
1919–1930: The Impossible Growth Spurt
Sometime around his 21st birthday, everything reversed.
A benign tumor (an eosinophilic adenoma) that had quietly sat on his pituitary gland for years began to grow. Instead of continuing to suppress growth hormone, it suddenly overproduced it — massively.
Adam Rainer began to grow again, and he never really stopped.
Here are the documented measurements:
- Age 19 (1918): 122 cm (4 ft 0 in)
- Age 21 (1920): 138 cm (4 ft 6 in)
- Age 25 (1924): 167 cm (5 ft 6 in)
- Age 28 (1927): 196 cm (6 ft 5 in)
- Age 31 (1930): 216 cm (7 ft 1 in)
- Age 32 (1931): 218 cm (7 ft 2 in) — taller than Shaquille O’Neal
In little more than a decade, he grew almost 3 feet 2 inches (96 cm). That’s an average of 8–10 cm (3–4 inches) every single year during his twenties.
His hands ballooned to the size of dinner plates. His feet grew past U.S. men’s size 20. His jaw jutted forward, his brow ridge thickened, his tongue enlarged, and his spine began to twist into a painful S-curve.
What looked like a miracle at first — the little man finally becoming tall — quickly became a nightmare.
1930–1931: A Desperate Surgery
By late 1930, at age 31 and already over seven feet tall, Adam could barely walk. Doctors in Vienna finally realized a pituitary tumor was the cause.
In December 1930, two pioneering surgeons, Oskar Hirsch and Alfred Krauss, performed one of the earliest transsphenoidal pituitary operations in history — going in through the nose and sphenoid sinus to reach the tumor. A second surgery followed in 1931 to remove remaining fragments.
The operation was a partial success: the explosive growth slowed to a crawl. But the damage was irreversible. The same tumor that had once starved him of growth hormone had now destroyed most of the healthy pituitary tissue. His spine was already severely deformed, his joints ruined, and his heart and organs strained beyond repair.
1932–1950: Seventeen Years in Bed
By 1933, Adam Rainer could no longer stand. His kyphoscoliosis had worsened to more than 120 degrees, and his legs stayed permanently bent. He spent the last 17–18 years of his life confined to a bed in a Vienna nursing home.
Despite constant pain, visitors described him as gentle, mentally sharp, and even cheerful. He loved small gifts — especially cigarettes — and never lost his sense of gratitude.
March 4, 1950: The End
Adam Rainer died at age 51 from complications of a perforated duodenal ulcer that led to peritonitis and sepsis. His body, weakened by nearly two decades of immobility and gigantism, could fight no longer.
His final measured length — corrected for spinal curvature — was 7 feet 8 inches (234 cm). Some newspapers exaggerated it to 7 ft 10 in or more, but the autopsy settled on 234 cm.
He was cremated days later. No one claimed the ashes.
Why Adam Rainer Still Matters
Adam Rainer is the only documented person ever to cross both extremes of human stature in one lifetime because of a single tumor that flipped from under-producing to over-producing growth hormone.
If he had been born just seventy years later:
- Blood tests would have caught the tumor in his early 20s.
- Medications like octreotide or pegvisomant would have blocked the excess hormone.
- Modern endoscopic surgery would have removed the tumor with minimal risk.
He would almost certainly have lived a normal life at normal (or only slightly above-average) height.
Instead, Adam Rainer became the most dramatic real-life demonstration of what happens when the master gland goes catastrophically wrong — a man whose body grew so fast that it destroyed itself trying to keep up.
Rest in peace, Adam. Your story is one of the strangest, saddest, and most educational in all of medical history.
