49 It was published anonymously ‘Extrait d'une lettre escrite d’Oxfort, le 12. Novembre 1664'Journal de Saxms vol. 1 (1665), pp. 11-12.
50 Dudley Wilson, S i^ and portents. Monstrous births firm the M iddle Ages to the Enli^TtenmenL (London, Roudedge, 1993), p. 105.
difficult to say exactly how many survived, or how many of the survivors have come to my attention, they are much less numerous than either broadsides or journal articles. A disputation by Jean Riolan (the younger, 1580-1657)^^ is seen by Wilson as something of a turning point; ‘one of the first efforts towards a more scientific view of the monstrous birth. This case (of thoracopagus conjoined twins) was particularly well documented, appearing in three other contemporary publications (Wilson highlights several minor variations among them, including the date of birth and whether they were bom alive or dead, a reminder that attitudes to factual detail in the popular press could be rather casual).
Riolan used a traditional formal question and answer format for his disputation. The first of his four questions was whether the twins were a monster, which he thought they were. The second question was whether they had two souls or only one. Riolan based his conclusion that they had two separate souls primarily on behavioural differences between them, and he used examples of the Oxford twins of 1552 and the Northumbrian monster of 1490 (conjoined twins who lived to the age of 28) to demonstrate that conjoined twins showed clear differences in behaviour if they lived to maturity. Behavioural differences were accepted evidence that conjoined twins were two individuals, as accounts of an autopsy performed on Hispaniola in 1533 show (see pp. 141-2) and Riolan’s approach was not innovative. Riolan’s third question was whether such monsters should be killed at birth; he rejected this proposal, but favoured segregating monsters from society. The final proposition, that monsters were prodigies, he rejected also. Riolan’s questions and answers were rhetorical: the twins were self- evidently a monster, conjoined twins with two heads were invariably treated as two individuals, there is nothing to suggest that infanticide was ever openly performed in the early modem period (see Chapter 6) - though unwanted children, monstrous or otherwise, may of course have been secretly destroyed - and the distinction between monsters and prodigies was well accepted (see Chapter 5).
The monograph included an impressive intaglio engraving, which would have been expensive to produce, showing diagrammatically the arrangement of the abdominal viscera (Fig. 11). The twins shared a liver and a heart (or at least a pericardial sac) and the artist arranged the viscera symmetrically, with one twin almost a mirror image of the other, suggesting that he may have
51 D e Monstro nota Lutedae armo Domini 1603. Dispntatio phtlosophka (Paris, Olivarum Varennaeum, 1605). 52 Wilson, op. c it, pp. 101-4 stresses Riolan’s omission of theological considerations such as ‘baptism or even last rites’ but I think that this omission is due to Riolan’s lack of theological training. Writers with a theological background usually did deal with the question of baptism in theses o f this period. The sacrament o f last rights’ is not appropriate to an infant.
been aware of the long-perpetuated myth that conjoined twins are always mirror images.” Three other publications appeared around the same time offering vernacular accounts of the twins for general consumption. All four versions put forward a mechanical cause for the monstrosity (nature had been obliged to ‘sew together’ the two embryos due to narrowness of the womb) but none offered an interpretation of the twins as a sign: evidence that general as well as scholarly readers no longer saw monstrous births in this way.”
The presentation of Riolan’s thesis marked his appointment to the chair of anatomy and botany at Paris. A formal pronouncement from the chair was expected of a new professor, and these were often subsequently printed.” We might regard the occasion as something like a modem inaugural lecture, with the faculty in attendance and a rather formal discussion afterwards. The audience was meant to admire Riolan’s grasp of logic and rhetoric rather than
his conclusions. Jean Riolan was only 25 at the time De Monstroso was published, and the
University of Paris (where his father had been Dean of the faculty of medicine) was an institution characterised (in retrospect) as conservative or even reactionary. Even though this conservatism may have been overemphasised by some commentators it seems veiy unlikely that he intended his questions and answers to present a controversial view. Riolan must have hoped that his display of the anatomy of the monster would impress his audience, and a high quality engraving was required to do it justice. He was a master anatomist, and his work is particularly impressive considering the limited numbers of cadavers available for dissection at that time.
Monstrous births featured in a number of later disputations in faculties of theology at German universities. Such works generally included a description of a recent monstrous birth, with a brief hterature summary. The appropriateness of baptism and whether demons could generate monsters were popular topics for discussion. Laurent Gerlin, for example, who wrote his thesis in Wittenburg in 1624, was able to identify only three cases of monstrous births in the sixteenth century. These he attributed to maternal impressions and discussed according to the theories of Aristotle. Christophor Walliich took as the subject of his disputation” John Baptiste and Lazarus Colloredo, the flamboyant Italian and his parasitic twin who toured Europe exhibiting themselves. Monstrous births were a popular subject for disputations at 53 See for example Dareste 1859, op. c it\ HJH. Newman, Twins and Super-Twins: a stucfy oftwins, triplets, quadruplets and quintuplets (London, Hutchinson, 1942), pp. 52-62.