A History of Monsters, 637.

found a single heart, a single lung, and a single stomach, along with a double liver and four kidneys.

A not dissimilar, but more recent, birth of a monster occurred in Reggio in November 1615. This was a two-bodied monster of both sexes; there were twins—one black and one white—joined at the belly and chest with a single navel. In all other respects they were perfectly formed, and they appeared to be locked in a mutual embrace. They lived for only three hours. Illustration IV shows this embrace and connection.

In July of that same year in Bologna, two conjoined twin girls were born dead and were subsequently dissected. At first glance, their external parts were completely formed and did not differ in the least from normal, healthy limbs, with the sole exception of the chest, which was single and shared between them. Their union began at the breastbone and ended at the navel. Both bodies were of the same size, but their shapes differed.

The girl on the right side seemed to be pressed into the other, causing the chest of one and the back of the other to curve. This physical configuration was the cause of their weakness; one was born dead while the other emerged alive. The structure of the umbilical vein was also unusual: it was single at its origin, as in any normal fetus, but as it approached the liver, it divided into two branches, each of which entered a twin to provide nourishment.

The liver was actually double, though to anyone not inspecting it closely, it appeared as one, for one part lay hidden beneath the other. There were two gallbladders located on the upper part of the liver. Likewise, there were two stomachs, which then joined into a single jejunum near the pylorus. The kidneys were not joined but separate, though each twin had a pair. One kidney lay near the side of the liver, and the other was hidden beneath it. There was only one spleen, visible only in the left-hand fetus, which resembled the shape of a dog's spleen rather than a human one. The colon lacked its usual pouches. The diaphragm was perforated in two places because there were two esophagi leading to the two stomachs.

The bones of the sternum—the site where the fetuses were joined—were so knitted together that they appeared to be a single bone. There was only one pericardium, which nevertheless enclosed two hearts. Their positioning was quite unusual: while in all humans the apex of the heart points downward, in these twins the apexes of the hearts faced each other.

If we now return to older records, we find an entry from the year 1540. According to Peucer in his *Teratoscopia*, a twin birth occurred in Louvain in April of that year. The infants were joined at the heads, specifically at the back of the skull, but were perfectly formed in all other parts, as can be seen in Illustration V.

In August 1550, in the territory of Abbot Ursinus in the village of Reiden—three miles from the town of Kaufbeuren in Swabia—the wife of a blacksmith gave birth to twin girls who were perfect in every part but joined from the belly all the way to the neck. Again, in March 1553, in Herbsleben, a village in Thuringia, twin girls were born joined at the bellies; they died two hours after birth.

Furthermore, in the year 1572, as reported by Ambroise Paré, female infants were born in July in the small town of Ponts-de-Cé near Angers. They were perfectly formed in all limbs, except that the hand of one had only four fingers. The fetuses were joined along their front sides from the chin down to the navel, which they shared, as they did the heart and a liver divided into four lobes. They lived for half an hour and are depicted in Illustration VI.

The following year, on October 6, 1573, according to the observations of Cornelius Gemma, a prodigious pair of twin girls was born. They were perfectly formed in all parts within the womb, but their chests and lower jaws were so grown together that they appeared to share a single bone. They died an hour and a half after birth. When the bodies were opened, it was found that each had her own heart in its distinct place—quite the opposite of what has been found in many other monsters of this kind. Their likeness is shown in Illustration VII.