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pages 25-28 of this twelfth issue of the Darwin College
Maga~ine.
IN QUEST OF MONSTERS
I deal with bodies which defied explanation and attracted -the wonder of the eye and the curiosjty of the mind.
Like the Iceland of Ortelius' siXleenth- .
century map, I am surrounded by creatures of striking shapes, monsters as they were most often called. The normal is reassuring like firm land, but the singular is challenging like the unpredictable sea and, to me, much more appe.aling.
Map of Iceland from Abrahamus Ortelius'
TheatrunzOrbisTerrorwll, Antwerp 1595
My regular encounters with the singular in nature come from research voyages to the old world of eighteenth-century Britain. So far ,my travels have enabled me to collect many instances of these strange occurrences. Yet, I 70
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am still exploring their meanings and uses in that period. I have gained some notions, but sometimes I feel that I will never achieve a clear understanding. The process of understanding implies choosing a path and leaving something important behind, and that is painful for me.
In those moments, I feel
perplexed, like the 'Monstrous Child with Multiple Sensory Organs'. I find myself looking simultaneously in different directions, trying to grasp the contours of the past and realizing how it comes in so many different shapes.
'Monstrous child with multiple sensory organs' from Nicolas-Frant;:ois Rcgnault Description des principales monsrruosites. 1808
Monsters were primarily creatures of the visible. They were deformed and 'ungrateful' shapes deviating from the common order of nature.
Their
singular forms raised questions about the true identity of bodies. They also drew attention to the ambiguous role of appearances in the perception of the world. Many of the instances in my 'catalogue' of monsters were situated at the intersection of the human and the animal.
A 'foetus resembling
Cl
monkey', a 'child in the form of a lobster', and a 'woman with a Hog's face! are just a few illustrative examples. These hybrid shapes problematized the 71
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very category of the human and its esse ntial attributes. A common eighteenlhcentury concern was if these monstrous shapes could conceal a soul and a rationality. My concern is still about the ex tent to wh ich appearances interact
with notions of the essence of things. Monsters were a common s ight during the eighteenth century. They were part of a culture of entertainment where the strange and rare was highly valued. Their ex hibition crossed national and social borders. Yet there were different ways of seeing and possessing these strange occurrences of nalure. There were the owners of monsters, their •masters' , as they were called. There were the owners of an exhibition ticket who were mere prisoners of the enchantment of the strange, the so called ' vulgar ' . And then there were the owners of know ledge, the 'learned'. who tried to go beyond the magnetic power of what they saw. Monsters we re possessed by the learned in detailed and circumstantial descri ptions. T hey were captured in reports of singular instances published in periodicals like the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society oJ London. In these reports, learned men sought 10 go beyond appearances and immerse their curiosity in the depths of flesh and blood. The gaze of the medical eye and the surgeon's skill endeavoured to dissect the true nature of the monstrous.
Howev er, monsters still defied comprehensive
ex planation and classification throughout this period. It is because eighteenthcentury mons te rs were eve rywhere and crossed many different boundaries that they are so f ull of meaning.
Yet that is precisely what makes my
difficulty in possessin g them so great. Most of the beings desc ribed as monsters were so from the moment of their birth. No longer concealed and nourished in their mother's womb, they were marked and exposed as monsters. However, there were also cases where not birth but time revealed 'monstrosity ' . Bodies that in the course of their lives went beyo nd or rema ined below ordinary size like giants and dwarfs. 72
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Time could also unveil other more unexpected and rare occurrences like horns growing suddenly out of human shapes. That was what happened to the unfortunate Mrs French of Tenderden in Kent.
In her forty-eighth year a
horn began to grow from her head which in four years time arrived at the size of eleven inches long, and two inches and a half in circumference at the base. Then the horn broke accidentally and was purchased from her by Hans Sloane for the price of four guineas. I first encountered the horn of Mrs French in an illustration by the artist and engraver A. Van Rymsdyk in his work
Museum Britannicum published in 1778. This work presented some of the most renowned specimens of the collection of the British Museum which opened in January 1759. The illustration of Mrs French's horn is evidence of
its status and value as a curiosity of nature. Moreover, it was a curiosity with increased value due to its ambivalent moral and social connotations.
'Horn from a Mrs French ofTenderden, Kent' from
J. & A. Rymsdyk, Museum BrilalUlicum. 1778
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As Rymsdyk remarked, 'if any of those women had lived or been born among the anciem Egyptians, & c. they might have laid claim of a pedigree to Osins. Bacchus, Pan. or any other of the homed Gods, but most of the gentlemen in ,his libertine age do not look on these as a proper ornament for the fair-sex. and yet it is very remarkable that all those horns I have seen are always found on a woman's head, as if nature laboured to put us in mind that there are female cuckoos as well as males'. Mrs French's case was unusual but not unique.
There were other
similar cases known before and throughout the eighteenth century.
r I.
~
However, by the end of this period horns, like other monstrous occurrences. became 'medicalized' and reduced to a pathological state of the body. In a conrribution of Everard Home to Philosophical Transactions published in 1791, horny excrescences were explained as being tumours of the incysted kind. In this way, their singular value decreased and their appreciation as a wonder of nature became more and more associated with ignorance and vulgarity.
Their proper place of exhibition was no more the cabinet of
curiosities but the pathological section of medical collections. Thus the boundaries between the monstrous and the pathological were often blurred. They were dependent on the observer's knowledge and feelings towards the observed. Also, not all monstrous occurrences were immediately visible. There were monstrosities hidden in the inner depths of the body. For example, there were cases of hearts turned upside-down. and others where caruncles, small bones, or worms were found. There were also hearts which simply had a monstrously large size. Interestingly, if horn excrescences were most found in women, pat hologics of the heart, as Matthew Baillie remarked in his The Morbid Anatomy (1793) were more common in men. ,I
Last year, while I was searching for 74
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reports on monstrous occurrences published throughout the eighteenth century
in Philosopizical Transactio/IS, 1 was amazed to find in volume 52 (1761-1762)
King George I1's heart unashamedly exposed in two illustrations.
Representation of the heart of King Gcorge 11 , from Philosophical Transactions , vol52 (1761 - 1762)
The title, 'Observations concerning the Body of his late Majesty' was not directly related with monsters, however I could not res ist reading it. h was
written shortly after George lI 's death in October 1760 by Frank Nicholls, his late Majesty's physician. Nicholls justified his article on the grounds that 'the very eminent and amiable character of his latc Majesty must make the nature
of his death the object of everyone's attention and inquiry' . An additional motive was that the case appeared 'exceedingly singular and extraordinary in
itself'. In fact, the dissection of the Royal Body revealed as the cause of death the bursting of the ventricle of the heart, a case entirely unknown in medical writings. In this way, His Royal Highness's heart was reduced to a singular medical case deviating from the known order of things in the natu ral world.
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Monsters were often designated as lusus naturae, sports of nature. I still tak.e them as nature mocking prejudices and notions about what should be :1ormative. The understanding of "monsters' in an historical context calls for a distinction between the normal and the singular. Although both are natural, the normal is within the boundaries of the usual course of nature while the singular crosses these boundaries. In quest of monsters - and there were no ITIOl1SlerS, just people who saw them - I have not only found the heart of King Gt:orgc 1I and the horn of Mrs French. Above all. I have been reassured of th~
naturaJ order of difference.
P ALMIRA FONTES DA COSTA Till! aw/wr. who is Portuguese and (J graduaJe oJ the University oJ Lisbon. came to Darwin ill
N'.I5 10 r.::searchJor her PhD in lhe Deparlment oJ rhe History and Philosophy oJScience.