While conducting dissertation research on early modern French colonial India in 2021-2022, I found myself unexpectedly working from home during one of those classic “strike days” that close both the French National Archives and National Library. I passed the time by searching for new online source collections and eventually stumbled across a surprising archival listing: a “Remarkable Essay of a baby, of a monstrous character, born in Pondichéry in the East Indies on the Coromandel Coast in the Mughal Empire in 1734.”1 The source, housed in the archives of the Royal Society of Medicine, presently the archives of the National Academy of Medicine, recounts the physical deformities of a stillborn female fetus delivered in a French colony in India. The text is vividly descriptive and once accompanied a now lost, “near perfect replica” of what the author called the “monstrous” fetus. While not directly related to my dissertation topic,2 after reading the source I knew it would be worth writing about in the future and it has since opened a variety of intellectual pathways.
In the French empire, monsters could be found everywhere. Starting in the early seventeenth century, Francis Bacon had encouraged people to think of monsters as a “point of reference that allows the naturalist to identify the overreaching regularity for the rest of organic life.”3 As European empires spread around the world, for European scientists the human “regularity” against which all others were measured increasingly meant white, able-bodied, Europe-born men and women. This early modern encounter with the supposedly “monstrous” baby born in the East Indies reflects the intersection of globalization and the rise of “enlightened” thinking in the eighteenth century. While the French people and crown had maintained an inconsistent connection with the Indian Ocean and its ethnically and religiously diverse cultures since the early sixteenth century, it was only in the last half of the seventeenth century that sustained French imperial efforts to trade with and colonize the East Indies began in earnest.4 By the turn of the eighteenth century, Pondichéry had become the commercial and political center of French presence in the Indian Ocean. Distant from the metropole, the many French and European settlers who found themselves living in French India nonetheless strove to maintain connections to the hexagon. While trade was one way to nurture those connections, intellectual exchange constituted another. Colonists not only shipped books, librettos, and artwork from the metropole to the Indies, but also wrote letters back and forth to family, friends, and colleagues. These letters, which carried stories of their lives and experiences in the colonies, both entertained and educated those who could not see the East Indies for themselves.
Intellectual exchanges formed around the dominant intellectual trends of the time, most especially those that emerged from the enlightenment.5 The Scientific Revolution had established rationalism and empiricism as the common practice of the educated mind, and subsequent generations of intellectuals began to devote closer attention to the natural, observable world. Entangled in the rise of empires and increasingly common encounters with colonial “Others,” intellectuals applied their predilection for observation to their experiences in the colonies. Throughout the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, writer-colonists travelled throughout global empires, seeking to uncover the meanings and the makings of man-kind. As new places and people introduced new ideas and questions of race and the body, the men (and occasional women) who had traveled to distant lands capitalized on their experience to their advantage. Collecting their “findings” into treatises, essays, and books, these intellectuals cum writer-colonists sought to leverage the knowledge they extracted from colonial populations into positions of influence and reputable standing.6 Thus, the “Remarkable Essay” is not just a story about one “monstrous” fetus or the man who wrote about her. It is also a story of the entanglement of the enlightenment and enlightenment anatomy, medicine, and anthropology with colonial expansion.
At a surface level, the “Remarkable Essay” reflects one intellectual’s attempt to serve his own ambitions. Like his compatriots, the anonymous author leveraged his knowledge to establish his expertise within enlightenment frameworks to secure social and material gain. Writing to the Royal Academy of Surgery, he detailed the stillborn fetus’s many “defects” to demonstrate his medical knowledge to a community he sought to impress. In the eighteenth century, the medical interpretation of monstrosity was in the process of shifting. Increasingly, practitioners of obstetric medicine began to view “monstrosity” – i.e. a fetal anomaly – as within the boundaries and definitions set by Nature. Harnessing a global correspondence network to share their experiences and examples, medical practitioners worked to tease out the “scientific, ethical and emotional issues” that arouse from studying these subjects.7 In the case of this particular fetus, the author drafted the document to serve as an entrée to eighteenth century epistemological and medical debates, perhaps in the hope that established medical elites would deem him to be a worthy colleague.
At the time, the French Royal Academy of Surgery was the preeminent authoritative body for the French medical elite.8 Whether they had been formally educated or were self-taught, doctors, surgeons, and other eighteenth-century medical practitioners sought recognition and support from the Academy. The author’s narrative about the fetus was a means to bridge his life in the colony and the intellectual milieu in the metropole. The author’s own training was a hurdle he had to cross if he hoped to gain recognition from this group of learned men. From where he gained his education is unclear, but the author’s criticism of a previous attempt to describe the fetus as “too little detailed” exemplifies his belief in the superiority of his own knowledge over the other medical practitioners involved with the monstrous subject.
