# History of Monsters, 457

...born of the wife of a certain gardener in the month of September in the year 1584. This boy lived for two hours; he lacked a nose, but on his forehead he bore two testicles along with a portion of flesh mimicking a penis. Furthermore, each of the infant’s hands was endowed with six fingers, and while his front side represented the male sex, his back represented the female.

Additionally, in the third part of the *History of Portuguese India*, we read that it is rare in those regions for offspring to be born marked by any deformity. Nevertheless, at one time, a mile away from Piratininga, a monstrous girl was born who had a nose extending all the way to her chin, and her mouth was visible beneath the chin. Her father, however, buried his daughter alive—a form of death they typically use to punish those believed to be tainted by the suspicion of adultery.

Let what has been said so far regarding repulsive and excessively prominent noses suffice. Now we must discuss monstrous fetuses born with open nostrils. Indeed, according to Lycosthenes, in the year 1556, around the Easter solemnities, a boy was born in Basel with nostrils so wide that onlookers could easily see the infant's brain through them, just as Illustration VII shows.

Now, a few things should be reported regarding ears. Infants have been found born without ears, as happened in Basel according to Lycosthenes, where a male fetus lacking ears was born in September 1556. In place of ears, two small slits appeared, but they were so closed up that the boy could hear nothing. The infant lived in poor health until August, at which time he died, racked by severe pains.

Furthermore, human fetuses are occasionally born with the ears of a beast. The famous Columbus confesses in his book on anatomy that he observed a fetus of this kind. Later, in Königsberg in 1593, a male infant was born with a hare’s ear and a portion of flesh like a cap, as Schenck noted. Likewise, at Eusigius in the new lands near the banks of the Danube, a monster was seen with a human face and the ears of a donkey.

Again, in a suburban villa of Krakow, in November 1494, a woman (as Lycosthenes recounts) gave birth to a fetus distinguished by hare-like ears; Illustration VIII reveals the true likeness of this monster.

Human fetuses are also born with their heads disfigured by horns. Amatus Lusitanus mentions a boy born with a small horn on his head; as the boy grew, the horn grew as well. The boy begged his father to remove it from his head because the other children called him "the horned one." The reader may find the rest of this story in the section on Ailments of the Head in the first chapter of this book.

Later, in Chieri in the Piedmont region, specifically in January 1577, a monstrous boy was born with a head marked by five horns, and a certain mass of flesh hung from the back of his head, which will be discussed in its proper place. Likewise, in the town of Radstadt, located in the Norican Alps (which the inhabitants call the Tauern), a horned infant was born in the year of our Lord 1551, as Figure IX shows.

In the village of Dammenwalde in the March, near Wittstock, the wife of a certain farmer gave birth to a monstrous offspring—namely, a horned one—which Fincelius described as follows, as reported by Lycosthenes. The infant's whole body was a chestnut-brown color, the head was endowed with rather long horns, the eyes were thick and without a nose, and the mouth was quite wide, in the middle of which a white, quadrangular tongue could be seen. The head was attached to the shoulders without a neck. Furthermore, the entire body was swollen and wrinkled, with an arm attached to the loins; the feet were long and slender, and finally, a sort of thick intestine hung from the navel down to the feet, as the reader can contemplate in Illustration X.

To provide further confirmation of the preceding accounts, I have chosen to add another human monster endowed with the horns of a ram, which was brought from France to Italy. It lacked a forehead and a neck, and the lower jaw was joined to the breastbone. Its head had ears and horns, but the horns resembled the shape of a ram’s horns, as Illustration XI demonstrates.

Before we move on to other monstrous parts of fetuses, something must be said about the lips