Vetāla 15: The Magic Pill

Click the link to jump directly to the english translation of the fifteenth Vetāla. This page only contains the notes.

The story of the magic pill is practically the same in the Hindi version (No. 14).^[1] The incident of the infuriated elephant is omitted. The daughter’s name, not the queen’s, is Candraprabhā. Mūladeva and Śaśin are described as “two learned and deeply read Brāhmans” who come quite by chance on the love-sick youth as he lies swooning from excess of love in their path. When Mūladeva returns to the court to claim his “daughter,” and is told she is gone, he demands the princess in marriage for his son. As the king will otherwise be cursed, he grants the request immediately.

The Vetāla’s question is rather more elaborate, for, on the king deciding that Śaśin was the lawful husband, he replies:

“Being pregnant by the Brāhman Manasvī” (so he is called), “how could she be the wife of Śaśi?”

The king replies:

“No one was aware that she was with child by Manasvī, and Śaśi married her before five or ten people; on this account, then, she remains his wife, and that child also will possess the right of performing the funeral obsequies.”

The Tamil version (No. 18)^[2] is reduced to a mere skeleton, lacking all interest and importance, and is quite unworthy of any discussion.

The story occurs in a more complicated form in the Turkish Ṭūṭī-nāmah,^[3] where a sorceress gives the love-sick youth a magic seal. By putting it in his mouth he is turned into a girl. In this form he marries the king’s son. Thus he has easy access to the princess, and finally escapes with her. The princess keeps the seal in her mouth during the day and is thus turned into a man, but at night they both revert to their original shapes. The sorceress demands back her “daughter” from the king, who pays a thousand gold pieces by way of compensation.

In the Persian Ṭūṭī-nāmah^[4] the tale is much more simple. A pill is used as in our text, but there is no mention of any claim for the “daughter.”

We turn to the one motif the story contains: the change of sex. I cannot find this exact method used in other tales to change sex, but it is employed for rather similar purposes. For instance, in one tale our friend Mūladeva turns himself into a dwarf by means of a magic pill.^[5]

In the Kathākoça (Tawney, p. 110) a girl puts a magic plant in her ear and immediately becomes a man. But in Indian literature perhaps the best-known case of change of sex, or in this case exchange of sex, occurs in the Mahābhārata, Udyoga Parva, sects, cxc-cxciv^[6]:

King Drupada longs for a son in order to revenge himself on Bhīṣma. Śiva at last says he shall have a child which shall be female and male. In due course a daughter is born, but trusting in Śiva’s promise, Drupada and his wife announce the birth of a son, whom they call Śikhaṇḍin, and bring up the girl as if she were a boy. She attains the age of puberty and the question of marriage arises. The daughter of a powerful king is selected, and the ceremony is performed. When the bride discovers that she has been tricked, and her husband is really a girl, her father is furious, and marches against Drupada to drive him from the throne and kill Śikhaṇḍin.

Meanwhile the unhappy Śikhaṇḍin decides on suicide, and goes into the forest to put her plan into action. There she meets a Yakṣa who takes pity on her and agrees to exchange sex with her until the danger has passed. All is arranged satisfactorily and the two kings are reconciled. But Kuvera discovers what the Yakṣa has done and curses him so that he must always remain a woman. On the request of other Yakṣas, however, the curse is allowed to end on the death of Śikhaṇḍin. The prince returns to the Yakṣa in accordance with his bargain, but is told of Kuvera’s curse and returns in happiness to his wife. Several versions of this tale exist in different parts of India. One was written in Persian by ‘Izzat Ullāh in 1712 under the title of Gul-i Bakāwalī,^[7] while another, based on a Tamil version, appeared in Dubois’ Pantcha-Tantra, p. 15. Cf. No. 14 of Dozon’s Contes Albanais, and No. 58 of Hahn’s Griechische und albanesische Märchen.

So far the transformations have been made either by a magic pill, seal or plant, or merely by mutual agreement with a superhuman being. We have already seen (Vol. VI, p. 59 et seq.) that the most usual, and certainly less compromising, method of enjoying illicit intercourse by magical means was by temporarily changing the man into some animal whose presence would incite no comment. As the motif travelled westwards it seems that water became the more usual medium. Sometimes it was an enchanted spring, or else a lake or well, by bathing in which the change was effected.

