History of Monsters. 507

... fallen out; for this monster shared both sexes, being male on the right side and female on the left.

A monster not much different from this was described by Lycosthenes, born in the town of Plauen in Voigtland in the year 1547. It was an infant lacking a belly; its intestines hung from the chest through the open body, and its navel appeared on the left shin. Furthermore, its feet slanted toward its head, and the head itself was pointed like a Persian tiara, just as it is depicted in Figure I.

Lycosthenes records another case of this kind that occurred in the year of the world 3859 (104 years before the birth of the Virgin) in Norcia. There, a noblewoman gave birth to twins: a girl with all her limbs intact, and a boy with an open belly so that his intestines were visible. He was solid in his posterior parts and died shortly after letting out a cry.

Johann Georg Schenck, the city physician of Haguenau in Alsace, observed another deformity of the belly in 1606 in the corpse of an infant who had survived for several days. From its first formation in the womb, it had a round, gaping hole reaching as far as the navel and penetrating to the innermost viscera of the belly—an open passage, as if it had been stabbed with a dagger, making for a marvelous sight. Because of this, food and waste flowed out immediately through this natural wound.

Upon opening the corpse, while the other parts were healthy, the body was found to lack a bladder and had an imperforate anus. When investigating the cause of this monstrous body, it was reported that the pregnant woman had been terrified by her husband pursuing her with a drawn sword. To avoid his angry assault, she had huddled in a corner of the house. This intense imagination of the mother toward the fetus could easily have imprinted the mark of a sword thrust into the belly; indeed, the way she contracted and compressed her body in the corner of the room likely caused the lack of a bladder and the imperforate anus.

Nor should we omit the thirty-year-old Burgundian man with a malformed belly, depicted in Figure II. While traveling abroad, he passed through Bologna in March 1640 and was kindly received as a guest at the Hospital of Saint Francis, where almost countless pilgrims stay every year while passing through. The illustrious Lord Vincenzo Tanari, a Bolognese patrician second to none in the study of the Muses and a diligent investigator of natural things, was visiting the hospital on official business. Noticing the deformity of this man's belly, he summoned the most excellent and learned men—Giovanni Agostino Cucchi, Pompeo Bolognetti, Giovanni Antonio Godi, Andrea Mariani, Bartolomeo Massari, my brother Giacinto Ambrosini, and Francesco Galletti—to witness this curious and monstrous sight. After these doctors of the philosophical and medical faculty, along with many medical students, had diligently inspected and examined the belly, they observed that everything present was explained in the letters patent from the doctors of the medical institution of the University of Aix, issued in the Royal Hall of the University on July 1, 1639. Thus, they judged it superfluous to add anything further, except for a few condylomas hanging from the lower belly. For this reason, it is worthwhile to recite those letters here; they are of the following tenor:

"We, the medical doctors and Royal Professors of the famous University of Aix, certify to all who shall see these writings that we have willingly examined Etienne Beauvois, of the Diocese of Bourges, with a sharp eye and mind in our medical school. The conformation of his belly, and especially his private parts, is clearly monstrous. Not only is the protruding mass of the entire abdomen not broken by any wrinkles of a navel, but at the very bottom of the belly, a vestige of a navel—not tied off, but as if covered by a scar—is seen adhering to the pubic bone. Fixed to the belly in the region of the bladder is a fleshy, fungus-like growth, though of quite exquisite sensitivity. It is a deep red color and permeated with hidden pores, through which urine drips continuously and imperceptibly. Whether this from the pro