Yet the discovery of an interesting specimen and honed anatomical knowledge were not enough to win that respect. He needed to talk the talk as well. As such, his narrative carefully situates his work within two prevalent discursive themes from the enlightenment: First, in addition to simply showing off his learning, the author also claimed that the report and replica were of utilitarian use. In his words, they would be of “infinite help to surgery” – if less so than the original—as an object of study. Drawing on one of the earliest themes in enlightenment discourse, the author strove to show that his work would prove valuable and useful to the fields of medicine and anatomy. His purpose, he suggested, was the accumulation of knowledge for the field of surgery as a whole and to “uncover the secrets of nature.” The inclusion of the now-lost “near perfect” replica intended to further this aim. The replica would have enabled members of the Academy to examine and observe for themselves, as well as serve as a teaching model with which they might instruct others. He framed his efforts as benefitting the wider French medical community, providing a specimen that they might dissect (figuratively) to better understand why the fetus had developed as it had.
The author’s repeated narration of the story of his “little monster” and his wistful interest in the “mechanics of nature” that brought such a “little machine” into existence underline such an approach. By using machinic metaphors, the author engages a second enlightenment discourse and debate: the body as a machine. Since Descartes had first proposed the idea of dualism, enlightenment era intellectuals debated the separation of the body and soul.9 Dualism combined with the rise of empiricism to provoke increased interest in the disabled, deformed, “monstrous” body as a productive and useful site of scientific inquiry.10 The author constantly refers to the mechanical nature of this deformed human body as much as its anatomical physiology. Whether it be the whole fetus as a “small, yet great machine,” or the regular juxtaposition of the body against “Nature,” the author was engaged in an enlightenment discursive shift regarding the body. No longer were deformities a sign of a fetus’s moral failings but rather a naturally occurring mystery that the scientific process could uncover. The author’s descriptive choices emphasized rational explanation over other possibilities for understanding the origins of the so-called monstrous “little animal.”11 The attention the author spent on its corporeal details are of interest to intellectual and medical historians because it reveals how far enlightenment concepts had travelled, and how extra-European experiences and examples were used to expand, defend, and rationalize the enlightenment’s intellectual shift.
Equally informative are the obscured social histories embedded in the document’s genesis. The “Remarkable essay” provides a window into the social world of France’s colonies. It hints at processes of global migration and circulation in its recounting of the Longdocien bell maker-turned-Jesuit cum physician who created the tiny replica sent with the report to the Royal Academy of Surgery. There is a brief glimpse at the violence that permeated colonial life when the author reveals the fetus was conceived during a sexual assault while the mother was incapacitated due to an epileptic attack. Despite the snippets it reveals about these events, it remains silent about their identities. That later of these two important people is not named—and the former only in passing—serves to highlight the methodological challenges of social history.12 Were the experiences of the colonized commonly fragmentary, only preserved in the archives due to the violent episodes they endured and not for their own sake? This source forces readers to push past the surface if one hopes to uncover more about the lives of those who lived these events. To look past the fractures, readers must work to read with, against, and through the source to account effectively for the conditions that affected its creation, and the silences its creators produced by occluding non-white, non-European, and non-male perspectives and actors from the events they supposedly recorded.
In the classroom, this source demands that students unsettle the narrative’s fragmentary and imbricated aspects. To fully understand why this fetus was “monstrous,” students must confront how changes in early eighteenth-century intellectual and political landscapes led to a shift in the way that people related to the world around them, changes that occurred not only in terms of personal relationships but also in terms of man’s relationship to the supposedly natural. “Remarkable Essay” opens a window onto the violence of everyday life as well as trauma’s perpetuation through the pursuit of enlightened knowledge. Readers must consider the varied experiences of empire—opportunity for some, silencing for others—and the complicated ways that archives perpetuate and compound colonial violence. This source highlights the intellectual divide that pertains between recovering the experience of colonized bodies and the archive’s objectification of their conditions.
Remarkable Essay of a baby of a monstrous character, born in Pondichéry in the East Indies on the Coromandel Coast in the Mughal Empire in 1734
(France, National Academy of Medicine, 182 d2 4)
[1] As I believe, messieurs, that you have yet to see an artificial monstrous fetus, with an account of the conception of the true fetus, and of its structure, which monsieur de Beaulieu, lieutenant of ships for the Compagnie des Indes, a very curious man and very apt to uncover the secrets of nature, shall have given to monsieur Petit, surgeon, as he told me many times on returning from the Indies, being surgeon-major of the ship on which he was.
