A telling of wonders: teratology in western medicine.

In a recent exhibit at the New York Academy of Medicine, I examined the evolution ofteratology (i.e., the study of perceived abnormalities in the natural world, both real and imagined) through the eyes of physicians and philosophers. Based on the exhibit, this paper describes the major interpretations of teratology from Antiquity to the end of the eighteenth century. The term "monster," which is derived from the Latin verb "monstrare" meaning ''to show," was used to describe a visually unusual creature from the first century B.C. onward. Greek and Roman authors had already developed scientific, ethnographic, and cosmographic interpretations of "the monstrous." These classical interpretations remained influential until the end of the seventeenth century.