30

30. On a monster-child

[‘Monsters’ were widely held, even by professional men of all kinds, to be ‘demonstrations’ – portents of God’s will. Montaigne personally examined two such cases: some Siamese twins and a malformed shepherd. His original chapter left all discussion to the doctors, many of whom, even the great Dr Ambrose Paré, believed that at least some ‘monsters’ are monstra, omens showing divine anger or approval. In his final text, [C], Montaigne explains ‘monsters’ in platonic terms as rare examples of the infinite forms existing in God’s created Nature, vast numbers of which are unknown to Man.]

[A] This tale will go its simple way, for I shall leave all the discussion to the doctors.

I saw the day before yesterday an infant child that two men and a wet-nurse (who said they were its father, uncle and aunt) were travelling about with and exhibiting for its strangeness, so as to make a penny or two out of it.

In every other way that boy was of the normal form and could stand up on his own legs, walking and warbling more or less like other children of his age: he had not yet been willing to accept any food other than from his nurse’s breasts: what they assayed putting into his mouth, in my presence, he chewed for a while then spat out without swallowing anything. There certainly seemed something peculiar about the way he cried; he was then just fourteen months old. Just below his breast he was firmly attached to another child with no head and with the spinal canal blocked, though the rest of the body was entire: one arm was in fact shorter than the other, but that was accidentally broken at birth. They were joined facing each other, looking as though a slightly smaller child were trying to put his arm round the neck of a slightly bigger one. The area joining them together was merely about four fingers wide, so that if you raised up that imperfect child you could see the other one’s navel underneath: the join was therefore found between his nipple and his navel. There was no sign of a navel in the imperfect child, though all the rest of the belly was there: the parts of that imperfect child which were not attached, such as the arms, buttocks, thighs and legs, dangled down loosely over the other one, and in length could reach down to his knees. The wet-nurse said the monster urinated through both places: indeed the limbs of the imperfect child were as much alive, as well fed and in the same condition as the other’s, except that they were smaller and thinner.

This double body and these sundry limbs all depending on one single head could well provide us with a favourable omen that our king will maintain the sundry parties and factions of our State in unity under his laws; but for fear lest the outcome should belie it we should let that happen first, for there is no divining like divining about the past! [C] ‘Ut quum facta sunt, tum ad conjecturam aliqua interpretatione revocantur.’ [Once things have happened we can find some interpretation of them which turns them into prophecies.] [B] As was said of Epimenides: he always prophesied backwards.1

I have just seen a shepherd in Médoc: he is about thirty years old and has no sign of any genitals, having three holes through which he ceaselessly makes water. He wears a beard and enjoys the touch of women.

[C] What we call monsters are not so for God who sees the infinite number of forms which he has included in the immensity of his creation: it is to be believed that the figure which astonishes us relates to, and derives from, some other figure of the same genus unknown to Man. God is all-wise; nothing comes from him which is not good, general and regular: but we cannot see the disposition and relationship: ‘Quod crebro videt, non miratur, etiam si cur fiat nescit. Quod ante non vidit, id, si evenerit, ostentum esse censet.’ [What a man frequently sees never produces wonder in him, even though he does not know how it happens. But if something occurs which he has never seen before, he takes it as a portent.]2

Whatever happens against custom we say is against Nature, yet there is nothing whatsoever which is not in harmony with her. May Nature’s universal reason chase away that deluded ecstatic amazement which novelty brings to us.