TWO-headed men and bearded women, giants and dwarves and people with goat's horns and ogres who feast off decomposing corpses are among the oddities who parade through the pages of a new book by a Gwent author.

If Jan Bondeson were a journalist his new book, The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square and other Medical Marvels, would no doubt have been criticised as tasteless, but Bondeson is a doctor and thus able to proceed under the carapace of medical respectability.

If there are problems of taste or decency, this book suggests, it is our problem and not that of the unfortunates who are held up for our inspection, apart from the real crackpots who dwell in the book's final pages.

Jan Bondeson lives with his thousands of books and research papers in a pleasant part of Newport. Swedish by birth, he is a senior lecturer and consultant at the University of Wales College of Medicine.

He is cheerfully undeterred by subjects that might be thought macabre, having written books about the forerunner and possible role model for London's Jack the Ripper, and another work entitled Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear.

"There have been some horrible books written, most recently about Julia Pastrana, the bearded woman," he says.

"Some of these books are little better than if the subjects had been exhibited in a freak show. I feel, though, that I should mention an American writer, Frederick Drimmer, who has approached the subject with sensitivity.

"One has to feel for some of these terribly disfigured people, who often went along with their exploiters. One such person, Jo-Jo, who had a doglike face, barked and whined and snapped like a dog for visitors to a freak sideshow."

Jan Bondeson began his researches while still working in Sweden and continued them in the UK, visiting such august establishments as the Royal College of Surgeons for data.

Extreme deformities such as horned human, dicephalic (conjoined) twins, extreme hairiness or faces resembling those of dogs or pigs are rare, but occur with the same frequency as in previous centuries, he says.

"But we now think of their afflictions as outside things which do not reflect upon their personalities. We have simply become more civilised," he added.

The Pig-Faced Lady of Manchester Square and Other Medical Marvels is published by Tempus at £20. 116 illustrations (18 colour).