A story of a sex-changing well is found in all versions of the Book of Sindibād,^[8] and so in the Nights (Burton, vol. vi, p. 145 et seq.).

A certain prince is to marry the daughter of a neighbouring king. Her cousin is jealous and bribes the prince’s vazir to do what he can to prevent the marriage.

The vazir accompanies the prince to his fiancée’s kingdom, and on the way leads him to

“a certain spring of running water in the mountains there, called Al-Zahrā, whereof whosoever drank from a man became a woman.”

The prince stays on the spot bemoaning his sad fate, while his rival rejoices at the news. By chance a cavalier rides up, who proves to be a king’s son of the Jānn. He takes pity on the prince and conveys him to the Black Country, where, after obtaining leave from the king, one Zu’l Janāhayn, he drinks of a stream and is turned back again to his original shape. Variants of the tale occur in the Hebrew and Spanish texts. See further Clouston, op. cit., p. 300.

In another tale of the Nights^[9] we read of a magic cauldron full of water, into which a vizier plunges at the bidding of a sorcerer. Immediately^[10] he finds himself in the sea, and on coming to dry land discovers he has turned into a woman. He marries and becomes a mother of seven. “She” tires of the life, and flinging “herself” into the sea comes up again in the cauldron in his original sex, to find that he has really been absent only a few seconds. (See further, p. 245.)

A curious Arabic story introducing our motif occurs in the collection of proverbs of al-Mufaḍḍal ibn Salāma, called the Fākhir. When dealing with “The Magic Seed” in Vol. VI, p. 62, I quoted the third sub-story of it. The following forms the first sub-story, and is told by the stranger in the hopes of saving Khurāfa’s life^[11]:

I was in prosperous circumstances, then they ceased and I was ridden with debt. So I went out, fleeing, and a terrible thirst befell me; so I journeyed to a well and alighted that I might drink. Then someone called out to me from the well, “Stand!” so I went away from it and did not drink. But the thirst overcame me and I returned; then he called out to me. Again I returned a third time and drank, and paid no attention to him.

Then he said:

“O Allah! if it is a man transform him into a woman, and if it is a woman transform her into a man.”

And lo! I was a woman. I went to a certain city and a man married me and I bore him two children. Thereafter I returned to my own country, and I passed by the well of which I had drunk and I alighted. He called out to me as he had called at first, but I drank and paid no attention to him. So he prayed as at first, and I became a man as I had been. Then I came to my own country and married a wife and begat on her two children. So I have two sons of my loins and two of my womb.

Stories of sex-changing water cannot, however, be regarded as of common occurrence in folk-tales, the most usual use of magical water, streams, wells, etc., being as an eau de jouvence, or “water of life.”

There is a curious gipsy tale in which a second curse neutralises the effect of the first. It is included in one of von Wlislocki’s works^[12]:

A youth pleases a beautiful river-nymph, daughter of the moon-king, by his piping, to which she has been dancing. In return she gives him a silver sickle, promising him yet fairer gifts if he will come again. Alas! he is late for the tryst, and finds her dead on the ground, heart-broken at his breach of faith; for these ladies’ hearts are very fragile. Her sister appears from the river and curses him, if a man, to become a woman, if a woman, to become a man. She then carries the dead nymph back into the river, and, as it seems, there restores her to life, for immediately afterwards a magnificent black steed stands before the desolate youth (now become a girl) and declares that she is sent by the deceased maiden to bear him where his fortune blossoms. Mounted on the steed, he is borne through the air like lightning to the aid of a king’s daughter, given to a dragon who dwells in a fountain and requires a maid once a year for dinner. He slays the dragon with the sickle, and the king in his joy gives him his daughter to wife. He accepted the lady amid the general excitement, without thinking that he was no longer a man, but a woman. This was awkward. The bride complained to her father, who was afraid to attempt his life by direct means. Wherefore he sent him instead to rob the cloud-king of three golden apples, which had the property, one of them of making wealthy, another of making lucky, and the third of making healthy. His steed helps him to accomplish the task.

But when the monster, half-man, half-dog, that guards the apples finds that he has been cozened he flings the curse after the robber:

“If a man, become woman; if a woman, become man.”

The curse sets matters right again.

