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1. 1 2017-06-20T20:34:55+00:00 Museums 9 In the eighteenth century, surgeons discovered how to use chemicals, like alcohol or formalin, to preserve human and animal body parts for long periods of time. These anatomical preservations became valuable and useful tools for students learning medicine. plain 2018-10-09T17:46:49+00:00 In the 18th century, surgeons discovered how to use chemicals, like alcohol or formalin, to preserve human and animal body parts for long periods of time. These anatomical preservations became valuable and useful tools for students learning medicine. Instead of learning about the body through images, they could now study actual body parts preserved in jars. Through the 18th and 19th centuries, many medical schools had a museum containing anatomical preservations, as well as bones, drawings, instruments, and other materials, that students could study. Surgeons were especially interested in collecting “monstrous births” during this period. This is because gestation, the development of the fetus during pregnancy, was not well understood. This is why most medical museums, like the Mütter, have teratological collections. These bodies were important clues to answering questions about human development. Unlike images in books, however, not everyone could see anatomical preservations. Many of these museums weren’t truly “public,” like the Mütter is today; instead, they were restricted to physicians, surgeons, and students.
2. 1 media/background.jpg 2018-10-03T18:42:45+00:00 Monstrosities of a Mother’s Making 6 The idea that the power of thought could affect an unborn fetus was commonly held among medical practitioners before and up through the beginning of the early modern period. Yet it was only in the 17th Century when this concept of maternal impression took root as a cause of monstrosities. image_header 2018-10-09T17:50:16+00:00 Jean Riolan (1580-1657), in his 1649 book, Opuscula anatomica nova, described one such case. A “double-fetus,” more commonly known as a conjoined twin, was born to a mother in 1605. The cause, according to Riolan, was the mother having looked at pictures of demons. Many believed at the time that the devil could directly affect an unborn fetus. In this case, however, the cause was the mother having seen, and then meditated upon, the images of demons that was the cause.
   
   Riolan, was somewhat cautious in his belief in maternal impression. He believed that though the imagination could alter the properties of the fetus, it could not change the species. Fortunio Liceti (1577-1657), a prominent Italian physician, philosopher, and scientist, went further.  He did not believe “mutilated monstrosities and those showing excessive parts” resulted from maternal impression; instead Liceti referred to monstrosities as lusus naturae (nature’s game).
   
   As in Paré’s thirteen reasons, it was not always the imagination that caused a maternal impression, but rather an external event. Nicolas Culpeper (1616-1654), was an English botanist, herbalist, physician and astrologer. In his book A directory for midwives (1671) he described various accounts of maternal impression in the chapter “On Monsters.” Culpeper claimed that one woman, Anne Troperim, gave birth to two serpents after drinking from a brook near Basil, having swallowed the spawn of a serpent.