386 MEMOIR OF M. ISIDORE GEOFFROY SAINT HILAIRE. 



The General and Particular History of the Anomalies of Organization, (1832.) 

 This time it was no longer a simple memoir, nor a resume enlightened by new 

 idea? ; but a Avork sufficiently new in substance and in form to found, at once, 

 a whole branch of natural science. 



It is well known how much the anomalies of organization, designated by . 

 the name of jnonstrositics, have, at all times, struck the imagination of the 

 vulgar and excited the curiosity of the learned. Long regarded as 2^rodigi('s,* 

 they became afterwards freaks or errors of nature. They were viev/ed as 

 proofs that the laws governing the formation of living beings might suffer 

 exceptions and infractions. Later, it was undcystood that physiology was 

 deeply interested in the study of these supposed abnormal beings. But it had 

 required the great progress accomplished during the first years of the present 

 century in anatomy and embryogcny, to demonstrate the extent of the services 

 which the study of monsters was to render. Etienne Geoffroy had often in- 

 sisted on this. Resting partly on the doctrines of his predecessors, but espe- 

 cially strong in his own, he had been the first seriously to take account of the 

 perfectly natural conditions under which these alterations are produced. Isidore 

 G-eoffroy followed his father in this track. As he says himself, he proposed 

 to make anomalies better known, to trace their characters, their mode of pro- 

 duction, their relations, their influence, and thus to lead'to the more perfect 

 knowledge of the normal order.t 



A single fact will show how completely this multiplex aim of the author has 

 been accomplished. These beings, so various, so complex, which had been 

 considered the product of as many special infractions of general rules, have 

 conformed to all the exigencies of the classification invented for normal beings, 

 Isidore Geoffroy has divided the slightest deformities as well as the greatest 

 monstrosities, those characterized by excessive complication, as well as those 

 resulting from defective parts, into classes, ordtrs, families, and genera, as had 

 been done with the mammals or the birds. And this classification has re- 

 mained unchanged. Some new genera have been added to it, some new species 

 described, but all have fitted naturally iiito the framework so skilfully traced 

 out by tho author between his twenty-sixth and thirtieth ycar.| 



The importance of this v/ork was immediately understood. The first vol- 

 ume, which appeared in 1832, was a guarantee of those which were to follow. 

 This consideration decided the Academy, and on the 15th April, 1833, Isidore 

 Geoffroy, at the age of twenty-seven, took his seat beside his father in the 

 section of zoology § 



The History of Anomalies was completed, and other labors and publications 

 succeeded. Of these we can notice only a few. 



We must first point out the views which Isidore Geoffroy frequently put 

 forth relative to classification. It is well known what importance has justly 

 been attached, since the time of Linnaeus, to the forms for the arrangement, in 

 an order determined beforehand, of the numerous beings with which naturalists 



*The Greek and Roman laws condemned to death every child affected with certain organic 

 deviations. In the middle ages it was nearly the same ; and even in the 17th century Riolan 

 thought himscll' very bold, and really was so, in maintaining that they need not bo put to 

 death ; that it was enough to shut ihom up. 



\ Analytical Notice of the Zoological, Anatomical and Physiological Labors of M. Isidore 

 Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, 1833. 



t The third voliune of the History of Anomalies appeared in 1833. 



6 M. Delaunay has preserved the remembrance of an incident which marked this election. 

 Our confrdro has recalled, in happy terms, that Mr. Gay Lussac, president of the session, af'.er 

 having counted the votes, yielded the chair to Etienne Geoffroy, then vice-president, in order 

 to give him the happiness of verifying the triumph of his son himself and proclaiming his 

 election. M. Delaunay has well depicted the emotion of the Academy in witnessing tho 

 verification of the vote. — {Funeral of M. Isidore Geoffroy: Discourse of 31. Delaunay in the 

 name of tho Faculty of Sciences. ) 



