Long Fingernails of Old

In a used book store years ago I ran across a modern reprint of a work originally published in 1896, Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, by George M. Gould, M.D., and Walter L. Pyle, M.D. There's a brief section on "anomalies of the nails." I quote from it a few brief excerpts:

Rayer mentions two nails sent to him by Bricheteau, physician of the Hôpital Necker, belonging to an old woman who had lived in the Salpétrière. They were very thick and spirally twisted, like the horns of a ram...

A woman by the name of Mélin, living in the last century in Paris, was surnamed "the woman with nails"; according to the description given by Saillant in 1776 she presented another and not less curious instance of the excessive growth of the nails.

Musaeus [Diss. de unguibus monstrosis, Hafniæ, 1716] gives an account of the nails of a girl of twenty, which grew to such a size that some of those of the fingers were five inches in length...

I doubt many of the cases related would be arousing, but they're of some historical interest, especially for those of us who want to know everything everything everything about long fingernails.

Those whose French is better than mine may find some interesting Google Book results for Mélin, la femme aux ongles.