Messieurs, before I give you an exact description of this little fetus, I believe that it is necessary to tell you who is the author of the account [2] and the supervisor of the wooden sculpture of the little monster; it is a Jesuit brother; who came to the Indies when he was around forty, being a smelter of bells; having a lively, penetrating, and quite ingenious spirit, something ordinary enough for Longdociens, having been some time in the Indies working in his profession; he left it to embrace the monastic life in which he lives today filled with glory, praise, and years; aiding a number of poor, new Christian converts, and even the idolaters with his alms; At the beginning, he followed very closely a brother of the order, a skilled chemist and pharmacist, under whom he worked for a many years. Eventually the Brother died, he replaced him, he also took to treating wounds, and even to do some surgical operations, even having done an amputation, not in the manner that we practice in France, nor with the same instruments, but totally differently, as he told me many times; having spoken with surgeons a few times, he believed to be prepared to put forth an essay (but too little detailed) of the little monster which is under consideration. Believing this to be an infinite help to [3] surgery, I showed him many times before he had begun to make these little wooden monsters that surgery would much more indebted to him if he sent the original rather than the copy, which is polished enough it is true but not natural, and which does nothing for us seeing the internal troubles of the viscera of this little animal, as I have remarked many times in seeing and examining it; I believe myself obligated for the public utility to give a just and consistent description of the anatomy.
That part of India where the mother of the above-said monster was born is in a very hot climate, where it is almost summer for every season, and it rains very rarely. It is this which causes a great dryness of the earth which only produce its crops with much work, and all of them for that reasons are without substance and tasteless, also the food which the poor Indians get from [the land] serves often to make them languish rather than to nourish them. They are nearly all weak and effeminate, their food [4] only supplies them very little nourishing juice and animal spirit; this renders them prone to several unfortunate sicknesses, such as rickets, consumption, “the doldrums,” epilepsy, catalepsy, paralysis, et cetera.
The mother of the above-said monster is a widow, aged around thirty, and long-time afflicted with periodic epilepsy, which puts her in the harsh necessity of begging for her livelihood, having come by this subject in Pondichéry; a colony established by the Compagnie des Indes, where she had an epilepsy attack with violent convulsions which lasted six days, having had in this time some reprieve, she recalled that a man entered into her casa, or house, and abused her at the height of her illness; she had all the signs of pregnancy; during the first six months of her pregnancy, she felt extreme pains in her hypogastric region, which put her in a very sad state and plunged her into a very great melancholy.
Anyway, she carried this costly fruit until the eighth and a half month at which time she birthed a stillborn girl, having more resemblance to a hideous monster than to a human creature, there was [5] no afterbirth. The childbirth was very difficult and laborious, with tearing of the matrix of the internal orifice, which resulted in an ulcer that for about a month and a half discharged whitish pus almost like leukorrhea, which healed itself naturally, without the need for human intervention. That woman recovered since then, and currently feels well.
The two types of pyramidal or pampiniform bodies which exist from around the superior and anterior section of the left parietal bone to the superior portion of the occipital bone on the same side, covering all the parietal, and extending to the temporal bone on the same side, which has a length of about two inches and some twelfths of an inch look to be nothing other than an extension of the scalp whose vessels are connected with those at the bottom of the uterus and which took place of the placenta and of the umbilical cord for transmission of blood from the mother to the fetus, and for the reciprocal flow of blood from the fetus to the mother, I see no other place by which the circulation could have been supported given there appears to be [6] no vestige of an umbilicus.
On the right side [of the head], there is another pyramidal body which its much less considerable that the left, and which is a bit closer located to the same place, but it is much less extensive, and is a little less than the same length. They were not connected by their anatomy in their superior section, but we bound them together by their superior section to suspend the fetus in the vase in which we have conserved it today in ethanol; during the birth, these pampiniform bodies were flared and caved in horizontally on the external surface of the head, these membranes were softer and more supple than is ordinary for the scalp on a fetus, but the ethanol has rendered them firm enough.
At the inferior part of the right pampiniform body there is a rounded protuberance the size of a small nut which seems to be formed from the temporal bone, there are no appearance on the coronal, nor the parietals. The bust being like a sawed head, which we want to show the brain and the same side of the face there it’s a lot flatter from it is [7] horizontal from the superior part of the upper lip to the superior part of the occipital.
