MONSTER; a birth or production of a living being, degenerating from the proper and usual disposition of parts in the species to which it belongs: As, when there are too many members, or too few; or some of them are extravagantly out of proportion, either on the side of defect or excess. The word comes from the Latin monstrum, of monstrando, "flowing." Whence also the box wherein relics were anciently kept to be shown, was called monstrum. Dugdale mentions an inventory of the church of York with this article, Item unum monstrum cum obitu sancti Petri in beryl, et crucifixo in funerato.

Aristotle defines a monster to be a defect of nature, when, acting towards some end, it cannot attend to it, from some of its principles being corrupted.

Monsters do not propagate their kind; for which reason some rank males among the number of monsters, as also hermaphrodites.

Females which bring forth twins, are found most liable to produce monsters. The reason, probably, is owing to this; that though the twins are covered with one common chorion, yet they have each their separate amnios, which by their contiguity may chance to grow together, and so occasion a confusion or blending of the parts. Hence so many double creatures.

Various theories have been proposed by philosophers and physiologists to account for the production of monsters. But after all, it must be confessed, that we are very little acquainted with those deviations from the ordinary course of nature. For each organized being there appears to exist a primitive germ or model of the different species drawn by the Creator, determined by forms and sexes, and realized in the individuals of both sexes, which must unite in order to their reproduction. From this model nature never departs, unless when compelled by circumstances which derange the primitive organization common to the species, and produce what are called monsters.

With respect to structure, monsters are of various kinds. Some have an excess or defect in certain parts; such as those which are called acephalous, or who want the head; those which have two heads, two arms, two legs, and one body, or which have two bodies and one head, or which have three legs; and those which want the arms or the legs. Others err through an extraordinary and deformed conformation, through an unnatural union of certain parts or viscera, through a great derangement in one or more of their members, and through the extraordinary place which these often occupy in consequence of this derangement or transposition. The monster described by Dr Eller of the academy of Berlin was of this kind. It was a fetus of nine months, 28 inches long, with an enormous head and frightful countenance; and in the middle of a broad and vast forehead it had a reddish eye, without either eyebrows or eyelids, and sunk deep into a square hole. Immediately below this eye was an excrescence which strongly resembled a penis with a glans, a prepuce, and an urethra: the part covered with hair was likewise below the nape of the neck. In other monsters we meet with the unnatural union of some parts, which from their definition and functions, ought always to be separate; and the separation of other parts, which, for the same reasons, ought constantly to be united. The reader may see the different ways in which the formation of monsters takes place, in four memoirs by M. Lemaire, inserted in L'Histoire de l'Academie des Sciences, 1738 and 1739. M. du Verney has likewise published a memoir on the same subject.

In the volume published by the Academy of Sciences in 1724, mention is made by M. Geoffroy of a monster born in Barrois 1722. This monstrous production consisted of two children without the inferior extremities, joined together by a common navel; each of them had a nurse, fucked, and eat pap; and the one fucked while the other slept. The reader may likewise consult the second part of Winnow's Memoirs on Monsters, inserted in the volume published by the Academy of Sciences in 1734, where he will find the history of two very extraordinary twin monsters, who evidenced during their life a great difference in their moral and physical qualities. We are obliged simply to refer to these Memoirs, as they are too long for abridgment.

It is observed by Haller, that in some monsters the natural structure is changed by some shock or passion; in others the structure, independent of any accident, is originally monstrous; such as when all the members are reversed from left to right, when the person has six fingers, and in many other instances. M. de Maurtus mentions, that there is at Berlin a family who have had six fingers on each hand for several generations. M. de Riville saw an instance of this at Malta, of which he has given a description. M. Renou, surgeon at Pommeraye in Anjou, has published an account of some families with six fingers, which are to be found in several parishes of the Lower Anjou, and which have existed there from time immemorial. This deformity is perpetuated in these families even when they intermarry with persons who are free from it. Whether the propagation of these supernumerary organs, which are not only useless but inconvenient and even disagreeable, be owing to the father or mother, their children of both sexes are subject to it indiscriminately. A father and mother with six fingers frequently have a part, and sometimes the whole of their children, free from this deformity; but it again makes its appearance, and in a very great degree, in the third generation. From this it appears, that this fault in the conformation is hereditary. M. Reaumur has likewise published the history of a family in the island of Malta, the children of which are born with six fingers and six toes. But it deserves to be inquired, Whether these supernumerary fingers are real fingers? The reader may here consult the Journal de Physique for November 1774, p. 372. This variety of sexidiglary hands and feet is not comprehended in the Recherches sur quelques conformations monstrueuses des doigts dans l'homme, which is inserted in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences for 1771. In the Journal de Physique for August 1776, we find a description of a double uterus and vagina observed in a woman who died in childbirth, by Dr Purcell of Dublin; and in that for June 1788, we have an account of a man with seven fingers on each hand, by Baron Dietrich.

