Doing an image search doesn’t turn up this:
Yes, it’s a real disease (Harlequin-type ichthyosis) and has been known since 1750 when it was first described in the diary of a cleric from Charleston, South Carolina, the Rev. Oliver Hart:
On Thursday, April the 5th, 1750, I went to see a most deplorable object of a child, born the night before of one Mary Evans in ‘Chas’town. It was surprising to all who beheld it, and I scarcely know how to describe it. The skin was dry and hard and seemed to be cracked in many places, somewhat resembling the scales of a fish. The mouth was large and round and open. It had no external nose, but two holes where the nose should have been. The eyes appeared to be lumps of coagulated blood, turned out, about the bigness of a plum, ghastly to behold. It had no external ears, but holes where the ears should be. The hands and feet appeared to be swollen, were cramped up and felt quite hard. The back part of the head was much open. It made a strange kind of noise, very low, which I cannot describe. It lived about forty-eight hours and was alive when I saw it.
When you wake tonight screaming, you can thank me.
I’ve seen worse.
I’ve fapped to worse.
“most irreverent…”
ghastly. Reminds me of some of the things being born around Love Canal.
I have a practically Roman dread of prodigies.
Yeah, the Harlequin babies are sad. Most of them die straightaway, but I believe there are a few teenagers with the disease who have managed to stay alive with rather drastic several-times-a-day skin treatments.