then there is a great danger that the limbs will be produced in the fetus without any order.

Furthermore, in the formation of the parts of a fetus, Nature is sometimes hindered by the viscidity and sluggishness of the matter, preventing her from assigning each limb its proper place. For tenacious matter is divided only with difficulty, and thus a strong formative power acts upon matter even if it is not located in its correct seat; for a natural agent always works upon the material provided to endow it with the required form, even if that material has been shifted from its destined location.

THE MULTIPLICATION OF ARMS IN MONSTERS

It has been observed that Nature sometimes multiplies the arms in fetuses among various monsters brought into the light of day. First, we must recall the fetus described previously, born in the district of Zurich in the year 1536, as the historian Conrad Lycosthenes related. It was indeed equipped with three arms and as many feet; although it later had two heads, it was very similar to the one that appeared six years ago among the Swiss in the village of Gossau.

Indeed, Julius Obsequens recorded in his chronicles that during the consulship of P. Crassus and M. Juventius, a fetus endowed with three arms emerged from a woman’s womb. Jakob Rüff, in his short work on the conception and generation of man, also mentions a boy provided with three arms and as many feet who, as Roman history relates, was born in Venafrum; the likeness of this fetus is shown in Figure I.

What is more? Histories record that sometimes infants have been seen with four arms. We have gathered from Lycosthenes that in the year 162 BC, an infant of the Sedicinian theater was seen with four arms and as many feet. Although others, such as Johann Georg Schenck, read that this boy was born at Teanum during the consulship of M. Marcellus and P. Sulpitius. Likewise, from the account of Julius Obsequens, in the year 160 BC, during the consulship of T. Gracchus, antiquity beheld and marveled at a birth marked by four arms. Again, in the year 133 BC, a boy was born to a handmaid with four arms and as many feet, according to Lycosthenes.

Furthermore, in the year 1389, in Italy, according to Lycosthenes, an infant with four arms and as many feet was seen, who, after being sprinkled with the waters of the celestial bath of baptism, immediately expired. This monstrous boy perhaps corresponds to the one said to have been born in Italy at the time when the Venetians and Genoese entered into a treaty. In another instance, in the year 1413, a girl was seen, though she was two-headed and endowed with four arms and as many feet, who drew the breath of life in Northern Bavaria between the Danube and the Alemanus rivers.

Near Esslingen on the Neckar, in the year 1528, according to the history of Lycosthenes, a monstrous infant was observed with four arms and as many feet. Indeed, in the following year, as Giovanni Pontano noted—specifically, in the year 1529, on the ninth of January—a woman in Germany gave birth to a male infant with four arms and as many feet. Jakob Rüff, the Swiss surgeon, relates having seen another similar to this one, provided with both male and female genitals, of the form delineated in Figure II.

Likewise, according to Jakob Rüff, in England, in the year 1552, not far from Oxford, a two-headed boy was born with four arms and a single belly. Again, on the twenty-seventh day of December in the year fifteen hundred and