Several monstrous productions are to be seen in the cabinet at Chantilly. 1. Two calves joined together in the body, with each a separate head and neck, and four legs in whole. 2. Two calves united only by the pelvis, with only one anus and one tail: the whole is supported by fix legs, four before and two behind. 3. A lamb with fix legs, four of which are behind. 4. The skeleton of a ram, which has likewise fix legs. 5. A hermaphrodite decre. 6. The head of a foal, which has only one eye in the middle of the forehead. 7. Some leverets with fix and eight legs. 8. A puppy, the lips of which are divided four-fold. 9. Some foetuses of a hog which have a kind of tube upon their forehead one or two inches long; and another, the hinder part of which is double in every thing. 10. Two double human foetuses joined by the belly, with four arms and three legs. 11. A young chicken with two bodies and one head. 12. A pigeon and a duck, each with two bills. 13. A duck with two heads. 14. A pigeon with four feet. 15. A capon with three feet; the third being fixed to the anus. 16. Two heads of a calf joined together, each of them with two ears: these two heads were both fixed to one neck. 17. In the Menagerie at Chantilly there was formerly to be seen a cow with five feet, the fifth of which was connected with the dug. 18. A rabbit without ears. 19. Two cats, each having two heads. 20. Two leverets newly brought forth, well shaped in the body and legs, but connected together by means of only one head. 21. Several eggs, in the figure of which there occur some monstrous appearances and extraordinary deformities, sufficient to show that they are contrary to the established form of nature.

Mr Home, surgeon, some time ago presented to Mr John Hunter, the double skull of a child, born at Calcutta in May 1783 of poor parents aged 30 and 35, and which lived to be nearly two years old. The body of this child was naturally formed: but the head had the phenomenon of appearing double; another head of the same size, and almost equally perfect, being attached to its upper part. In this extraordinary and preternatural head no pulsation could be felt in the arteries of the temples. But the superficial veins were very evident; one of the eyes had been hurt by the fire, upon which the midwife, in her first alarm, threw the child: the other moved readily; but the iris was not affected by the approach of any thing to it. The external ears of this head were very imperfect; the tongue adhered to the lower jaw, except for about half an inch at the lip, which was loose; the jaw was capable of motion, but there were no teeth. The child was shown about the streets of Calcutta for a curiosity; but was rendered unhealthy by confinement, and died at last of a bite of the cobra de capello. It was dug up by the East India Company's agent for salt at Tumlock, and the skull is now in the museum of Mr Hunter.

Among the monstrous productions of the animal kingdom, we may rank those individuals which ought only to possess one sex, but in which we observe the union or the appearance of two. See the articles ANDROGYNES and HERMAPHRODITE.

M. Fabri arranges mutilations of the members, distortions, gibbosities, tumors, divisions of the lips or of the palate, compressions of the cranium, and many other deformities of this kind, in the class of morbid monstruities. In that which he calls connaturale (connaturelle) monstruities, are placed the plurality, transposition, and infertile of the parts. To explain these facts, a great many writers have had recourse to the effect of the imagination of pregnant women.—The causes of the first class of monstruities are discussed by M. Fabri, who observes, that some of them are internal with regard to the mother, and others external. By an internal cause he here means all those depravations or morbid principles which can affect the fluids, and which vitiate the form and structure of the solids; in particular the uterus, in which such depravations have often been found to occur. To these he adds violent affections of the mind, spasmodic contractions, hysterical convulsions, and the many inconveniences of this kind to which women are extremely subject. External causes comprehend every thing which can act externally upon the fetus contained in the uterus, such as the pressure of the clothes; and in short every thing which prevents the free dilatation of the belly in women that are pregnant, violent motions, falls, blows, and all accidents of this kind. These external causes, and especially the first, compress the fetus in the womb, and oblige it to remain in a very confined situation. This according to the observation of Hippocrates, produces those embryos which are born with some entire part wounded. M. Fabri maintains, that all deformities of the fetus proceed from some mechanical and accidental causes.