Around the area of the vertex, at the right, there are three small cords, which the top and the longest one moves towards the occipital on the left, the two others move to the left, at the union of these three cords there is a type of suture from the area inferior and anterior of rounded eminence on the right temporal to the left corner of the mouth, that suture had been made during birth by Brother Loupias, and the above mentioned cords, which are joined, are formed by the folds of the skin so that the suture had the occasion to put back together, therefore the cords and the sutures are only artificial.
From the anterior section of this false suture until a fleshy outgrowth, which comes out of the right side of the mouth, there can clearly be seen a little oblong black spot which stands in for a very small and unopened eye, from the opposite side about the same distance from the mouth is another eye but it is more apparent and also closed.
From the anterior, medial, and inferior section [8] of the left pampiniform body, until the medial and superior section of the upper lip, where there is a notch that forms a cleft-lip, is a pyramidal body which enlarges and deepens as it approaches the lip—it is what I have always considered as a nose even though there are no nostrils.
The occipital is greatly enlarged and internally forms its cavities bigger than there should be in a fetus of her size, it is this which makes that the cerebellum would not have been obstructed in its functions to make up for the lack of brain, which is missing entirely.
The ears are well-enough shaped, if only that the right is thicker than the left which is longer in area by the canal, helix, and antihelix.
The mouth is very open, big, and very disfigured via the upper lip; as if being ripped in the middle, and forming a cleft-lip, and very inverted and that the interior is filled with several fleshy lips, and the right side exhibits a flame which exited form the mouth; the palate is [9] filled with many fleshy bumps, the same thing in the lateral parts of the mouth, the tongue is normal, the bottom lip is a bit inverted, but without deformity, the left cheek is fatter than the right, the chin is normal.
After having spoken amply enough about the head, I will say something of the trunk; the spine pitches considerably to the right side, that is what give the fetus its completely wrong appearance, there does not appear to be any dip of the spine, the buttocks are joined without any semblance of that contour which ordinarily separates them in all subjects.
At the posterior and superior area of the right clavicle, there is a considerable gland which holds, so to speak, the place of this side’s parotid gland. Immediately to its posterior and superior side, there is a rupture or a tearing which goes diagonally from back to front until reaching the fifth true rib, this allowed the protrusion of the right lung, the liver, the ventricle, the spleen, the mesentery, and the largest part of the intestines, the most remarkable, [10] is that this protrusion responds immediately to the chest capacity, which could not have happened without the diaphragm first tearing to allow the viscera of the abdomen into the chest. All these features, which had required a true examination to see the disruption that Nature caused in this little animal by its difference, as much as for the umbilical vessels as the other parts, did little to incite Brother Loupias to allow his dear fetus to be cruelly dissected as I offered him many times in order to discover the mechanisms used by Nature to make this small, yet great machine function. This is not in a vein of criticism which I say this, but a pure desire to discover the phenomena of nature) in the above cited rift, there are several skin folds which appear to be made by a scar formed in the womb of the mother.
At the armpit, there is a bit of tissue which seems to be a portion of the thymus, a bit lower and towards the back there is a lobe of the lung, which seems to be proportional enough to the subject.
[11] Between the humerus of the right arm and one of the lobes of the lungs of the same side, there is liver tissue which is about three times larger than is should be, it is supported only by the coronary ligament, its color is a pale brown; its two lobes are very obvious as is the fissure; the bile duct is hidden by the ventricle, the wrapping that the liver receives from the peritoneum is very saggy and leaves visible many bumps and cavities on its surface.
The ventricle is directly below the liver, its large cul-de-sac points to the left, its size is quite proportionate, its color is off-white, it there nothing particular about it.
To the right side of the ventricle there is a portion of the duodenum, the jejunum, the ilium, and a portion of the colon as well as a portion of the mesentery.
Below the mesentery, there is what I would judge to be the spleen, which appears rounded, with a convex superior portion and a concave inferior one. We can assume from this picture that it may only be possible to find abdominal viscera of [12] the kidneys, the bladder, the uterus, and the pancreas which do not appear outside any more than the omentum.
The exterior portions of the genitalia have nothing unique about them, expect that the vulva is quite outstretched and rounded, the labia minora is very large and puffy; the clitoral hood is present, but there is no visible perineum.
To conclude I will say that the right arm seems to be detached at the shoulder blade where the ligaments are so loose that they have allowed the head of the humerus to travel towards the anterior side of the clavicle on the same side, the entire arm and forearm are atrophied, which may have been caused when the viscera, before exiting the chest, had formed a tumor, which has pressed the axillary vessels, and as a result had hindered free circulation and caused the withering of the arm—the nourishing juices not being able to be carried there in great enough abondance.
The ulna and the radius are convex on the outside and concave inside, the ulna forms a bony process of around five to six twelfths of an inch that overruns the humerus.
