MONSTROSITY. In anatomy and physi ology any deviation in form or function so great as to be noticeable may be termed a monstrosity by the extension of the term. But it is customary to consider as true monstrosi ties only such deviations from the normal as are excessive. Supernumerary fingers, toes, legs, arms, etc., or the absence of any or all of them from birth are not called true monstrosities. Deviations from the normal in form or function are ahnost limitless, the study of them being otherwise known as teratology. The subject of human teratology has been systematized by Saint Hilaire and slightly modified by Hirst and Piersol and is as follows: (1) Hemiterata are all abnormal developments which are not true monstrosities, lacking the element of excess, with the exception of excess in numbers re ferred to. They include. however, anomalies in size such as dwarfs and giants, anomalies in form of head, pelvis, etc., of color such as albinism or melanism, of position, including curvature of the spine, hernia, clubfoot, etc., of continuity, including imperforate esophagus, rectum or vagina. (2) Heterotaxes, which in clude the anomalous position of heart, liver, etc. (3) Hermaphrodites, which according to the definition of Ahlfeld are those individuals which possess sexual glands both masculine and feminine, but show all possible variations of one sex organ upon the other. (4) True monsters, where there are either more or less than the normal number of legs, arms or there are no heads or rudimentary heads or two or more. This group also contains what are called omphalositic monsters which are embryos at tached to an original fcetus and depending on it for what nourishment and development they can get. The best-known type of monsters, those which have been frequently exhibited, are the composite monsters of which the Siamese Twins and the Tocci Brothers are examples. Other illustrations are of children with. two bodies joined together at the pelvis but having no legs, and the bodies pointing in opposite directions. There are also terata with two heads and two faces or with one head and two faces like the ancient conception of the god Janus.
It is almost impossible to imagine any deviation in form, function or size which has not been recorded, since the curiosity of man kind has been such as to be attracted from time immemorial to anything in the nature of the marvelous. The composite monsters on record have shown almost all varieties of union of lower extremities and of reduplication of both lower and upper; and of the partial or total reduplication of the entire body, the climax being reached in the twins which are united by only a comparatively small cartilage. Double monsters are either parasitic or inde pendently nurtured as was the case of the Siamese Twins, who lived to the age of 63 years. There are also known triple monsters,
one case being recorded by Saint Hilaire of a three-headed child who was born in Italy in 1832.
The, very unpleasant side of anatomic teratology has its more cheerful compensation in the records of extraordinary developments in vitality and fecundity and in the recovery of many persons who have suffered accidents or other misfortunes ordinarily found fatal, or who have shown remarkable abilities of adapta tion to apparently impossible conditions. For not only do we see the monstrosities of fatness and leanness, the people with elastic skin, the bearded women, etc., but there have been re corded a large number of cases of extraor dinary ability to function in spite of adverse circumstances. Examples of teratology of function are seen in suspended animation, a case being recorded of a man who could, ap parently at will, cause his heart to stop beat ing. He succeeded once in prolonging this in activity of the heart for about 30 minutes. The function appeared to be restored automatically. A post mortem examination of his heart showed nothing extraordinary. Other illus trations of purely physiological wonders with out, however, showing any other atmortnality are seen in very high temperature. One case is on record of a man whose temperature ran up to 148° and was between 120° and 125° for five days in succession.
Among anomalies of excess in function are to be included also mental prodigies such as extraordinary memory and other mental func tions of which one of the most remarkable was Jacques Inaudi born in 1869 in Piedmont. He had an extraordinary mathematical ability which enabled him to perform mentally tions with numbers in the billions and trillions.
He had no other unusual ability. Many promi nent men such as Edmund Burke, John Locke, Pascal, Liebnitz and Euler were noted for super normal memory. Another mathematicalprodigy was a man named Rube Fields of Johnson County, Mo., who added columns of figures as rapidly as they were read to him, and per formed incredibly enormous operations in multiplication. He was an uncultivated boor ish man with no other mental ability worth mentioning.
These facts are of importance from the point of view that the average individual prob ably possesses powers of endurance, toleration of disease and of mental development far above that which the ordinary person acquires, and that the mine of human abilities has up to the present age not merely not been worked but has probably not even been more than sampled. What may be the cause of this relatively un developed mentality in men in general is sug gested by the recent investigations into the unconscious mental activity.