Welcome back to the Dittrick Museum Blog! Last week, we discussed some of the finer points of birth anomaly in the 18th century. Today, we will consider the ways in which Paré’s work influenced the writers of the nineteenth century!
As the Age of Enlightenment, the eighteenth-century promoted scientific and philosophical progress. By the latter part of the century, causation (in reproduction but also in relation to disease) had largely left Pare’s metaphysical behind in medical treatises—but it enjoyed renewed fervor in the popular press. Two broad categories of work regularly printed stories of monster birth. The first were collections...