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Interestingly, Par\u00e9\u2019s sixteenth-century sensibility about the cause of monstrous birth was still present and highly debated in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Joseph Duverney, professor of anatomy (1648-1730), considered monstrosity a problem of divine origin\u2014and divine wrath. Physician Nicholas Lemery (1645-1715), by contrast, believed in accidental origins and Jacques Winslow (1669-1760) suggested \u201caccidental causes could mask metaphysical [that is, divine] forces.\u201d[1] Other major thinkers of the period\u2014from Nicolas Malebranche to Denis Diderot\u2014returned to this question in philosophical works. Malebranche (member of the Acad\u00e9mie Royale des Sciences) published Tractatus de inquisitione veritatis in 1753. The text, which was translated into English and reprinted throughout the 18th century, was critical to popularizing the idea that mother imagination could cause birth defects\u2014a devastating assumption also present in Par\u00e9, who claimed \u201cmonsters should not live among us,\u201d as they could imprint upon the \u201cfruit\u201d of pregnant women because of the \u201cideas which might remain in their imaginative faulty, over the form of so monstrous a creature.\u201d[2] Two devastating consequences arise from this philosophy. The first is the estrangement and banishment of the malformed individual (and Par\u00e9 includes among these those who have been marred by accident or illness as well). Such points continue to be made into the eighteenth century; a letter published in The Political State, February 1731, suggests the banishment of beggars, who must surely affect the developing fetus\u2014and delicate feelings\u2014of pregnant women.[3] The second consequence, however, is of longer standing: that is, the continued culpability of mothers in the malformation of their children. Enlightenment medicine did much to elucidate the complexities of generation and birth, particularly as to anatomy, but it did little to dispel the lingering horror of the monster birth\u2014or to curb its enthusiastic reception among a reading public curious for marvels.<\/p>\n
Ruth Perry reports on a number of \u201cmonster\u201d birth cases in the 18th century, including one about a dead infant being half-consumed by live snakes. It was printed in\u00a0The Weekly Journal or British Gazatteer<\/i>\u00a0on October 20th, 1722.[4] However, it is in fact a re-telling (with embellishment) from Par\u00e9\u2019sMonsters and Marvels<\/i>. In Par\u00e9\u2019s account, the child \u201chad a live snake attached to its back, who was gnawing on this little dead creature\u201d.[5] But Par\u00e9 was citing Lycosthenes from 1494, and for all we know, Lycosthenes was reporting a marvel earlier still. The same may be said of the 365 children of Countess of Hennebrg, 1276; whether fabrication or the result of hydatidiform mole, the story of her miraculous brood was still being circulated well into later centuries\u2014even appearing in broadsheet ballad form as \u201cThe Lamenting Lady.\u201d[6] The eighteenth century account of the dead-baby-live-snakes improvises as well, not in form so much as character. The account in the British Gazatteer introduces new agents\u2014a frightened female midwife, and a valiant husband who kills the snakes. In any case, these stories of monster births are perhaps most marvelous for their ability to fire the imagination of successive generations of readers\u2014each adding to it that which was appropriate to their particular historical moment.<\/p>\n
In part three, I will talk about the lingering use of Par\u00e9’s work in the latter 18th and early 19th century… And a different sort of “monster” birth: thenaissance\u00a0<\/i>of Gothic fiction.
\n____________________________<\/p>\n\n
About Brandy Schillace<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\nA medical humanist, literary scholar and writer of Gothic fiction, Dr. Brandy Schillace spends her time in the mist-shrouded alleyways between medical history and literature. She is the Managing Editor,\u00a0Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry<\/i>\u00a0and has worked as an assistant professor of literature. She also leads interdisciplinary conferences abroad for IDnet and spends a lot of her time in museums and medical libraries.<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n[1] \u201cThe 18th Century: Monsters as a Battleground\u201d
\n[2] Par\u00e9, 9.
\n[3] \u201cA Further Account of Advises from Foreign Parts.\u201d The Political State, Vol 41. (London: Jan-June, 1731), 161.
\n[4] Perry, Ruth. \u201cThe Veil of Chastity.\u201d Sexuality in Eighteenth-Century Britain. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), 147.
\n[5] Par\u00e9, 58.
\n[6] Speert, Harold. Obstetrics and Gynecology: A History and Iconography, 3rd Ed. (New York: Parthenon Publishing Ltd.), 393-394<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week, I introduced the “monsters and marvels” of Ambroise Par\u00e9. This unique text is not a collection only (or even primarily) of cases witnessed by the good doctor. Such treatises also existed, and became more popular over time. Both Dr. William Smellie and Dr. William Hunter published extensively about their practices, and many doctors described difficult labors or unusual births. Par\u00e9’s 15th century text is, however, much more a compendium; he collects tales from afar, gathers anecdotes from ancient manuscripts and compiles accounts from myth and local legend. Parts of the book actually discuss strange animals from foreign climes,<\/p>\n
Continue reading… Monstrous History Part II: The \u201cGothic\u201d Influence of Ambroise Par\u00e9<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[429,111],"tags":[123,119,120,122,124],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artscimedia.case.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/39\/2013\/06\/25104251\/f5101-fig4.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5784,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions\/5784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsci.case.edu\/dittrick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/artscimedia.case.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/39\/2013\/06\/25104250\/e083f-fig5.jpg\")
Last week, I introduced the “monsters and marvels” of Ambroise Par\u00e9. This unique text is not a collection only (or even primarily) of cases witnessed by the good doctor. Such treatises also existed, and became more popular over time. Both Dr. William Smellie and Dr. William Hunter published extensively about their practices, and many doctors described difficult labors or unusual births. Par\u00e9’s 15th century text is, however, much more a compendium; he collects tales from afar, gathers anecdotes from ancient manuscripts and compiles accounts from myth and local legend. Parts of the book actually discuss strange animals from foreign climes, and there is a fairly accurate depiction of what we now know to be a skate or sting ray. To his readers, these accounts of marvels would be mystery as much as medicine.\u00a0 The image above left was one of the more verified accounts, and the man in the picture in his mid-forties. According to Par\u00e9, many came to see him–as they did other “marvels–and a number of “birth monsters” were put on display for money.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/artscimedia.case.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/39\/2013\/06\/25104251\/f5101-fig4.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/artscimedia.case.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/39\/2013\/06\/25104250\/8c940-fig7.jpg\")
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