Margaret Atwood's "Lusus Naturae" is a story about a young girl who is diagnosed with porphyria. Porphyria is a group of diseases in which substance called porphyrins build up affecting the skin or nervous system. This in turn causes abdominal pain, chest pain, vomiting, and many more symptoms. This also causes severe disfiguration in the skin all over the body. In the story the girl suffers many mental and physical ailments because of the verbal abuse from her family and also from the villages of where she lived. Her family did not understand the disease which caused him to think that they were cursed. They ended up faking the girls death in order to get on with the rest of their lives and not have to worry about her anymore. She was given