The hand is composed of only four [13] very well-formed fingers; the left arm was very well nourished and proportional to its parts.
The right leg is also very well proportioned. The left leg is convex at the external lateral portion, and concave at the opposing side. The foot is turned inwards as if dislocated, this is in part due to the fetus being placed originally in a too short vase and the legs were bent and too tightly squeezed, that is the cause of this curve.
Memoire Remarquable d’un enfant, d’une figure monstrueuse, né à Pontichéry dans les indes orientales a la coste de Coromandel dans l’empire Du Mogol en 1734e
(France, Académie Nationale de Medicine, 182 d2 4)
[1e] Comme je crois, Messieurs, que vous n’etes point sans avoir vêu un fœtus monstrueux artificiel, avec un recit de la conception du vray fœtus, et de sa structure, que Monsieur de Beaulieu lieutenant des vaisseaux de la compagnie des indes, homme fort curieux et tres porté a la decouverte des secrets de la nâture, doit avoir donné a Monsieur Petit chirurgien, comme il me la dit plusieurs fois en revenant des indes, êtant chirurgien major du vaisseau dans lequel il etoit.
Messieurs avant que de vous donner un portrait exact de ce petit fœtus, je crois qu’il est necessaire de vous dire qui est l’auteur de la relation, [2e] et le conducteur de la sculpture du petit monstre de bois ; c’est un frère jésuite ; venû aux indes il y à environ quarante ans, étant fondeur de cloches de sa profession, ayant un esprit vif, penetrant, et fort ingenieux, chose asses ordinaire aux languedociens, ayant eté quelques temps aux indes, travaillant de sa profession ; il la quitta pour embrasser l’étât monastique dans lequel il vit aujourd’huy, chargé de gloire, de louanges, et d’anées ; secourant par ses aumones quantité de pauvres chretiens nouveaux convertis, et même des payens ; au commencement il suivit fort exactement un frere de son ordre, habile chimiste et pharmacien, sous lequel il travailla pendant plusieurs anées, Enfin le frere êtant venû à mourir, il le remplaça, il s’addonna aussi a traiter les playes, et même a faire quelques operations de chirurgie, iusqu’à avoir fait une amputation, non de la maniere que nous la pratiquons en France, ny avec les mêmes instruments, mais tout differemment, comme il me la dit plusieurs fois ; ayant quelque fois conversé avec des chirurgiens, il a crû être en Etât d’exposer un mémoire (mais trop peu circonstancié) du petit monstre dont il est question ; croyant en cela obliger infiniment la [3e] chirurgie ; ieluy ay representé plusieurs fois avant qu’il eut commancé a faire faire ces petits monstres de bois, que la chirurgie luy seroit bien plus redevable s’il envoioit l’original que non pas la copie, qui est ases polie il est vrai, mais qui n’est pas nâturel, et qui ne nous fait rien voir du dérangement interieur des visceres de ce petit animal, comme ie l’ay remarqué plusieures fois en le voyant et examinant ; ie me crois obligé pour l’utilité du public, d’en donner une description plus juste et plus conforme à l’anatomie.
Cette partie de L’inde ou est née la mere du monstre susdit est dans un climat fort chaud, où on ne connoit quasi pour toute saison que l’esté, il y pleut tres rarément, c’est ce qui cause une grande arridité de la terre qui ne produit ses fruits qu’avec beaucoup de peine, et qui sonts pour ainsi dire sans substance et comme insipides, aussi la nourriture que les pauvres indiens en retirent sert-elle plustost a les faire languir qu’a les faire vivre. Ils sont presques tous foibles et efeminés, leur nourriture ne [4e] leur fournissant que tres peu de suc nouricier et d’esprits animeaux, ce qui les rend sujets a quantité de facheuses maladies, telles que sont les rachitis, la phtisie, le marasme, l’epilepsie, la catalepsie, la paralisie etc.
La mere du monstre susdit est une femme veuvë agée d’anviron trente ans, attaquée depuis long temps d’une epilepsie periodique, qui la met dans la dure necessité de mandier sa vie ; êtant venuë pour ce sujet a Pontichéry colonie établie par la compagnie des indes, ou elle fut attaquée d’epilepsie avec des convulsions violentes qui durerent six jours, ayant eû dans cette espace de temps quelque relache, elle s’est souvenuë qu’un homme entra dans la Case où maison et en abusa dans la paroxisme de son mal ; elle eut tous les signes de grosesse ; pendant les six premiers mois de sa grosesse, elle ressentit des douleurs extraordinaires dans la region hypogastrique qui la mirent dans un tres triste etât et la plongerent dans une melancolie fort grande.
