or ACEPHALUS, in a general sense; without a head.

The term is more particularly used in speaking of certain nations, or people, represented by ancient naturalists and cosmographers, as well as by some modern travellers, Acephalous travellers, as formed without heads; their eyes, mouth, &c. being placed in other parts.

Such are the Blemmyes, a nation of Africa near the head of the Niger, represented to be by Pliny and Solinus; Blemmyes traduntur capita abesse, oculi et oculos peatore affuisse. Ctesias and Solinus mention others in India near the Ganges, sine cervice, oculis in humeris habentes. Mela also speaks of people, quibus capitae et vultus in peatore sunt. And Suidas, Stephanus Byzantius, Vopiscus, and others after them, relate the like. Some modern travellers still pretend to find acephalous people in America.

Several opinions have been framed as to the origin of the fable of the Acephali. The first is that of Thomas Bartholin, who turns the whole into a metaphor; being convinced, that the name Acephali was anciently given to such as had less brain, or conducted themselves less by the rules of prudence than others. Olearius rather apprehends, that the ancient voyagers, viewing certain barbarous people from the coasts, had been imposed on by their uncouth dress; for that the Samogitians, being short of stature, and going in the severity of winter with their heads covered in hoods, seem at a distance as if they were headless. F. Laftau says, that by Acephali are only meant people whose heads are sunk below their shoulders. In effect, Hulsius, in his epitome of Sir Walter Raleigh's voyage to Guiana, also speaks of a people which that traveller found in the province of Irivpanama, between the lakes of Panama and Caflipa, who had no head or neck; and Hondius, in his map, marks the place with the figures of these monsters. Yet De Laet* rejects the story; being informed by others, that the inhabitants of the banks of the Caora, a river that flows out of the lake of Caflipa, have their heads so far sunk between their shoulders, that many believed they had their eyes in their shoulders, and their mouths in their breasts.

But though the existence of a nation of Acephali be ill warranted, naturalists furnish several instances of individuals born without heads, by some fetus or deviation of nature. Wepfer gives† a catalogue of such acephalous births, from Schenckius, Licetus, Paræus, Wolfius, Mauriceau, &c.