“I don’t know what has happened, dearest father,”

says the bride to the king,

“but my husband is a man after all.”

There is also an Albanian version^[13] in which the dragon-slayer is born a girl. She kills a lamia to whom the king has given his son, and is rewarded with a magical steed. Later on she wins another king’s daughter in marriage by a feat of athletics, and, as in the last tale, is guilty of the thoughtlessness of taking the bride. Being prescribed a series of tasks by the king, with the same object of getting rid of her, she at last is cursed by some serpents with the requisite change of sex.

Now, both the above tales are also versions of the great Andromeda cycle,^[14] and could be quoted in connection with the sacrifice of Jīmūtavāhana, which is the next Vetāla tale with which we shall deal. (See p. 233 et seq.)

Before discussing our motif from an anthropological point of view we should see whether Greek mythology can offer us any similar tales for comparison. Foremost among such legends is that of Tiresias, or Teiresias. He was a famous Theban soothsayer, son of Everes and a nymph Chariclo, and he was blind. One of the causes given for his blindness was that once on Mount Cyllene (some accounts say Mount Cithæron, in Bæotia) he saw two snakes copulating, and that having wounded them (or having killed the female) he was turned from a man into a woman, but that on observing the same snakes (or another pair) copulating on another occasion (many accounts make him kill the male) he regained his original sex.

“Hence,” continues the account given by Apollodorus,^[15]

“when Hera and Zeus disputed whether the pleasures of love are felt more by women or by men, they referred to him for a decision. He said that if the pleasures of love be reckoned at ten, men enjoy one and women nine. Wherefore Hera blinded him, but Zeus bestowed on him the art of soothsaying.”

It is interesting to note that the ill-luck attached to anyone who sees snakes coupling is by no means confined to Greek mythology, and we find the superstition fully developed in India. Frazer, op. cit. sup., gives references to works quoting the superstition from North and South India, Burma and the East Indian Islands. I confess I can offer no explanation for the belief, unless it is based on the fact that as the Nāgas are so widely worshipped in India, a devotee so indiscreet as to remain a witness of any personal and intimate relationship between them would naturally incur their wrath. The idea is quite an accepted fact in mythology, and another account given to explain the blindness of Tiresias himself was that he had chanced to see Athena bathing naked.

Then there was Cæneus,^[16] one of the Lapithæ, who was originally a girl called Cænis. She was seized by Poseidon and dragged to his watery abode, where she became his mistress.

Having tasted the joys of his new love, Poseidon asked her to choose whatever she most longed for. Cænis replied (Ovid, Met., xii, 200 et seq.):

“The wrong that you have done me calls for a mighty prayer, the prayer that I may never again be able to suffer so. Grant me that I be not woman! So grant all my prayers.”

Not only did her sex change, but the new Cæneus was made invulnerable in battle. At his death, according to some of the accounts, he was changed back to a woman again. This change of sex at death will be referred to a little later.

Finally there is the story of Iphis, daughter of Ligdus and Telethusa of Phæstus in Crete.^[17] Ligdus longed for a son, and told his wife that if it was a girl she was to be killed.

Just previous to the birth the “daughter of Inachus” (i.e. lo, worshipped as the goddess Isis) appeared to her in a dream, telling her to save the child whatever sex it was, finishing with the words:

“I am the goddess who brings help and succour to those who call upon me, nor shall you have cause to complain that you have worshipped a thankless deity.”

A girl was duly born, but Telethusa pretended it was a boy, and Ligdus, being deceived, had it brought up as a boy, and named it Iphis. Now Iphis is a name of common gender, so Telethusa rejoiced. Time passed, and Iphis was betrothed to Ianthe, daughter of Telestes.

distracted mother postponed the marriage as long as possible and prayed fervently to Isis.

“The goddess seemed to move, nay, moved her altar, the doors of the temple shook, her moon-shaped horns shot forth gleams of light, and the sistrum rattled noisily.”

The omen proved auspicious, and lo! Iphis had become a man.

The similarity between the above Greek legend and the tale of Drupada in the Mahābhārata and its numerous variants is at once noticeable.

Surveying all the tales noted above, we find that the “Change of Sex” motif is employed in several different ways. The question naturally arises as to what originated such ideas. Was it the result of the story-tellers’ imagination, or can the motif find its basis in real religious and anthropological beliefs?