The name of monsters is likewise given to animals enormous for bulk; such as the elephant among terrestrial quadrupeds, and the shark and the whale among sea animals; to other animals remarkable for fierceness and cruelty; and to animals of an extraordinary species, which, we are told, arises from the copulation of one animal with another of a different genus. According to the report of travellers, Africa abounds with monsters of this kind; and accounts of the East are full of descriptions of sea monsters, which, however, are seldom to be seen, such as sea men, mermaids, &c.

Monsters are more common and more extraordinary in the vegetable than in the animal kingdom, because the different juices are more easily deranged and confounded together. Leaves are often seen, from the internal parts of which other leaves spring forth, and it is not uncommon to see flowers of the ranunculus from the middle of which issues a stalk bearing another flower. M. Bonnet informs us, that in certain warm and rainy years he has frequently met with monsters of this kind in rose trees. This observer saw a rose, from the centre of which issued a square stalk of a whitish colour, tender, and without prickles, which at its top bore two flower buds opposite to each other, and totally destitute of a calyx; a little above the buds issued a petal of a very irregular shape. Upon the prickly stalk which supported the rose, a leaf was observed which had the shape of a trefoil, together with a broad flat pedicle. In the memoirs of the Academy of Sciences for 1707, p. 448, mention is made of a rose, from the centre of the leaves of which issued a rose branch two or three inches long, and furnished with leaves. See the same Memoirs for 1749, p. 44, and for 1724, p. 20. In the Memoirs for 1775, a very singular instance is mentioned of a monstrousness observed by M. Duhamel, in an apple-tree ingrafted with clay. At the place of the insertion, there appeared a bud which produced a stalk and some leaves; the stalk and the pedicle of the leaves were of a pulpy substance, and had the most perfect resemblance both in taste and smell to the pulp of a green apple. An extraordinary chamomile is mentioned in the Acta Helvetica. M. Bonnet, in his Recherches sur l'usage des feuilles, mentions likewise some monstrous productions which have been found in fruits with kernels, analogous in their nature to those which occur in the flowers of the ranunculus and of the rose tree. He has seen a pear, from the eye of which issued a tuft of 13 or 14 leaves, very well shaped, and many of them of the natural size. He has seen another pear which gave rise to a ligneous and knotty stalk, on which grew another pear somewhat larger than the first. The stalk had probably flourished, and the fruit had formed. The lilium album polyanthus, observed some years ago at Breclaw, which bore on its top a bundle of flowers, consisting of 102 lilies all of the common shape, is well known. M. Reynier has mentioned some individuals monstrous with respect to the flower, in the Journal de Physique et d'Histoire Naturelle, for November 1785. He has likewise mentioned a monstrous tulip which is seen in the gardens of some amateurs; juniper berries with horns; a balsamine with three spurs, &c.

The vegetable productions which are so extraordinary, and so contrary to the common course of things, do nevertheless present deviations subject to particular laws, and reducible to certain principles, by distinguishing such as are perpetuated either by seed or by transplanting, from those which seem to be only accidental. Monstruities which are perpetuated exist in the original organization of the seed of the plant, such as marked or curled leaves, &c. The word monster is more properly applied to those irregularities in plants, which arise from frequent transplantation, and from a particular culture, such as double flowers, &c.; but those monstruities which are not perpetuated, and which arise from accidental and transient causes deranging the primitive organization of the plant when it comes to be unfolded, as is the effect of daisies, of heat or cold, of a superfluous or scarcity of juices, of a deprivation of the vessels contributing to nutrition, of the ring of insects, of contusions and natural grafts, retain also the name of monsters. Of this kind are knobs or swellings, stunting, gall nuts, certain streaks, and other similar defects.