402 Ulisse Aldrovandi

...communicated to Paré by the most excellent Fontanus of Agen, who affirmed that he had seen the monster himself. Around the region of the neck a hump protruded, and ears were visible above the shoulder blades. On the back, eyes and a snout like a proboscis appeared; when all these features were taken together, they represented the rudiments of eyes, a nose, and a sort of face. Otherwise, the rest of the female body was skillfully formed, except that the navel hung down a bit further than usual. The figure of this monster, drawn from both sides, displays all these characteristics.

This should cause us no amazement, since similar cases of births have been observed here in Bologna. In the year of our Lord 1431, near the Porta Maggiore in a small street called Torlione, a certain woman gave birth to a male child complete in all its limbs, followed immediately by a headless female lacking arms and legs, though a small orifice like a little mouth appeared in the neck region.

Again, in 1615, a woman who had previously been fertile but had not conceived for fifteen years finally became pregnant and gave birth to a fairly large headless boy. Where the neck usually sits, a mouth with teeth was seen, and on the opposite side, a membrane mimicking the meninges of the brain was visible. The midwife showed us this fetus, which possessed some degree of movement after being delivered from the womb.

Once more, in August 1624, in the territory of Bologna, a female monster was born whose neck featured eyes, a nose, and a mouth. At the top of the neck, softer flesh protruded like a pyramid. It lacked a tongue, larynx, esophagus, and lungs; in their place, certain small fleshy masses adhered to the ribs on both sides, while the rest of the parts were correctly formed.

However, when Ulrich, in the records of his voyage, reported that a race of headless people lives in the Kingdom of Guyana (located between Lake Cassise and the Parime marshes) with eyes and other facial features placed on their chests, we are not easily led to believe it, as this sounds more like a fable than the truth. Although Pliny the Elder, who lived in the time of Emperor Vespasian, writes in his *Natural History* that a race of headless people lives toward the west near Mount Milo in Asia, the reader should nevertheless refer to the heading regarding differences in the first chapter of this History for more on this difficult matter.

Now, if we inquire into the cause of a headless monster, it is not to be sought from maimed parents. Aristotle asserted that it is not always necessary for defective offspring to be procreated from maimed parents, since where the spiritual part of the father's seed is lacking to form a specific part, it can sometimes be assisted by the mother's seed. Furthermore, we should not believe that a headless monster was procreated by parents who themselves lacked heads. For the most part, however, authors agree that deformed monsters result from a lack of matter, provided that a large portion of the limb is not missing.

To this must be added the weakness of the formative power—though sometimes this happens neither from a lack of matter nor the weakness of the agent, but due to the confinement of space. Indeed, sometimes, even with all these causes set aside, such a monster is generated because the portion of matter destined for the form of a certain limb is either unsuitable or corrupted; in that case, no likeness of that limb appears in the birth. But this cause does not seem applicable to the aforementioned monster, since the rudiments of a face are visible on the chest.

Someone might say that a defective fetus is sometimes generated from perfect parents because the infant loses a part in the womb through the violence of some disease. But this is not provable, since the head is a primary part, and if it were corrupted or removed, the fetus would lose its life in the womb. Nor should we resort to the imagination in the generation of this monster, for however strong the power of the imagination may be, it cannot remove a portion of the matter existing in the womb. Therefore, it must be asserted that when the matter destined for the generation of the head is dissipated for some reason and transmitted to the chest, since the seminal matter always retains the power to generate that part for which it was originally intended, it follows that the rudiments of a face appear on the chest.