In Indian folk-lore we find evidence of the actual belief in change of sex, quite apart from pretended change of sex usually employed as a prophylactic. In the Bombay district it is generally believed among the village inhabitants that the performance of certain rites can change sex, as well as the incantations of Yogis, and the blessings or curses of Mahatmas (Enthoven, Folklore of Bombay, p. 340).

There are also numerous legends current in different parts of India which involve a change of sex. In some cases the selection of the tribal deity has its origin in such legends. Here are examples of the kind of legends to which I refer.

At Bateswar (Bateṣar),^[18] a small place on the right bank of the Jumna, forty-three miles south-east from Agra, an immense number of temples line the banks of the river for over a mile. The local legend regarding these temples is that at the time when the first of the line of Bhaduria Rājas reigned it was the rule for each Rāja to send a princess for the seraglio of the Emperor of Delhi. The Bhaduria Rāja had a daughter, but not wishing to send her to the harem of the Delhi king he represented that he had no daughter: the other Rājas, who had sent their daughters, were indignant at this, and informed the Delhi emperor, who thereupon ordered a search to be made. In this extremity the daughter of the Rāja fled alone to Bateswar, and prayed to the Devī at the temple to save her from the pollution of a Mohammedan seraglio. Her sex was accordingly changed, and she emerged from the temple a boy! On this the grateful Rāja diverted the river and built the temples along its banks which now exist.

Another version of the story says that one Rāja Hara, of some place unknown, and Rāja Badan, the Bhaduria Rāja, once made an agreement with each other to marry their children should one have a son and the other a daughter. Both, however, had daughters, but the Bhaduria Rāja concealed the circumstance, and proclaimed that he had a son. Accordingly, in due time, the daughter of Rāja Hara was married to the supposed son of Bhaduria Rāja. The imposition was, however, soon found out, and Rāja Hara advanced with an army to avenge the injury, when the daughter of the Bhaduria Rāja, to save her father from the imminent danger, determined to die and end the strife. Accordingly she jumped into the Jumna: but to the surprise of all, instead of drowning, she emerged a boy; and Rāja Hara, finding that the Bhaduria Rāja really had a son to whom his daughter had been married, retired pacified. The grateful Bhaduria Rāja then diverted the Jumna from the spot where his daughter had jumped in, and instituted a great annual fair in honour of the circumstance, and built those temples all along the Jumna which we see now.

In the Baroda volume of the Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency (vol. vii, 1883, p. 612) we find another legend similar to the latter. The Chāvaḍa king of Pattan and the Solāṅki king of Kābri resolved on forming a royal alliance. But, by evil chance, both kings had daughters; neither had a son. Thereupon the Kābri Rāja fraudulently passed off his girl as a boy and a marriage was duly celebrated. Difficulties ensued, and the girl-husband found herself constrained to flee from Pattan. In the forest of the Devī she rested a while. Her dog [bitch] plunged into a pool, and to the wonder of the princess changed her sex on the spot; her mare jumped and came forth a stallion; the princess herself then tried the magic of the water, and lo! she, too, changed into a man. From that time the Solāṅki Rājputs followed the Devī.^[19]

Among the Dhanwār, a primitive tribe in the wild country of Bilāspur adjoining Chota Nāgpur, it is believed that the sex of a person may change in transmigration, for male children are sometimes named after women relatives and female after men.^[20] Such a belief is not confined to India, as we Have already seen in the case of Cæneus. It conforms, says Frazer,^[21] to an observation of Plato or Aristotle that the sex of a person generally changes at each transmigration of his soul into a new body. A similar belief is found among the Urabunna and Waramunga tribes of Central Australia.^[22]

We now come to the pretended change of sex. The necessity for dressing a boy as a girl and vice versa at certain critical times of their life is a well-recognised and strictly observed custom not only in India but in the most diverse parts of the world. Westermarck^[23] and Frazer^[24] have given abundant examples of such customs, chiefly employed at marriage ceremonies in order to avert the Evil Eye and to deceive any demons who might attempt to harm either of the happy couple at such an auspicious and dangerous time.

