Monstrous birth

Overview

An early reference to monstrous birth is in the apocryphal biblical text 2 Esdras, where it is linked to menstruation: "women in their uncleanness will bear monsters." Often placed in a religious context, monstrous births are frequently interpreted as signs and symbols, as evidenced in the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle. According to David Hume's The Natural History of Religion, they are among the first signs that arouse the barbarian's interest. Monstrous human births raise questions about the difference between humans and animals, and anthropologists have described varying interpretations of and behaviors toward such births. Among the East African Nuer people, monstrous births are dealt with in a way that restores the division between humans and animals: "the Nuer treat monstrous births as baby hippopotamuses, accidentally born to humans, and, with this labelling, the appropriate action is clear. They gently lay them in the river where they belong."

The nature of monstrous births—whether natural, unnatural, or supernatural—remained a topic of discussion. Saint Augustine argued that nothing "done by the will of God could be contrary to nature," while Thomas Aquinas considered some miracles to be against nature.

Medieval explanations

Reasons for monstrous births given in early medieval penitentials (concerned with sexual sin) and thirteenth-century medical texts (concerned with physical purity) include pollution through menses and intercourse during menstruation. Such explanations appear in many medieval literary texts, including Jean Maillart's fourteenth-century Roman du Comte Anjou and Geoffrey Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale.

Early modern explanations

Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century medical texts, which treat pregnancy as a disease, suggest that monstrous births may result from the mother's sickness or distress. They also perpetuate the myth of intercourse (bestial or otherwise) during pregnancy as a cause. The mother's role is paramount, with the presupposition being the possibility of emotional transference from mother to fetus, referred to as the "theory of the maternal imagination":

According to most of the authors of the sixteenth through early eighteenth centuries, an expectant mother's cravings, desires, and experiences—especially experiences that aroused strong passions such as fear and lust—were capable of directly inscribing themselves upon the body of the fetus, producing deformities and monstrosities that retained the semantic content of the original impression.

Simultaneously, an epistemological shift occurred, changing monstrous births from "signs to facts". These births were now often publicized in pamphlets and broadsides and became subjects of scientific investigation, with the early sixteenth century seeing an "apparent upsurge of interest in monstrous births".