Enfin elle porta ce fruit onereux jusqu’à huit mois et demy auquel temps elle accoucha d’une fille morte, ayant plus de rapport a un monstre hideux qu’a une creature humaine, il ne suivit apres la sortie de l’enfant [5e] aucune apparence d’arriere faix ; l’accouchement fut fort difficile et laborieux, avec dechirement de l’orifice intérieur de la matrice qui y occasiona un ulcere qui fournit environ une mois et demy un pus blanchâtre presque semblable à un ecoulement de fleurs blanches, que la nâture guerit par elle-même sans le secours de la main des hommes. Cette femme s’est retablie depuis ce temps la et se porte presentément bien.
Les deux especes de corps piramideaux ou pampiniformes, qui regnent depuis environ la partie superieure et antérieure du parietal gauche jusqu’a la partie supérieure de l’occipitale du même costé en recouvrant tout la parietal, et s’avançant même jusqu’au temporal du même costé, qui a de longueur environ deux pouces et quelques lignes ne paroit être autre chose qu’un prolongement du cuir chevelû dont les vaisseaux se sont abouchés avec ceux du fond de l’uterus et qui ont tenu lieu de placenta et de cordon ombilical pour la communication du sang de la mere au fœtus, et pour le retour reciproque du sang du fœtus a la mère, ie ne vois point d’autre endroit par lequel la circulation ait pu être entretenuë que par ce seul veû qu’il n’apparu [6e] aucun vestige d’ombilic.
Du costé droit se trouve l’autre corps piramidal qui est bien moins considerable que la gauche et qui est a peu pres situé de même, mais qui est bien moins etendû, et qui à a peu près la même longueur. Ils n’etoients point reunis des leur premiere conformations dans leur partie supérieure, mais on les a lies ensemble par leur partie supérieure pour suspendre le fœtus dans le vaze dans lequel on le conserve aujourd’huy dans l’esprit de vin ; lors de la naissance ces corps pampiniformes etoient evases et affaises horisontallement sur la surface externe de la tête, ces membranes etoient plus moles et plus laxes que n’est ordinairement le cuir chevelû dans un fœtus, mais l’esprit de vin les a rendues asses fermes.
A la partie inférieure du corps pampiniforme droit se trouve une eminence arrondie de la groseur d’une petite noix qui me semblé être formée du temporal ; il n’y à nulle apparence de coronal, ny des parietaux, le buste etant comme une tète sciée dont on veut demontrer le cerveau et même du costé de la face il se trouve beaucoup plus applaty puisqu’il se trouve [7e] horizontal de la partie supérieure de la levre supérieure a la partie supérieure de l’occipital.
Vers l’endroit du vertex a droit se remarque trois petits cordons dont le supérieur et le plus long se porte vers l’occipital à gauche, les deux autres se portent à gauche, a l’union de ces trois cordons se trouve une espece de suture qui regne depuis la partie inférieure et antérieure de l’eminence arrondie du temporal droit jusqu’a la commissure gauche de la boche, cette suture a eté faitte depuis l’accouchément par le frere loupias et les cordons susdits qui se trouvent joints sont formés par les replis de la peau, que la suture à occasioné en la rapprochant, cela faire voir que les cordons et la suture ne sont qu’artificiels.
Depuis la partie antérieure de cette fausse suture jusqu’a une excroissance charnuë qui sort de la bouche du costé droits, se remarque un petit point noir oblong qui represente un œil tres petit et point ouvert, du costé opposé a peu pres a la même distance de la bouche se remarque l’autre œil, mais qui est bien plus apparent et aussi fermé.
Depuis la partie antérieure moyenne et inferieure [8e] du corps pampiniforme gauche, jusqu’à la partie moyenne et supérieure de la levre supérieure ou se trouve une echancrure qui forme comme un bec de lievre, regne un corps piramidal qui s’élargit et grosit en s’approchant de la levre, c’est ce que j’ay toujours regardé comme le nez quoy qu’il n’y paraise point de narines.
L’occipital est fort elargi et forme intérieurement ses cavites plus grandes quelles ne doivent être dans un fœtus de sa groseur, c’est ce qui fait que le cervelet n’auroit pas eté gené dans ses fonctions pour récompenser au defaut du cerveau qui y manque entièrement.
Les oreilles sont ases bien formées sinon que la droitte est plus epaise que la gauche qui est plus allongée en partie par son conduit, et par l’helix et l’anthelix.