References to the authorities already given will at once show that in many countries it is the custom for priests to change their sex to all intents and purposes. In the Pelew Islands, for example, a man who is inspired by a goddess immediately dresses and behaves like a woman for the rest of his life. He is, moreover, henceforth treated and actually regarded as a woman. This pretended change of sex, says Frazer,^[25] may explain a widespread custom whereby men dress and live like women. He gives numerous references, and suggests that such transformations were often carried out in obedience to intimations received in dreams or in a state of ecstasy. Such inspirations act with both sexes, and many cases of women dressing and behaving as men, after having received their “call,” could be given.^[26] But apart from worshippers seeking to assimilate themselves with their deities, there is also the example of the gods themselves to be considered.

From the early days of the Babylonians and Assyrians the sex of deities has been known to undergo change. And this change has been dependent on a human anthropological change—that from a matriarchate to a patriarchate.

Thus, whereas the goddess Ishtar of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and the ‘Ashtar(t) of the Canaanites, Hebrews and Phoenicians was a divine counterpart of the human matriarch, we find that where the laws of society changed, the sex of the deity also became changed.^[27]

Thus among the Semites of Southern Arabia she has turned into the masculine ‘Athtar; so also in Abyssinia, Moab and North Africa.

The change of sex of a deity is usually an etymological change, and in some cases both genders apply to a single deity representing male and female principles. This reminds us of the Ardhanārīśvara form of Śiva and the Greek Hermaphroditus. Such religious beliefs, if not the basis of similar ideas in folk-tales, at least give assurance of their unquestioned reception and use as a fiction motif.

In conclusion I would quote a passage from Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, as showing the beliefs generally held and quoted by so eminent a writer of the first century a.d. The genuineness of his conviction is surely enhanced when we remember that his views of nature and of God were undoubtedly Stoic, and that he considered any use of the magical arts an act of violence against nature (ii, 114; xxx, 3).

The passage in question is from Book VII, chapter iii, section 4^[28]:

“The change of females into males is undoubtedly no fable. We find it stated in the Annals that, in the consulship of P. Licinius Crassus and C. Cassius Longinus [Consuls A.U.C. 581], a girl, who was living at Casinum with her parents, was changed into a boy; and that, by the command of the Aruspices, he was conveyed away to a desert island. Licinius Mucianus informs us that he once saw at Argos a person whose name was then Arescon, though he had been formerly called Arescusa: that this person had been married to a man, but that, shortly after, a beard and marks of virility made their appearance, upon which he took to himself a wife. He had also seen a boy at Smyrna to whom the very same thing had happened. I myself saw in Africa one L. Cossicius, a citizen of Thysdris, who had been changed into a man the very day on which he was married to a husband.”

In commenting on this passage Bostock says that a similar case is mentioned by Ambrose Paré, the great French surgeon of the sixteenth century. The subject in question was brought up as a girl, but, in consequence of a sudden muscular exertion, the organs of the male were developed, which had previously been concealed internally.^[29] He concluded by remarking that most similar cases of a supposed change of sex are from the female to the male, evidently of the kind mentioned by Paré; that cases of the contrary kind have also occurred; and even of the sex being doubtful, or of both existing together. Modern research, however, rather proves that such recorded changes of sex are from the male to the female, due to an abnormal development of the clitoris.^[30] But here we reach the threshold of teratology in its most modern and scientific sense, and this is beyond the scope of our present inquiry.

Sufficient has, I think, been already said to show that the “Change of Sex” motif, which figures in the fifteenth tale of the Vetāla, is not to be dismissed as a fantastic invention of the story-teller, but is to be regarded as one which has ample justification for its existence, having its roots firmly embedded in ancient religious beliefs and in the legends and rites of many primitive peoples. Modern surgery has only shown that apparent change of sex can occur, and has occurred. How readily, then, would the unscientific mind be prepared to accept such a miracle!

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Barker, op. cit., p. 225 et seq.

[2]:

Babington, op. cit., p. 76 et seq.

[3]:

Rosen, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 178. In Wickerhauser’s version, p. 240, compensation is obtained in the shape of a magic purse that always contains a thousand dīnārs.

[4]:

Iken, Touti Natneh, Stuttgart, 1822, p. 97.

[5]:

Meyer, Hindu Tales, p. 193. See also his translation of Daśakumāra-charita, p. 83.

