400 Ulisse Aldrovandi

flow through many other places, endowed with those properties mentioned by the Philosopher in the aforementioned passage.

To dismantle the second argument, we assert that it is a false assumption that the power of imagination operates only at the very beginning of the fetus's generation. Experience teaches the opposite: this imaginative force flourishes and operates throughout the entire period of gestation. The cravings of pregnant women, which stem from the imagination, persist in imprinting various forms on the fetus throughout the pregnancy. Furthermore, the imagination only concurs in the generation of fetuses when the senses are active.

With these foundations laid, the third argument proposed by our opponents collapses. We concede that the power and soul of the seed are not merely vegetative, but we also assert that the spirits of the imagination are joined to it. As for the claim that parents are so distracted by intense pleasure during intercourse that they are devoid of any imagination, it must be noted that this contradicts Aristotle's teaching. Although Aristotle himself acknowledged great pleasure in sexual union, he also testified in his *Problems* that a person’s mind is most often varied and shifting during the act. Thus, other arguments also fail, as we have previously shown that imagination is not the sole cause of the variety in fetal parts, nor should it be regarded as a necessary condition in all generations. Finally, following Aristotle's doctrine, we do not admit that a birth similar to a beast—such as a dog coming from a woman—is a perfect dog.

To the factors mentioned above, we should add the power of demons, which we discussed earlier in the section on causes. Beyond this, the Supreme Architect of all things can perform these and many other feats outside the normal order of Nature.

ON NATURE’S ERRORS in the Formation of the Head. Chapter III.

We have always expressed the strongest approval for the method used by Schenck in recording Nature's defects across various fetuses. By starting with the head and diligently examining every part, he follows an order we shall not abandon here. Thus, when Nature is hindered and falls away from the straight path of generation, she sometimes adds no head at all to the fetus formed in the womb; at other times, she shapes several heads on a single subject, as if she wished to reintroduce the likes of Janus or Geryon into the world.

Occasionally, she grants a fetus only one head, but one so unlike the subject that—to use the language of logicians—it constitutes an entirely different species; for the entire head may belong to a different kind of animal. In other cases, if Nature does not change the type of head, she still forms it in an altered state: defiled by various clefts and spots, filled with teeth at the very start of life, or marked with the ears of another animal, bringing no small amount of wonder to those who behold it.

Regarding the first case, Ctesias of Cnidus recorded in his *Persian History* that Roxane, the wife of Cambyses, gave birth to a boy lacking a head. Upon seeing this, the Magi prophesied that this birth was a prodigy, signifying that because of the missing head, no one would rule after Cambyses. Similarly, in 1525, as reported by Lycosthenes, a headless boy was born in Wittenberg. Furthermore, in the year 1554, an infant emerged from a human womb without a head, but with the appearance of eyes expressed on its chest—a case recorded by Job Fincelius in his work on the miracles of our time. Likewise, on the first day of November in 1560, a headless girl was born at Villefranche in Gascony, whose image we provide here