610 Ulisse Aldrovandi

not at all twisted; and thus the fleshy appendages somewhat resembled the beard of a satyr.

This creature had a single thorax, belly, and navel, but possessed four arms and as many legs, as well as swelling breasts. The rear arms were so short that their fingers could barely reach the elbows of the front arms. The other lower limbs, being doubled, were positioned diametrically opposite one another; consequently, the buttocks and anuses were located on the sides of the monster. The female sex was distinct, such that a double female was represented by this monster. Indeed, the parts below the navel were so perfectly formed by Nature that they filled onlookers with wonder. Upon dissecting the cadaver, the internal organs were found to be doubled, except for the heart. This monster was born in the seventh month of pregnancy, just as it is depicted in Figure II.

To these monsters, we must add those in which a perfect body carries another imperfect one, since these are undoubtedly born together. Since two bodies are governed under a single head in these cases, they should not be separated from this category. Therefore, we first present a male infant and a two-bodied female, in which the second body seems to be hidden, in a way, under the arm of the first; on one side of the monster, three arms hang down, while on the other, there is only one, as can be seen in Figure III.

Plater also mentions in his own observations a human monster of this type, from which hung another human complete in all parts except for the head. Furthermore, whenever the perfect man urinated, the imperfect one similarly released urine, although the anus was closed and appeared nowhere.

Not differing from this was a monstrous Illyrian boy, six years old, in good health and excellently built. As Amatus Lusitanus reports, he came to Ancona in the year 1552. From his navel, hanging toward the chest, was another small infant body with two arms and two feet, but without a head. It had a scrotum without testicles, appearing as an elongated prepuce through which urine trickled. Indeed, whenever the healthy boy urinated, urine suddenly flowed through this passage of the imperfect boy. He was a source of such great wonder to everyone that his parents collected a large amount of money throughout all of Italy.

This boy was perhaps not very different from the two-bodied, single-headed monster described by Benivieni. He wrote: "A certain woman named Alexandra came from Milan to Florence, who displayed twin males for profit. One was complete in his whole body and distinct limbs; the other, however, was so attached to the first's chest that his entire head seemed to have been inserted there, while the rest of his body was separate from the other, in the manner of an infant sucking at a breast."

Marcello Virgilio also describes, in his commentaries on Dioscorides, a monster brought from France to Italy. It was an imperfect, headless body emerging somewhat from the region of the stomach of another perfect boy, and it moved according to the senses and needs of the healthy child. For this reason, Giambattista della Porta admits in his *Natural Magic* that he saw a monster in Naples from whose chest another complete infant emerged, with only the head retained within the belly of the man’s chest. Furthermore, according to a faithful report preserved by the distinguished Ovidio Montalbani—a man adorned with every branch of learning—on May 11, 1615, a Spanish youth arrived in Bologna who carried under his armpit an infant complete in all its limbs except for the head, which appeared to be hidden within the youth’s thorax.

However, in the preceding year—namely 1514—according to Lycosthenes, in the town of Colmar (an imperial town in Alsace situated on the river Ill), a male infant was born from whose chest another small infant body, complete in all its limbs, hung down to the knees, with only the head hidden in the body of the larger infant, as shown in Figure IV.

Additionally, from the same Lycosthenes: in the year 1519, a man of mature age came from Savoy to Switzerland, of sound form and with all his limbs correctly constituted. From the region of his stomach hung another human body, lacking only the head and arms, which in the other's belly