[6]:

It occurs in vol. iii, pp. 529-538 of the new edition of Roy’s translation. It should be remembered that in the story quoted from the Mahābhārata, Śikhaṇḍin was a subsequent birth of Ambā, the eldest daughter of the King of Kāśi, who, after being carried off by Bhīṣma, tried in vain to be accepted as wife by King Saubha. Through asceticism she obtained the promise that she would kill Bhīṣma, and became a man in her next birth in order to do so. For full references see Sorensen, Index to Names in the Mahābhārata, under “Ambā” and “Çikhandin.”

[7]:

Garcin de Tassy, Allégories Récits Poétiques, 2nd edit., 1876, pp. 349, 350 and 372-374; also Clouston, Eastern Romances, pp. 279 and 532 et seq.

[8]:

See Chauvin, op. cit., viii, p. 43; Clouston, Book of Sindibād, pp. 80, 156 and 299.

[9]:

“The Tale of Warlock and the Young Cook of Baghdad,” Burton, Supp., Nights, vol. vi, p. 137. See also the note on pp. 121 and 354. Lane was told a version of the story in Cairo. See his Manners and Customs of the Modem Egyptians, 5th edit., 1860, pp. 468-469.

[10]:

This instantaneous transportation has occurred more than once in the Ocean; see Vol. II, pp. 223,223n¹, and Vol. VI, pp. 213 and 279.

[11]:

D. B. Macdonald, “The Earlier History of the Arabian Nights,” Journ. Roy. As. Soc., July 1924, p. 373.

[12]:

Volksdichtungen der siebenbürgischen und süduṅgarischen Zigeuner, Vienna, 1890, No. 34, p. 260.

[13]:

Dozon, Contes Albanais, No. 14, p. 109.

[14]:

S. Hartland, Legend of Perseus, vol. iii, pp. 28-29.

[15]:

See Frazer’s trans., Loeb Classics, vol. i, p. 365 et seq. The story is also found in Phlegon, Mirabilia, 4; Tzetzes, Scholiast on Lycophron, 683; Ovid, Metamorphoses, iii, 316 et seq.; Hyginus, Fab. 75, and in several other works given by Frazer.

[16]:

See, for example, Apollodorus, Library, Epitome i, 22; Apollonius Rhodius, Argon, i, 57-64; Ovid, Met., xii, 459-532; Virgil, Aen., vi, 448 et seq.

[17]:

Ovid, Metamorphoses, ix, 666 et seq. I use the edition in the Loeb Classics, by F. J. Miller, vol. ii, pp. 51-61, 1922.

[18]:

Cunningham, Arch. Survey Ind., vol. vii, pp. 5, 6.

[19]:

For another version see Enthoven, Folklore of Bombay, pp. 339-340, reprinted from Ind. Ant., vol. xlv, 1916, Supp., p. 124. The tale is also told of Lake Mānsarovar; see Enthoven, Ind. Ant., vol. xii, 1912, p. 42. See also Crooke, Religion and Folklore of Northern India (new edition), p. 279.

[20]:

Russell, Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces, vol. ii, p. 500.

[21]:

Apollodorus, vol. ii, p.150n¹.

[22]:

Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 148.

[23]:

History of Human Marriage, vol. ii, p. 518 et seq.

[24]:

Golden Bough (Adonis, Attis, Osiris), vol. ii, p. 253 et seq.

[25]:

Op. cit., pp. 254, 255.

[26]:

See my Appendix, “Indian Eunuchs,” Vol. Ill, pp. 322 and 327; also Crawley, “Dress,” Hastings’ Ency. Rel. Eth., vol. v, p. 71.

[27]:

See Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, pp. 58, 478; Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians, p. 240; Paton, “Ashtart,” and “Ishtar,” Ency. Rel. Eth., vol. ii, p. 115 et seq., and vol. vii, p. 429; Tremearne, Ban of the Bori, pp. 418, 419.

[28]:

I quote from the six-volume edition, trans. Bostock and Riley, Bohn’s Classical Library, 1885, 1886.

[29]:

Cf. Montaigne, Essays, Book I, cap. 20.

[30]:

See, for instance, R. F. Burton, “Notes on an Hermaphrodite,” Mem. Anth. Soc. Ldn., vol. ii, pp. 262-263. For a complete study of the modern developments of teratology, see E. Schwalbe, Morphologie der Missbildungen.