Even Saint Augustine says that he knew of a child born in
the Orient who, from the belly up, was in all parts double.
The first evidences of a step toward classification and definite
reasoning in regard to the causation of monstrosities were
evinced by Ambroise Pare in the sixteenth century, and though his
ideas are crude and some of his phenomena impossible, yet many of
his facts and arguments are worthy of consideration. Pare
attributed the cause of anomalies of excess to an excessive
quantity of semen, and anomalies of default to deficiency of the
same fluid. He has collected many instances of double terata from
reliable sources, but has interspersed his collection with
accounts of some hideous and impossible creatures, such as are
illustrated in the accompanying figure, which shows a creature
that was born shortly after a battle of Louis XII, in 1512; it
had the wings, crest, and lower extremity of a bird and a human
head and trunk; besides, it was an hermaphrodite, and had an
extra eye in the knee. Another illustration represents a
monstrous head found in an egg, said to have been sent for
examination to King Charles at Metz in 1569. It represented the
face and visage of a man, with small living serpents taking the
place of beard and hair.
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