Extract of a Letter, Written from Paris, containing an Account of fome Effects of the Transfufion of Bloud; and of two Monftrous Births, &c.

From Philosophical Transactions (1666):

In the Houfe of M. Bourdelots was fhew'd a Monfter in form of an Ape, having all over its fhoulders, almoft to his middle, a mafs of flefh, that came from the hinder part of its head, and hung down in form of a little Cloak.  The report is, that the Woman that brought it forth, had feen on a Stage an Ape fo cloathed: The moft remarkable thing was, that the faid mafs of flefh was divided in four parts, correfpondent to the Coat, the Ape did carry.  The Woman, upon inquiry, was found to have gone five months Child, before fhe had met with the acceident of that unhappy fight.  Many questions were on this occafion agitated: viz. about the Power of Imagination; and whether this Creature was endow'd with a humane Soul; and if not, what became of the Soul of the Embryo, that was five months old.

Back in the good ol' days literature mattered.  Pregnant women with overactive imaginations would produce monstrous births resembling something they saw on stage at some point during the pregnancy.  Not to mention those fellows had the whole abortion thing solved pat:

Baby souls are either malleable or interstitial.  If malleable, a woman could take in a play, transform her baby into something monstrous and demand her abomination be aborted.  (Depending on the cast she may create something wholly unfit for human parturition.  Her life would therefore depend on aborting the beast in her womb before it grew too large or abominable to be removed.)

If baby souls are interstitial, then the thing being aborted is as human as a chicken or a cod and therefore not entitled to any special treatment.  Unless the interstitial baby soul is some sort of loaner, in which case it would've been returned upon successful egression from the birth canal and is merely being returned early. 

They had it all figured out.  Where did we go so terribly, terribly wrong?

Comments

[Brian]

This is an unreafonable comment, but here goes: Please ftop ufing the letter "f" as if it were a long s. They're not the fame! There's a fubtle difference between them. It threatens my fanity to fee the poor f fo mifufed!

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Brian, I fo know that, but what is a poor graduate ftudent fans accefs to a decent typefet to do? I know the diftinction, belive you me, fo does the perfon in yonder ftudy working on medieval and early modern manufcripts, but I wanted to communicate the feel of a document from the Philofophical Tranfactions of the Royal Society, and it came down to a choice between "f" and the character for florin (ƒ). Would the latter have been preferable? (I ask honestly, since I've been digging around the archives for reports of "monstrous births" and wouldn't mind sharing what I've found in something approximating the original.)

[Brian]

Well, it's unicode character 017F, "Latin small letter long s": ſ (ah, the ſweet ſmell of ſucceſs!).

Will this work when I post it, though?

"Preview" shows that it works perfectly fine on my Mac (OS X 10.4.4) running OmniWeb 5.1.3. YMMV.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Brilliant! I scoured the web for that symbol for the better part of fifteen minutes and didn't find it. That'll teach me. (Too bad I'm so stubborn.) I'll edit my post accordingly when I finish the one I'm currently devising.