Emblematic Monsters: the Description and Interpretation of Human Birth
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Emblematic M onsters: the Description and Interpretation o f Human Birth D efects in E u r o p e , 1500-1700 Alan William Bates MD thesis The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London 2002 ProQuest Number: U642009 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U642009 Published by ProQuest LLC(2015). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 A tin-glazed earthernmtre botd, Italian c. 1315, depictrngfetnak conjoined twins A b s t r a c t Human birth defects - ‘monstrous births’ - were described in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe in popular prints, in books of wonders and of natural philosophy, and, towards the end of this period, in the journals of learned societies. Many descriptions emphasised the ambiguous status of monstrous births with respect to categories such as male/female, single/twin, and animal/human. They were ‘unnatural’ occurrences in the sense that they were outside the normal course of nature, and as such they were considered to be evidence of divine intervention in natural processes. Monstrous births were linked with contemporaneous events - of which they were held to be signs - but they were not used to portend the future, as they had been in the classical world. Their links with divine providence and their ambiguous form made them suitable emblems for theological instruction - both monsters and emblems could, almost by definition, be interpreted in more than one way. Protestants used monstrous births as signs of ‘Gods handiwork in wonders’ and Catholics saw them as emblematic of a creation that was ‘good, common, regular and orderly’. The réintroduction by Fortunio Liceti and others of the classical idea of monstrous births as slips of nature undermined both their place in arguments for divine intervention and their use as moralising emblems. The monster as a mistake was reinterpreted as a defect or malformation - something that was not as it ought to be. The collecting of cases (both in museums and in case reports) also ‘naturalised’ monstrous births - no phenomenon subjected to the attentions of so many observers could retain its attributes of rarity and wonder. The concept that nature could fail to achieve its ends found expression in new theories that non-human offspring could arise from human semen or foetuses through degeneration. Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s Abstract page 2 List of illustrations 5 Foreword 7 Chapter 1 - The uses of monstrous births 8 Signs and symbols 15 Collecting and classifying 19 One-in-two 21 Against nature 24 Reading the monster of Ravenna 26 Truth under the veil 31 Chapter 2 - Broadsides and other ephemeral literature 35 Broadsides 35 Resembling sins - monstrous births as moralising emblems 40 Chapter 3 - Books 50 Books of wonders 50 Stephen Batman’s Doome 55 The divine works of God 57 Medicine and natural philosophy 60 De monstrorum 64 4 - Learned societies and journals 68 Miscellanea Curiosa 69 ThePhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 73 The Journal des Savans 77 Theses and sermons 79 A farrago of medical curiosities 83 5 - Classifying monsters 89 Definitions 89 Monsters and prodigies 90 Finding fault with nature 94 Classifications 95 Mingling of seed 103 Agnes Bowker’s cat 108 Maternal impressions 112 Physical causes 114 Collections 116 6 - From the womb to the tomb 121 Deliveiy 121 Baptism 125 Exhibition 127 Dissection 137 The sooterkin 143 Infanticide 148 7 - Interpretation 152 Conjoined twins 154 Parasitic twins 158 Fetus amorphous 159 Craniofacial malformations 160 Multiple congenital malformations 162 Urogenital malformations 168 Conclusion 169 Appendix 1 - Descriptions of human birth defects 1500-1700 174 Appendix 2 - Birth defects in scholarly periodicals to 1700 214 Appendix 3 - François Bouchard’s ^Infantemctnstroso... ’ (1672) 219 Appendix 4 - Monstrous births from the book literature 221 Appendix 5 - A bibliography of broadsides and pamphlets on the subject of monstrous births, 1500-1700 222 Bibliography 228 Illustrations 252 L is t o f Illustrations Frontispiece - A tin-glazed earthemware bowl, Italian c. 1515, depicting female conjoined twins. Fig. 1 - The title page of Aldrovandi’s Mcmstromn Historia (1642). His ermine robe and crown of wisdom convey an impression of high social status as well as scholarly distinction. Fig. 2 - Left, a monster attributed to the sin of sodomy (Appendix 1, 1547b); right, Luther’s monk-calf. Illustrations from Schott’s Physica Qmosa (1667). Fig. 3 - The placenta as the rose of Jericho, a plant used in difficult labours, from Johan von Room’s