Abstract
A common object found within medical museums is the developmental series: an arrangement of embryos depicting the transformation of an unremarkable blob into an anatomically organized and recognizable organism. The developmental series depicts a normative process, one where bodies emerge in reliable sequential stages to reveal anatomically perfect beings. Yet a century before the developmental series would become a visual model of embryological development, the very process of development itself was discerned through the comparative study of preserved human fetuses—specifically, those deemed “monstrous” or characterized as “malformations.” This article examines how anatomically diverse fetal bodies were reformulated from singular curiosities into alternative developmental pathways whose characteristics testified to the laws of nature and to the primordial, physical relationship between humans and other species. In early nineteenth century Amsterdam, the father-son team of physicians Gerard and Willem Vrolik built up an internationally renowned anatomical museum famous especially for Willem’s collection of fetal malformations. Physical preparations of fetal malformations play a central role in Willem’s monumental handbook on developmental embryology: comparing human embryos against one another and the embryos of other species, Willem plots out a sequence of embryological development in which a body’s form marks its place within the ever-unfolding natural order. In conversation with the literature on model organisms, this article explores how the “monstrous” gets standardized and, in doing so, contributes to the scientific production of a normative physiological process.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
While this specific type of preparation is now called a “wet specimen,” my avoidance of that term in this paper reflects its recency; actors from the period referred to these objects as preparations even though the term applied more broadly to objects produced through a variety of preparation methods.
For more on Ruysch’s preparations as commodities, see Margóscy (2011).
For an examination of the role of parents—particularly mothers—in the collection of fetal material for scientific use in the context of nineteenth century America, see Withycombe (2019).
Preformation held that the body exists in extreme miniature and that gestation is a simple growth process. Epigenesis claimed that bodies emerged in successive stages during gestation. Roe’s Matter, Life, and Generation (1981) examines the differences between these theories—and what they said about scientific practice and philosophy—through close examination of the debates between the preformationist Haller and epigenesist Wolff.
In this context, evolution refers to linear growth in contrast to staged development.
Agnietes Vrolik, Brief van Parijs. Nationaal Archief Den Haag, Het familiearchief van de familie Vrolik. 2.21.172.8. The Hague, Netherlands.
The full Dutch title is De Vrucht van Den Mensch en van de Zoogdieren, Afgebeeld in Hare Regelmatige en Onregelmatige Ontwikkeling (The Fruit of Man and of the Mammals, Presented in Its Regular and Irregular Development). The text is published in side-by-side in Latin and Dutch and is most often referred to by its shortened Latin title, Tabulae.
In modern physiology, this condition is called acardia and is defined by the body’s lack of heart. The fetus is also born without any head structure, hence Vrolik’s naming the condition hoofdelooze misgeboorten.
References
Alberti, Samuel. 2011. Morbid Curiosities: Medical Museums in Nineteenth-Century Britain. New York: Oxford University Press.
Anemone, Anthony. 2000. The Monsters of Peter the Great: The Culture of the St. Petersburg Kunstkamera in the Eighteenth Century. The Slavic and East European Journal 44 (4): 583–602. https://doi.org/10.2307/3086285.
Appel, Toby A. 1987. The Cuvier-Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Blyakher, L.Ya. 1982. History of Embryology in Russia from the Middle of the Eighteenth to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century. Washington, DC: Al Ahram Center for Scientific Translations.
Canguilhem, Georges. 1989. The Normal and the Pathological. New York: Zone Books.
Canguilhem, Georges, and Therese Jaeger. 1962. Monstrosity and the Monstrous. Diogenes 10 (40): 27–42. https://doi.org/10.1177/039219216201004002.
Clarke, Adela, and Joan H. Fujimura. 1992. What Tools? Which Jobs? Why Right? In The Right Tools for the Job: At Work in Twentieth-Century Life Sciences, ed. Adela Clarke and Joan H. Fujimura, 3–44. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Collis, Robert. 2012. The Petrine Instauration: Religion, Esotericism, and Science at the Court of Peter the Great, 1689–1725. Boston: Brill.
Comfort, Nathaniel. 2009. The Prisoner as Model Organism: Malaria Research at Stateville Penitentiary. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part c: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 40 (3): 190–203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2009.06.007.
Creager, Angela. 2002. The Life of a Virus: Tobacco Mosaic Virus as an Experimental Model, 1930–1965. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Cunningham, Andrew. 2010. The Anatomist Anatomis’d: An Experimental Discipline in Enlightened Europe. New York: Routledge.
Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. 2010. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books.
De Rooy, Laurens. 2009. Forces of Form. Amsterdam: Academic Medical Center-Vossiuspers.
Duden, Barbara. 1993. Disembodying Women: Perspectives on Pregnancy and the Unborn. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dusseau, Justus Lodewijk. 1865. Musée Vrolik. Catalogue de la Collection d'Anatomie Humaine, Comparée et Pathologique de M.M. Ger. et W. Vrolik. Amsterdam: W.J. De Roever Kröber.
Gaissinovitch, A.E. 1990. C.F. Wolff on Variability and Heredity. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 12 (2): 179–201.
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 2009. Staring: How we Look. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Isidore. 1837. Histoire Générale et Particulière des Anomalies de l’Organisation chez l’Homme et les Animaux. Brussels: Hauman.
Gordin, Michael D. 2000. The Importance of Being Earnest: The Early St. Petersburg Academy. Isis 91 (1): 1–31.
Guerrini, Anita. 2005. The Creativity of God and the Order of Nature: Anatomizing Monsters in the Eighteenth Century. In Monsters & Philosophy, ed. Charles T. Wolfe, 153–168. London: College Publications.
Guerrini, Anita. 2015. Inside the Charnel House: The Display of Skeletons in Europe, 1500–1800. In The Fate of Anatomical Collections, ed. Rina Knoeff and Robert Zwijnenberg, 73–92. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Hagner, Michael. 1999. Enlightened Monsters. In The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, ed. William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer, 175–217. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Hansen, Julie V. 1996. Resurrecting Death: Anatomical Art in the Cabinet of Dr. Frederik Ruysch. The Art Bulletin 78 (4): 663–679.
Hendriksen, Marieke. 2015. Elegant Anatomy: The Eighteenth-century Leiden Anatomical Collections. Boston: Brill.
Hopwood, Nick. 2000. Producing Development: The Anatomy of Human Embryos and the Norms of Wilhelm His. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 74 (1): 29–79. https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2000.0020.
Hopwood, Nick. 2011. Approaches and Species in the History of Vertebrate Embryology. In Vertebrate Embryogenesis, ed. Francisco J. Pelegri, 1–20. New York: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-61779-210-6_1.
Hopwood, Nick, Rebecca Flemming, and Lauren Kassel. 2018. Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huet, Marie-Hélène. 1993. Monstrous Imagination. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hughes, Lindsey. 1998. Russia in the Age of Peter the Great. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Huisman, Tim. 2015. Resilient Collections: The Long Life of Leiden’s Earliest Anatomical Collections. In The Fate of Anatomical Collections, ed. Rina Knoeff and Robert Zwijnenberg, 73–92. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company.
Huistra, Hieke. 2019. The Afterlife of the Leiden Anatomical Collections: Hands On, Hands Off. New York: Routledge.
Johnson, Andi. 2013. The Athlete as Model Organism: The Everyday Practice of the Science of Human Performance. Social Studies of Science 43 (6): 878. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306312713490448.
Klunker, Rudyard, Luminita Göbbel, Anette Musil, Holger Tönnies, and Rüdiger Schultka. 2002. Johan Friedrich Meckel d. J. (1781–1833) und die Moderene Teratology. Annals of Anatomy — Anatomischer Anzieger 184 (6): 535–540.
Knoeff, Rina. 2015. Touching Anatomy: On the Handling of Preparations in the Anatomical Cabinets of Frederik Ruysch (1638–131). Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 49: 32–44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.11.002.
Kohler, Robert. 1994. Lords of the Fly: Drosophilia Genetics and the Experimental Life. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Kooijmans, Luuc. 2011. Death Defied: The Anatomy Lessons of Frederik Ruysch. Boston: Brill.
Linker, Beth. 2013. On the Borderland of the History of Medicine and Disability: A Survey of the Fields. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 87 (4): 499–535. https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2013.0074.
Longmore, Paul K., and Lauri Umanski. 2001. The New Disability History: American Perspectives. New York: New York University Press.
Margóscy, Dániel. 2011. A Museum of Wonders or a Cemetery of Corpses? The Commercial Exchange of Anatomical Collections in Early Modern Netherlands. In Silent Messengers: The Circulation of Material Objects of Knowledge in the Early Modern Low Countries, ed. Sven Dupré and Christoph Lüthy. Berlin: Lit Verlag.
