"Fetal Monstrosities": A Comparison of Evidence from Sicily in the Modern Age

A naturalistic sensitivity emerges that is disengaged from transcendental presuppositions, and which reflects in a broad sense a medical conception based less on "cosmic causes" and more on "human and social" aspects. Starting with an analysis of the important work by Ingrassia, this study will then draw a comparison both with contemporary teratological treatises and with subsequent thought on monstrous births in Sicily during the Enlightenment. In this remote corner of Europe, in fact, in the eighteenth century—and thus in a radically different cultural context—the discussion of monsters converges in a regressive movement far removed from the most daring positions expressed by Ingrassia in his sixteenth-century treaty.