Jorde-Gtmima (1697). Fig. 4 - The evolution of the monster of Ravenna as illustrated in Schott’s Physica Cwiosa (1667, p. 614). The figure on the top left represents the ‘original’ form of the monster - two lower limbs, male external genitalia, and a leopard’s face. The version top right is the one that established itself in the later literature. Note that the monster has become an hermaphrodite, symbolised by the depiction of both male and female genitaha. Fig. 5 - Lilith, as depicted in the Burney rehef. Fig. 6 - ‘a manne chylde, having three armes, three legges and very terrible to beholde’ (Batman, 1581). Fig. 7 - An anonymous broadside of 1562 describing a monstrous child (Appendix 1, 1562a). Features of maceration include skin slippage, skull deformation, and a ‘skeletal’ appearance of the limbs. Fig. 8 - Conjoined twins (Appendix 1, 1511b). Parapagus tribrachius tetrapus - an anatomical impossibility produced from a misunderstood description. HoUmder 1921, p. 77. Fig. 9 - Title page of Liceti’s D eM onstm nm (Padua, 1634). Fig. 10 - Thoracopagus twins born in Heidelburg (Appendix 1, 1544b). Although they lived a day and a half they are shown much older, embracing one another. HoU^der 1921, p. 345. Fig. 11 - An intagho engraving from Riolan’s thesis. The anatomised twins are shown ahve (Appendix 1, 1605). C is the stomach, E the liver, and F the heart. Fig. 12 - A macerated child with a large encephalocoele and bilateral cleft lip, and a locust’s wing bearing a Hebrew inscription {Misœüanea Curiosa^ 1690). Fig. 13 - Daemones. In the centre, a monster bom at Krakow (Appendix 1, 1547b). To the right is Melanchthon’s ‘popish ass’ and to the left a child with the head of a rabbit. Liceti, De Monstromri, 1665, p. 256, adapted from an illustration in Lycosthenes’ Proâi^jamm. Fig. 14 - Specimens from Ruysch’s collection. Fig. 15 - One of Ruysch’s dioramas showing foetal skeletons grieving (they have handkerchiefs of placental membranes) over disordered human remains. A m&mTto m onto the layman, for the anatomist this scene celebrates the capacity of preserved human material to evade the degradations of time. Fig. 16 - Cephalothoracopagus janiceps twins bom at Genoa (Appendix 1, 1555a) and delivered by embryotomy. They are, by convention, depicted as if living. Boaistuau, Histoires Prodi^mses, fol. 142% Fig 17 - A stillbirth at Heisagger, Denmark, ‘which the Painter, who 3 Days after it was dead, did draw... ’ From Philosophical Transactions y o \. 14 (1684), pp. 599-600. Fig. 18 - Separation of conjoined twins {Misœüanea Qmosa, 1689). Fig. 19 - Two views of cephalothoracopagus janiceps asymmetros twins (Appendix 1, 1578a). One twin has an abdominal hemia sac (or just possibly a sacral teratoma). Hollander 1921, p. 353. Fig. 20 - An engraving of a child with tetraphocomelia. Note, in addition to the features described by Bouchard (see Appendix 3), cryptorchidism and micrognathia. Fig. 21 - Woodcut of a ‘mishapen child’ bom to ‘an adulteresse named Annis Figge,’ from Batman’s The Doome Warning A ll Men to the Judgment 1581, p. 415. Fig. 22 - A warning to England. An anonymous English broadside of 1568 (Appendix 1, 1568b). Trisomy 13 is a possible diagnosis. Fig. 23 - Ischiopagus tetrabrachius tripus conjoined twins (Appendix 1, 1552b). Fenton, Certaine Secrete Wonders o f Natw e... 1569, fol. 141r. Fig. 24 - A hirsute cyclops (Appendix 1, 1568a). Fenton, Certaine Secrete Wonders o f Nature... 1569, fol. 146r. Fig. 25 - Three views of a cyclopic female. Based on a life drawing, this engraving includes details such as the absent philtrum, but locates an additional eye in the posterior fontanelle, llceti, I k Monstrorum, 1634, p. 132. Fig. 26 - The head of an anencephalic (Appendix 1, 1646), with drawings of the bones of the skull base. These skeletal preparations would have taken some time to produce. Hofmann, Miscellanea Curiosa vol. 2 (1671), p. 60. Fig. 27 - Parapagus tribrachius dipus illustrated in Miscellanea curiosa vol. 3 (1672), p. 254 (Appendix 1, 1658). They are recognisably dead. Abbreviations BL British Library NBG Nouvelle Biographie Générale OED Oxford English Dictionary F o r e w o r d My decision to restrict this study to Europe has excluded a few cases reported by settlers in the New World, only one of which seemed to me to provide significant extra information, and for which I have made an exception. For the rest of the world, I can only say that I have been unable to locate descriptions of monstrous births from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries outside Europe and that colleagues from the Middle East, India, the West Indies and South-East Asia have not been aware of any such reports in the literature of their own countries.