Teratology: Monsters and Prodigies

Abstract

In considering teratology and congenital malformations, the problems of birth defects and monstrosities in humans and animals have attracted attention since earliest times. The question arises, how these anomalies were viewed during the period encompassed by this work, and the manner in which ideas evolved as to their genesis. In earlier times, congenital anomalies were regarded as of supernatural origin. Pictorial records of malformations were made long before man could write, and are to be found on ancient rock carvings. As a naturalist, Aristotle appears to have been the first to examine abnormalities and to view them as a natural biological phenomenon. The Roman scholar Pliny “the elder” (23–79) described many well-known examples, but did not distinguish between those monstrosities that were actual and those legendary. During the middle ages these were treated in the fullest spirit of superstition, and numerous relics of this genre survive. For the most part, human anomalies were believed to represent punishment from God, Divine wrath, or to have been conceived in the wombs of women who commerced with the devil. The belief that such monsters is a consequence of unnatural union between women and male animals, or between men and female animals, is a continued form of the satanic legend. As originally used, the word monster was not pejorative, but, derived from the Latin monere, to warn, and monstrum, prodigy or portent, indicated a demonstration of something worth viewing. Many held that monsters were a consequence of excess or insufficiency of semen within the womb. Alternatively, it was believed that they were a result of admixture of semen from different fathers. Another popular view had an epigenetic basis, that it was the mother’s imagination, from experiences or other influences during pregnancy, that eventuated in this outcome.