46 One man who thought deeply. For a history of artificial incubation see Needham (1959) pp.22–5 and 203–4. For Geoffroy’s attempts to artificially create monstrous chickens see Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1825); Fischer (1972) and Appel (1987) pp.121–9. See also his son’s account of the influence of these experiments (Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire 1847). Étienne’s major teratological work is Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1822) Philosophie Anatomique des monstruosités humaines. The classificatory work was carried on by Isidore in Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1832–37) Histoire générale et particulière des anomalies de l’organisation chez I’homme et les animaux. See Morin (1996) for a modern evaluation of Geoffroyean teratology. For some of Geoffroy’s intellectual background see Appel (1987) pp.121–9; for a paen by Geoffroy to Bacon see Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1825).
49 Geoffroy was deeply enamoured. Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1847) claimed that his father first conceived of the soi pour soi in 1826, several years before Ritta and Christina appeared. A full, late statement of the law’s implications can be found in É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1838); see also Appel (1987).
51 The ability of disparate organ primordia. For a textbook review of cell adhesion molecules see Alberts et al. (1994) pp.950–1006. Spina bifida (182940) and anencephaly (206500) are both neural defects caused by unknown genetic factors and many environmental ones (Corcoran 1998). For bifid heart see Gilbert (2000) p.474.
52 The power of cell–cell adhesion. Parasitic conjoined twins have an occurrence of one in a million live births. See Serres (1832) for a description of these cephalothoracoileopagus conjoined twins. See Spencer (2000 a; b; 2001) for a review of conjoined twins and parasites. Park and Daston (1981) and Bondeson (2000) pp.vii–xix tell the story of Lazarus Colloredo; see Thompson (1930; 1994) p.93 for Laloo; Ta-Mei et al. (1982) for the Chinese man and Rodriguez (1870) for the multiple parasites. Spencer (2001) persuasively argues the foetus-in-foetu-teratoma theory. Naudin ten Cate (1995) describes the twenty-one-foetus teratoma.
56 In recent years, much has been learned. The story of the old soldier is told by Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1832–37) volume 3 pp. 8–11; Martin (1880) p.147, and Fischer (1991) p-74. Geoffroy and Martin claim that the old soldier was also the inspiration for Molière’s he Médicin malgré lui (Doctor in spite of himself), a comedy which turned on a doctor who diagnosed a patient’s heart as being on the right side of her chest. Appealing though this is, it cannot be true since Molière composed his comedy in 1666–67, Les Invalides was built in 1671, and the old soldier died in 1688 (J.-L. Fischer, pers. comm.).
56 It is a diagnosis that allows. Kartagener’s syndrome or primary ciliary dyskinesia (244400) is caused by recessive mutations in the DNAI1 (604366) and DNAH5 (603335) genes (Guichard et al. 2001 and Olbrich et al. 2002). See Afzelius (1976) for the causal link to cilia; see Kosaki and Casey (1998), Casey and Hackett (2000) and Brueckner (2001) for recent reviews.
58 I said earlier that the organiser is. For ciliary flow around the node see Nonaka et al. (1998). Of course, in a sense the discovery of asymmetrical ciliary movement doesn’t absolutely solve the problem of the embryo’s handedness, since it merely raises the question of why cilia should beat from right to left rather than the other way around. There’s no good answer to this question in mammals at least, but it is worth noting that the embryo is a three-dimensional object, and once two axes (head to tail and back to belly) have been established, the last (left to right) obtains automatically. So a cell that wishes to tell left from right merely needs to know which way its cilia protrude with respect to the rest of the embryo’s geometry. For some conceptual models of symmetry-breaking see Lander et al. (1998).
59 There is a lovely experiment that proves this. The original path-breaking paper defining the signals that determine left–right asymmetry in chicks is Levin et al. (1995). Since then a large literature has accumulated on left–right signalling in all major vertebrate model systems – and it seems clear that although the precise distribution of the various signalling molecules differs between mice and chickens, the general principles are the same (Tsukui et al. 1999; Meyers and Martin 1999; Casey and Hackett 2000). The differences between mice and chickens also affect the interpretation of Levin et al. (1996) who gave the original explanation for situs inversus in conjoined twins. Their explanation, which is surely correct in essence, was based on the earlier chicken data and now cannot be right in detail.
62 For Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. The quote is from his Philosophic anatomique (1822) and runs in fulclass="underline" ‘les Monstres ne sont plus des jeux de la Nature; leur organisation est soumise à la loi commune; les Monstres sont d’autres êtres normaux; ou plutôt il n’y a pas de Monstres et al Nature est une’.
CHAPTER III: THE LAST JUDGEMENT
65 In 1890 the citizens of Amsterdam. For a history of teratology in the Netherlands and a re-evaluation of Vrolik’s specimens see the magnificent series of articles by Vrolik’s successors at the University of Amsterdam: Baljet and Oostra (1998) and Oostra et al. (1998a-e). Baljet and Öjesjö (1994) have suggested that Hieronymus Bosch’s demonic creatures were inspired by human malformations. Most scholars point instead to medieval illustrations or else the gargoyles of Sint Jan’s cathedral, s’Hertogenbosch. Although Bosch surely cannot have seen many deformed infants in the flesh, the correspondence between many of his grotesques and known deformities is certainly striking. See also Bos and Baljet (1999).
67 Of Willem Vrolik’s published writings. Vrolik’s first major work on cyclopia was a long article in Dutch (Vrolik 1834), followed a decade later by his Tabulae (Vrolik 1844–49). See Baljet (1990) and Baljet et al. (1991) for an account of Vrolik’s work on cyclopia and his collections.
68 Hesiod says that there were three Cyclopes. Homer The Odyssey (trans. E.V. Rieu. 1946. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, UK); Ovid Metamorphoses (trans. A.D. Melville. 1986. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, UK). For classical Cyclopean iconography see Touchefeu-Meynier (1992).
68 Many teratologists have linked the deformity to the myth. Aetiological explanations of myths have the delightful property that they are more or less unfalsifiable, but that hasn’t stopped many from proposing them. For arguments that the forms of the various monsters of Greek mythology (the Cyclops, the Hydra, Typhon, the Harpies etc.) are derived from foetuses that show various abnormalities see Schatz (1901). For the claim that the Cyclopes were inspired by the Pleistocene remains of dwarf elephant skulls that have been found on Sicily see Mayor (2000). Far more sophisticated discussions of deformity in ancient Greece and Egypt by a classicist can be found in Véronique Dasen’s numerous papers. The relationships and symbolic meanings of the Cyclopes are discussed by the pre-eminent scholar of comparative mythology G.S. Kirk (1974) pp-85, 207.