Hardiman Scalp wound

 Image: Top: Hardiman wearing wig and hat as a teenager to cover his scalp wound. Bottom: Hardiman’s scalp wound.

When Vertus Hardiman’s parents signed the consent form that allowed their five-year-old son partake in a “new form of ringworm treatment,” they had no idea they were signing their lovely son into misery.

In 1928, Hardiman and nine other children were taken from their small Indiana community to a nearby hospital and given high-dose radiation which turned out to be the new cure for ringworm that their parents were made to believe.

After their time in the hospital, they all complained of headaches followed by complete loss of the hairs on their scalp.

Vertus Hardiman was so irradiated that he developed a big open wound on his scalp that extended to his skull. He wore wig for the rest of his life to cover the incurable wound.

Vertus’s wound eventually became cancerous and ultimately ended his life at age 85. Only in his final years did he begin to speak out about the horrifying ordeal he endured and the agonizing pain he suffered every day. He entrusted his story to a close friend, Wilbert Smith. Together, they documented Vertus’s life story in a book and documentary film that unveiled the wound he hid from the world.