La bouche est fort ouverte, grande, et tres defigurée par sa levre supérieure ; se trouvant vers son milieu comme dechirée, et formant un bec de lievre, et fort renversée, et dont l’interieur se trouve garny de plusieures caroncules charnuës, et qui du costé droit representent comme une flamme qui sortiroit de la bouche ; le palais se trouve garny [9e] de plusieurs eminences charnuës, on trouve aussi la même chose dans les parties lateralles de la bouche, la langue se trouve dans une forme naturelle ; la levre inférieure est un peu renversée, mais sans deformité, la joue gauche se trouve plus grosse que la droite, le menton est bien formé.
Après avoir parlé asés amplement sur la tête, ie diray quelque chose du tronc ; l’épine se jette considerablement du costé droit c’est ce qui fait paroitre le fœtus tout de travers, il ne paroit regner aucune depression de l’epine, et les fesses se trouvent jointes sans qu’on y remarque cette ligne qui les separe ordinairément dans tous les sujets.
A la partie postérieure et supérieure de la clavicule droitte se trouve une glande considerable qui tient pour ainsi dire lieu de la parotide de ce costé ; immediatement a son costé postérieur et supérieur se trouve une rupture ou dechirément qui se porte obliquément de derriere en devant iusque vers la cinquieme des vrayes costes, qui a permis la sortie du poumon du costé droit, du foye, du ventricule, de la ratte, du mezentere, et de la plus grande partie des intestines ce qu’il y à de plus remarquables, c’est [10e] que cette sortie repond immediatement dans la capacité de la poitrine, c’est ce que ne s’est pû faire sans que le diaphragme n’ait souffert le premier dechirement pour donner passage des visceres de l’abdomen dans la capacité de la poitrine ; toutes ces particularités que auroient demandé un examen exact pour voir le derangement que la nâture a causé dans ce petit animal par sa variation, tant a l’egard des vaisseaux ombilicaux que de plusieures autres parties, n’ont peu porter le frere Loupias a permettre que son cher fœtus fut aussi dissequé cruelement comme je m’y suis offert plusieures fois afin de decouvrir les resorts dont la nâture s’est servie pour faire jouer cette petite, mais grande machine. (e n’est point un esprit de critique qui me fait parler ainsi, mais une pure envie de decouvrir les phœnomenes de la nâture) dans le dechirément cy desus cité il sy trouve plusieurs petits replis de la peau qui semblent être faits par une cicatrice formée dans le sein de la mere.
A l’endroit de l’aiselle se trouve comme un petit parenchime qui semble être une portion de la fagouë, un peu au desous et en arriere se trouve un des lobes du poumon, qui ma semblé ases proportionné au sujet.
[11e] Entre l’humerus du bras droit et un des lobes du poumon du même costé se trouve le parenchime du foye qui est environ trois fois plus gros qu’il ne doit être, il n’est soutenû que par son ligament corönaire, sa couleur est d’un brun clair ; ses deux lobes sont forts apparents et même la scissure ; la vesicule du fiel est cachée par le ventricule, l’enveloppe que le fois [sic] reçoit du peritoine est fort affaisée et laisse voir plusieurs petites eminences et cavités à sa surface.
Le ventricule se trouve immediatement au desous du foye, son grand cul de sac se porte a gauche, son volume est fort proportioné, sa couleur est d’un blanc sale, il n’a rien de particulier.
Au costé droit du ventricule se voit une partie du duodenum, le jeujunum, l’ileum, et une partie du colon, avec une portion du mezentere.
Au Dessous du mezentere se voit sur ce que j’en ay pur juger la ratte qui paroit arrondie, convexe dans sa partie supérieure et concave dans l’inferiéure. On peut presumer par ce tableaux qu’il ne se peut trouver de visceres dans la capacité de l’abdomen que les [12e] reins, la vessie, la matrices, et le pancreas qui ne paroit point au dehors non plus que l’epiploon.
Les parties extérieures de la génération n’ont rien de singulier, sinon que les lèvres se trouvent fort débordées, et arrondies, les nymphes sont fort grosses et comme tuméfiées, on y remarque le prépuce du clitoris, on n’y voit point de périnée.
Pour finir ie diray que le bras droite semble être detaché de l’omoplate, ou les ligaments tellement relachés qu’ils ont permis a la tête de l’humerus de se porter a la partie antérieure de la clavicule du même costé, tout le bras et l’avant bras sont atrophies ce qui peut avoir eté causé lorsque les viscères avant que de sortir de la poitrine auront fait tumeur, qui aura pressé les vaisseaux axillaires et aura par ce moyen empesché une libre circulation, et causé l’amaigrissement du bras, les sucs nouriciers ne pouvant y être porter en asez grande abondance.
