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Book Review
| A.W. Bates, Emblematic Monsters: Unnatural Conceptions and Deformed Births in Early Modern Europe (New York/Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005). ISBN 90-420-1862-3. 340 pp.
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| The underlying argument in A.W. Bates' monograph is that the writers and illustrators of monstrous births in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries attempted to create accurate, or at least believable, depictions of individual monsters. According to Bates, the actual event and form of a monstrous birth was important in early modern society because they were thought to have significant underlying meanings. |
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Bates analyses monstrous births depicted in a number of different sources, including ballads, sermons, books and early scholarly journals. He argues that in the sixteenth century writers used monstrous births as emblematic symbols suggesting deeper meanings within their events. He writes: 'Ballads about monstrous births were read not because monsters were intrinsically interesting ... but because they carried a message for the reader, a hidden meaning that had to be puzzled out with the writer's help' (p. 45). According to Bates, Protestant writers used these ballads in order to serve as 'expressions of human sinfulness' (p. 48). Protestants also saw monstrous births as evidence of the continual intervention of God on earth. |
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As the classical theory of monsters as 'slips of nature' regained currency in the seventeenth century, this threatened the use of monstrous births as meaningful signs from God. However, according to Bates, seventeenth-century natural philosophers, most notably in scholarly journals, continued to depict monstrous births, but they did so in order to demonstrate that monsters had a place in the continuum of nature. |
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Chapter 6, 'From the Womb to the Tomb' is of interest to social and religious historians as Bates approaches monstrous births from a larger societal perspective. For instance, he discusses how monstrous births played a role in the debate among Protestant writers regarding baptism. Protestants had to determine if 'double monsters' (today's conjoined twins) constituted one, or two, separate individuals so as to not baptise one individual twice (which other Protestant sects associated with Anabaptists). This chapter also explored the exhibition of monstrous births, which continued even after death. |
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Bates' chapter on retrospective diagnosis is controversial and exposes a tension in his attempt to bring modern medical perspectives and the history of medicine closer together. Bates acknowledges that there are objections among historians to retrospective diagnosis. However he argues that the technique can be applied in the case of monstrous births on several grounds in order to advance his argument that early modern accounts of monstrous births were primarily based on true representations. He argues that birth defects are a special case: 'birth defects are essentially anatomical variations, less prone to subjectivity than accounts of disease: the perception that a child has four legs or two hearts is less subjective than labeling it as having diphtheria or depression' (pp. 176–177). Bates also suggests that studying early modern monstrous births can be useful to modern medical researchers. Using the example of Roberts' syndrome, he argues that, if applied carefully, retrospective diagnosis can identify historical instances of conditions supposedly discovered in the twentieth century. |
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At times, most clearly in his chapter on retrospective diagnosis, Bates' use of medical language is not fully explained to the reader who has no medical training. The lay reader may struggle with sentences such as: 'An even more tentative attribution is a macerated child born at Old Sandwich in Kent, though the description does suggest encephalocoele, polydactyly and limb deformity' (p. 190). |
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While Bates largely succeeds in his argument that people depicting early modern monstrous births created believable depictions and that readers expected as much, the reader may be left wondering about the broader implications of this position. The religious implications, for instance, are hinted at in his work, but they are not his main preoccupation. Therefore, his work may inspire further investigation into monstrous births by historians. Overall, Emblematic Monsters, with its fusion of historical and medical perspectives, is of interest to early modern European medical historians, historians of religion, intellectual historians, and medical practitioners. |
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| KATHERINE WALKER
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| MCMASTER UNIVERSITY, HAMILTON, ONTARIO, CANADA |
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