Stahl A, Tourame P
Hôpital de la Timone, Marseille, France.
Arch Pediatr. 2010 Dec;17(12):1716-24. doi: 10.1016/j.arcped.2010.09.004. Epub 2010 Nov 11.
The mythology of the Greeks and Romans is full of monsters of fiction: giants, cyclops, centaurs, hydras, Gorgons… The accounts of travelers, reproduced in the Natural History of Pline l'Ancien reported the existence, in distant countries, of men with a dog's head (baboons), of men with a single tall foot (sciapode), beings whose face is embedded in the chest (or acephala blemmyes), to which must be added a wide variety of men with no mouth, no nose, or equipped with giant ears or feet turned backwards, as well as hermaphrodites. Teratology reports on monstrous births, which have constituted the factual basis from which the imagination conceived adults whose morphology corresponds to the monsters of legend. Newborns sirenomelia were behind the legend of sciapode and sirens. Cyclopia have inspired the legend of the cyclops. Anencephaly probably explains the description of headless or blemmyes. The genesis of the legend of baboons may have multiple origins: firstly the existence of people suffering from congenital hypertrichosis, on the other hand, the influence of Egyptian mythology where the god Anubis has a dog's head. The acardiac fetus may explain some monstrous forms, features the work of Hieronymus Bosch. The significance of the monsters of legend, their genesis, their persistence through the ages is complex. By approaching teratology, we added a new field of exploration of real monsters of antiquity and Middle Ages.
巨人、独眼巨人、半人马、九头蛇、蛇发女怪……老普林尼的《自然史》中转载了旅行者的记述，其中提到在遥远的国度存在着狗头人（狒狒）、单脚高个的人（斯基阿波德人）、脸部嵌于胸部的生物（无面胸头人），此外还有各种各样没有嘴巴、没有鼻子、长着巨耳或脚向后弯的人，以及两性人。畸形学记载了怪胎的情况，这些构成了想象出形态与传说中的怪物相符的成年人的事实依据。无肢畸形新生儿是斯基阿波德人和塞壬传说的背后原因。独眼畸形激发了独眼巨人的传说。无脑畸形可能解释了无头人或无面胸头人的描述。狒狒传说的起源可能有多种：一方面是患有先天性多毛症的人的存在，另一方面是埃及神话的影响，在埃及神话中阿努比斯神有一个狗头。无心胎儿可能解释了一些怪异形态，比如希罗尼穆斯·博斯作品中的形象。传说中怪物的意义、它们的起源以及历经岁月的延续是复杂的。通过研究畸形学，我们为探索古代和中世纪真正的怪物增添了一个新领域。
