Emblematic monsters : The description and interpretation of human birth defects in Europe, 1500-1700

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 theolog ical 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 reintroduction 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