Le cubitus et le rdius[sic] sont convexes en dehors et concaves en dedans, le cubitus forme une appophise d’environ cinq a six lignes qui excede l’humerus.
La main ne se trouve composée que de quatre [13e] doigts fort bien formés ; le bras gauche est fort bien nourri et proportioné dans toutes ses parties.
La jambe droitte se trouve aussi fort bien proportionée. La jambe gauche est convexe par la partie lateralle externe, et concave par sa partie opposée. Le pied se trouve tourné en dedans et comme luxé, cela vient en partie de ce qu’au commencement on avoit mis le fœtus dans un vase trop court et que les jambes y étoient pliées et trop pressées, c’est ce qui à causé cette courbure.
Notes
- Archives de la Société Royale de Médicine/Carton 182/Dossier 4, ff. 1-13, Anonyme, Mémoire Remarquable d’un enfant, d’une figure monstrueuse, né à Pondichéry dans les indes orientales à la côte de Coromandel dans l’empire du Mogol (1734). ⮭
- Jakob Burnham, Producing Pondichéry: Bureaucracy, Social Lives, and Urban Development in French India, 1699-1757. (Ph.D. Dissertation, Georgetown University, 2024). ⮭
- Andrew Curran and Patrick Graille, “The Faces of Eighteenth-Century Monstrosity,” Eighteenth-Century Life 21, no. 2 (1997): 1. ⮭
- Jakob Burnham, “France and the Indian Ocean” in Routledge Resources Online: The Renaissance World. Edited by Keith Luria and Mack Holt. New York: Routledge (June 2023). ⮭
- More and more work has challenged the prevailing since of a single “enlightenment” in favor of a more multifaceted conceptualization. For an overview on the enlightenment, see Antoine Lilti, L’héritage Des Lumières: Ambivalences de La Modernité, Hautes Études (Seuil, 2019). Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton University Press, 2009) and Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Cornell University Press, 1994). ⮭
- Elena Russo, Styles of Enlightenment: Taste, Politics, and Authorship in Eighteenth- Century France (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) and Jeremy Caradonna, The Enlightenment in Practice: Academic Prize Contests and Intellectual Culture in France, 1670– 1794 (Cornell University Press, 2012). ⮭
- Sean M. Quinlan, “Monstrous Births and Medical Networks: Debates over Forensic Evidence, Generation Theory, and Obstetrical Authority in France, ca. 1780-1815,” Early Science and Medicine 14, no. 5 (2009): 602. ⮭
- France’s Académie royale de chirurgie was founded in 1731, thereby distinguishing itself from the French Académie des sciences, which was founded in 1666. Following the French Revolution, it was combined with the Société royale de médicine (founded 1776) to create the current Académie Nationale de médicine in 1820. For more on the Royal Academies before and during the enlightenment, see Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666-1803, (University of California Press, 1971) and Daniel Roche, Le siècle des lumières en province: académies et académiciens provinciaux, 1680-1789, Civilisations et sociétés (Mouton, 1978). ⮭
- Réne Descartes’ philosophy of dualism contributed to the intellectual division of mind and body, an emphasis on reason as a method to develop the natural sciences, and the rise of Rationalism in the late seventeenth century. ⮭
- Disability studies is still a growing field. For more on the topic in the eighteenth century, see Dwight Christopher Gabbard, “Disability Studies and the British Long Eighteenth Century,” Literature Compass 8, no. 2 (2011): 80–94, and Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, Between Fitness and Death: Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean, Disability Histories (Series) (University of Illinois Press, 2020). ⮭
- For a brief discussion of the shifting ideas of physical deformities in early modern France, see Jakob Burnham, “Fetal Remains, Knowledge, and the Making of Early Modern Monsters” Nursing Clio (3 April 2024) ⮭
- For complete discussions of the challenges of colonial social history and the archives, see Danna Agmon, “Historical Gaps and Non-Existent Sources: The Case of the Chaudrie Court in French India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 63, no. 4 (October 2021): 979–1006; Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (W. W. Norton & Company, 2019); Sophie White, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2019), and Marisa J., Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Archive (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). ⮭
Jakob Burnham is currently a Lecturer in the History of Early Modern Europe and the World at the University of North Texas. He received his Ph.D. in History from Georgetown University in 2024. His research investigates social histories of colonialism and medicine across the French Indian Ocean during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. He thanks Anaïs Faurt for her spirited discussions regarding some of the trickier French translations, Meghan Roberts for taking photos of the source for him, and the editors of the Journal for their thoughtful comments on the project.