De Monstris

Ancient fascination

Accounts of deformities are as old as human written culture. Already in ancient Babylonia and Greece dysplasias of human bodies were described. Such non-standard body shapes were interpreted as a 'play of nature' or omen until the 16th century, which is why terms like 'monster' and 'monstrosity' were also common in this context.
In the early modern period, however, people were no longer pleased with purely supernatural explanations for the miraculous phenomena and began to search for their causes, which were initially assumed to be in the genome, mechanical impacts on the fetus, and diseases of the same. With the increased interest in the subject, the first publications concerning root cause analysis appeared in the 16th and 17th centuries, of which probably the most influential and widely circulated was Fortunio Liceti's (1577–1657) De Monstrorum Causis, Natura et Diferentiis.

A product of its time

Liceti initially published his most successful and best-known work in 1616 without any illustrations. His treatise, divided into two books and dozens of shorter chapters, however, not only deals with physical deformities in the modern sense, but also includes passages on wondrous mythical creatures and common animal species which were only perceived as exotic and 'abnormal' by the European readership.
Thus, the author linked two extremely popular and much discussed topics of his time. First, it is about the limits of (human) physiognomy and the related idea that the character of the soul is also reflected in the external appearance of the human being. According to this, a deformed physique was at the same time understood as evidence of moral weaknesses or even a corrupted soul, which is based on Pseudo-Aristotle's treatise Physiognomonica. On the other hand, the text is also influenced by the burgeoning Renaissance ethnography that developed from the increasing exploration of the world and the countless tales of the foreign. The growing interest in the inhabitants of non-European regions was accompanied by many prejudices about these 'others', who were subsequently often imagined as 'monsters' or people with physical 'monstrosities'.
Accordingly, Fortunio Liceti's work hit exactly the taste of the time and its widespread reception soon allowed for several (illustrated) reprints, which appeared under the shorter title De Monstris.

Astonishing illustrations

Thus, 1634 saw the first illustrated edition of the text, to which initially 58 copper engravings were added for this purpose, which served as models for later editions. Among these, the one that stands out the most is the edition published 1668 by the printer Paolo Frambotti in Padua and dedicated to the couple Verità and Girolamo Zenobio from an important Veronese family. Its quality and meticulous decoration with fantastic copper engravings immediately catches the eye. The edition, published posthumously by Gerardus Leonardus Blasius (d. 1692), was supplemented by the latter with an Appendix, which additionally contains 15 new illustrations showing famous contemporary cases of malformed bodies that had become known after the dissemination of Liceti's work. The edition is also complemented by a striking title page with a wonderful full-page copper engraving signed by Hendrik Bary (d. 1717), who was probably also responsible for the rest of the illustrations.

A piece of medical and scientific history

Although the work remains attached to Aristotelian doctrines and thus to some assumptions and beliefs of antiquity and the Middle Ages, it nevertheless represents an important step in medical history, as it disseminated new theses on the causes of malformations. This approach, which was quite innovative at the time, and the search for biological explanations as a counterweight to the supernatural attempts at explanation of earlier times makes De Monstris an important work in the history of medicine and science. Together with similar treatises, it forms the foundation of modern scientific teratology.