A History of Monsters. 461

it must be said, since those parts also occasionally acquire their own deformity. Some men are seen from time to time with lips so short that they cannot cover their teeth; indeed, Trincavelli relates that he observed some born with cleft lips who suffered significantly in their speech. Some were also born in Bologna with split lips; as adults, ashamed of the deformity, they found a cure and a joining of the open lips through the work of a surgeon. The surgeon used a blade to remove the surface flesh of the fissure and, by suturing the wound, fused the divided lips.

Occasionally, infants are born with deformed caruncles around the lips that disfigure the entire face of the fetus. Although many cases of this kind that occurred in Bologna could be recounted, one in particular stands out, recorded by Johann Georg Schenck. He describes a boy born in Haguenau, Alsace, in September 1608. This fetus was fully formed and perfect in every other part of its body, except that around the upper lip and the space between the nostrils, a monstrous piece of flesh had grown like a sort of proboscis. it resembled the shape of a sheep’s mouth, with the tongue protruding as if bleating. This monstrous flesh did not extend beyond the nose, but the rest of the upper lip was split on both sides. Consequently, when the boy wailed, with his mouth pulled apart and the "wings" of his upper lip gaping, he presented an astonishing sight to those watching. Furthermore, the nose was entirely fused to this growth, blocked and flattened, so that no path was open for him to draw in air; similarly, this monstrous flesh was a significant impediment to taking in nourishment.

Thus, when Schenck (who was a physician in Haguenau) inquired with the mother about the cause of this foul lip, he discovered that for many years she had been repulsed by those sheep heads that are publicly displayed for sale in markets with their tongues protruding. The occasion for this disgust was when she had seen the protruding tongue of a criminal who had been publicly beheaded. Therefore, her local memory—the retainer of all ideas—formed an analogy and linked that image of the beheaded man’s head to the bleating sheep heads she frequently saw at home with their tongues sticking out. Through the power of her imagination, the mother was then easily able to impress this image upon the fetus; for while she was pregnant, she had bought and eaten sheep heads, even though she already loathed them. The boy, marked by this foulness and named Johann Jacob, lived for a long time. We have chosen to recount the cause of this monstrous birth here, both because it arose from the manifest power of the imagination and because Schenck included it in his description.

Among monstrous heads deformed in the womb, we must also include those that are positioned as can be seen in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh illustrations. But for a better explanation of this matter, it is worth presenting the image of that infant who was born without a neck in Basel in August 1557, according to the account of Lycosthenes. While its other limbs were perfectly formed, only the face was monstrous: first, it did not rise above a neck because it lacked one, and the eyes were of enormous size, appearing as if located on the forehead.

Furthermore, the upper part of the head was missing from this fetus. On the back of the head, it had a hole like those surgeons are accustomed to prepare with a branding iron to create a fontanelle. From this, blood seeped out little by little; because of this, the infant's birth was quickly followed by its death. This monster is shown in Figure 12.

Next, it is worth presenting an image found in the public museum of a monstrous boy whose appearance emulated that of Bacchus. It was an embryo—an immature birth of five months—lacking both a neck and a forehead, with a very wide face. It is no wonder, then, that it was called *buzyos* by the most learned Ulisse Aldrovandi, since it represented the gaping mouth of an ox. This monster is shown from the front, back, and side in Figures 13, 14, and 15.

If Nature does form a neck in the fetus, it sometimes twists it so severely in the womb that the infant’s head cannot be raised at all. This is shown in the image of the boy born in 1542 in the Bohemian town of Bilsen, as recorded by Lycosthenes.

Indeed, due to the twisting of the neck, he bore the likeness of the crucified Christ; for the head to