of the monthly flow, they would be produced in much greater numbers. For this reason, their birth is attributed to the equal vigor of the parents' seeds, as Boscio has excellently stated in his *Harmony of Philosophers and Physicians on Human Conception*. Indeed, according to the common and true opinion, these monstrous fetuses are said to derive the cause of their generation and form from an abundance of seminal material. When an equal portion of seminal matter is shed by each parent, the formative faculty—which always strives to shape something similar to itself—exerts itself with equal force upon both materials. Consequently, it is no surprise if both sexes are revealed in one and the same fetus.

# ON THE DEFECTIVE CONFORMATION OF THE FEET.

Chapter VI.

What we previously observed regarding the formation of the arms and hands must now be considered in the structure of the legs and feet. This is because Nature, when hindered in the shaping of these limbs, produces either no feet at all, diminished ones, doubled ones, or defiles them in some other way. Regarding the first case, history records that during the time of Mauritius—who reigned in the five hundred and seventy-eighth year after the Virgin’s birth—an infant was born without feet; the lower part of this fetus ended in a fish's tail (the illustration of which is to be found in the fourth chapter of this History). Haly Rodoham, in his commentaries on Galen’s medical art, confesses to having seen a living man without feet, and Schenck, in his *Observations*, mentions a girl without feet—which had fallen off due to the violence of a disease, though the torso remained unharmed—who later begged in the public streets. Likewise, as Roman history relates, an infant was born in the Picene territory who lacked legs and feet from the genitals down, ending instead in a sort of pyramidal cone. It was of the male sex, with all other parts perfectly formed. Finally, Rufus, in his work on human conception and generation, testifies to having seen infants mutilated by a defect of the limbs and lacking feet.

If we proceed through the sequence of years, we find that in the village of Nepritez, not far from the town of Wouterserf situated on the Moldau, an infant was born without feet in the year 1537, as Lycosthenes reports; this is shown in Illustration I.

Nicolaus Rocheus reports having seen a fetus not unlike this one on the eighth of February, 1541, in the Castle of Saint Amand-Alisay in the Bourbonnais region. Born to a well-known woman, it bore the likeness of a human from the head to the navel, but thereafter a tail in the manner of a siren was substituted for legs and feet; the monster is said to have lived for an hour after birth.

Furthermore, in the year 1552, at Windenbach (which is a mile from Schleusingen), Lycosthenes records that a monster was born to a woman, having the image of an infant but without legs and feet, in place of which a downward-pointing tip was produced; indeed, certain small points also protruded from the sides, as seen in Illustration II.

To this let us add a similar and horrific monster brought forth by a potter’s wife in the year 1556. From the crown of the head to the hips, it represented a human figure, though with a protruding mouth and a grim face. From the navel down, however, leaving behind the human form, it ended in a pyramidal shape