324 
ANIDIAN MONSTERS. 
bones, but no resemblance of any thoracic or abdominal 
viscera. The rest of its bulk was made up of fat.” 
Yrolik, in his c Memoirs’ of 1822, wrote on ‘Acephalic 
Monsters/ recognizing six classes of them, the fifth consisting 
of individuals without heads and extremities, or solely com- 
posed of a trunk. He thus adopted Tiedemann’s subdivision, 
overlooking the fact that Yalisnieri’s case, on which Tiede- 
mann had founded the class, possessed heart and arteries, 
also parts resembling lungs and liver, besides stomach and 
intestine, so that it will not be considered under the same 
head as Bland’s case above quoted, and which Vrolik himself 
refers to at length. Tiedemann firmly maintained that no 
monster, however imperfect, was ever destitute of those pri- 
mordial portions of intestine which characterise the anidium 
I have above described. Yrolik expressed his satisfaction at 
being able to publish a case in corroboration of these views, 
and spoke of a spherical mass which was delivered the morn- 
ing after the birth of a well-formed female child : he could 
get to know nothing of the placenta. The mass consisted of 
skin covered with small hairs. In the centre it bore evident 
traces of a spinal column, the inferior vertebrae of which were 
fused into an irregular and shapeless mass ; the superior ones 
were separate, and preserved their rounded aspect. Around 
the vertebrae were a few muscular fibres, and the spine com- 
municated superiorly with what might be considered an im- 
perfect model of the brain, in which, however, he could not 
distinguish the cortical from the medullary portion. This 
imperfect nervous centre was enclosed in a kind of dura 
mater , which was not, however, consolidated by an outer 
osseous box in the rudimental head. The spinal marrow 
terminated in a rounded extremity at the point of fusion of 
the vertebrae ; but above this, nerves were given off which 
passed through the spaces between the vertebrae, and were 
distributed to the soft parts around. There were, however, 
no origins of nerves discoverable in the rudimentary brain. 
Independently of the spinal column were two other irregular 
bony nodules. This monster also possessed a semicircular 
and superficial cavity, which, w r ith the exception of umbilical 
vessels, contained only a short and recurrent intestinal fold, 
attached by a little loose cellular tissue, and terminating at 
one T end in a cut de sac , and in the other losing itself in the 
cord. 
In his ‘ Tabulae/ published in 1849, Yrolik refers this spe- 
cimen to (lurlt’s genus Amorphus ; and in his 46th plate, 
not only has he depicted it, but also drawn and described 
another case from a cow which was simultaneously delivered 