Mirilas, Petros. 2006. The Monarch and the Master: Peter the Great and Frederik Ruysch. Archives of Surgery. https://doi.org/10.1001/archsurg.141.6.602.
Molhuysen, P.C., and P.J. Blok. 1911. Nieuw Nederlandsch Biographisch Woordenboek. Leiden: N. Israel.
Monti, Maria Teresa. 2000. Epigenesis of the Monstrous Form and Preformistic ‘Genetics’ (Lémery-Winslow-Haller). Early Science and Medicine 5 (1): 3–32.
Needham, Joseph. 1975. A History of Embryology. New York: Arno Press.
Oostra, Roelof-Jan., Bob Baljet, and Piet F. Dijkstra. 1998a. Congenital Anomalies in the Teratological Collection of Museum Vrolik in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I: Syndromes with Multiple Congenital Abnormalities. American Journal of Medical Genetics 77 (2): 100–115.
Oostra, Roelof-Jan., Bob Baljet, and Piet F. Dijkstra. 1998b. Congenital Anomalies in the Teratological Collection of Museum Vrolik in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. II: Skeletal Dysplasias. American Journal of Medical Genetics 77 (2): 116–134.
Oostra, Roelof-Jan., Bob Baljet, Ben W.J.M.. Verbeeten, and Raoul C.M.. Hennekam. 1998c. Congenital Anomalies in the Teratological Collection of Museum Vrolik in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. III: Primary Field Defects, Sequences, and Other Complex Anomalies. American Journal of Medical Genetics 80 (1): 46–59.
Oostra, Roelof-Jan., Bob Baljet, and Raoul C.M.. Hennekam. 1998d. Congenital Anomalies in the Teratological Collection of Museum Vrolik in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. IV: Closure Defects of the Neural Tube. American Journal of Medical Genetics 80 (1): 60–73.
Rader, Karen. 2004. Making Mice: Standardizing Animals for Biomedical Research, 1900–1915. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Reagan, Leslie J. 2018. Monstrous Births, Birth Defects, Unusual Anatomy, and Disability in Europe and North America. In Oxford Handbook of Disability History, ed. Michael Rembis, Catherine Kudlick, Kim E. Nielsen, and Leslie J. Reagan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Roe, Shirley. 1981. Matter, Life, and Generation: Eighteenth-century Embryology and the Haller-Wolff Debate. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ruysch, Frederik. 1744. Alle de Ontleed-, Genees-, en Heelkundige Werken van Frederik Ruysch. Amsterdam: By de Janssoons van Waesberge.
Temkin, Oswei. 2006. German Concepts of Ontogeny and History around 1800. In The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Tresch, John. 2012. The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology After Napoleon. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Von Baer, Karl Ernst. 1846. Ueber den Littärischen Nachlass von Caspar Friedrich Wolff, Ehemaligen Mitglieder der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu St. Petersburg. Bulletin De La Classe Physico-Mathématique De L’académie Impériale Des Sciences De Saint-Pétersbourg 5: 129–160.
Vrolik, Willem. 1834. Over den Aard en Oorsprong der Cyclopie. Amsterdam.
Vrolik, Willem. 1840. Handboek der Ziektekundige Ontleedkunde, Eerste Deel. Amsterdam: Müller.
Vrolik, Willem. 1842. Handboek der Ziektekundige Ontleedkunde, Tweede Deel. Amsterdam: Müller.
Vrolik, Willem. 1849a. Teratology. In The Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology, ed. Robert Bentley Todd, 942–976. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Robert.
Vrolik, Willem. 1849b. De Vrucht van den Mensch en van de Zoogdieren, Afgebeeld en Beschreven in hare Regelmatige en Onregelmatige Ontwikkeling. Amsterdam: G.M.P. Londonck.
Wellman, Janina. 2017. The Form of Becoming: Embryology and the Epistemology of Rhythm, 1760–1830. Trans. Kate Sturge. New York: Zone Books.
Withycombe, Shannon. 2019. Lost: Miscarriage in Nineteenth-century America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Funding
Funding was provided by Council for European Studies.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ray, S. From Monsters to Malformations: Anatomical Preparations as Objects of Evidence for a Developmental Paradigm of Embryology, 1770–1850. J Hist Biol 55, 35–57 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-022-09670-z
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-022-09670-z