MONSTERS AND PREDICTS

Since antiquity, monstrous creatures together with human beings and animals born with deformities were regarded as predicts for misfortune.
The Gods interceded so in the order of nature to transmit to human beings clear and urgent messages.
Thus, the observation of the deformed births played an important part as an omen divine.

In the the fith century, the whole of deformities of all the Roman kingdom in the fourth century have reported and indexed by Julius Obsequens.

The intellectuals and scientists of the Rebirth joined again with this practice of the prediction and the book of Obsequens was again put
at the honor for political and religious propaganda.The church itself knew used and misused this style of prediction.

According to the skill of the interpreter, the existence of these monsters could be interpreted in a positive or negative way.
God suspended temporarily the perfection of his creation to transmit an important message by the means of a monstrous birth.

FEAR OF STRANGENESS

The human being having deformities caused fear and concern because they were the sign of somes predicts sent by God. Men did not grant to them the same vital needs
as for the other alive beings. Some new-born famished and thus condemned to an unquestionable death.
One also started to exploit these being human which inspired pity.
Some parents went thus exposing against money the deformity of their children.

THE SCIENCE OF OMENS OR TERATOSCOPY

In his comment on the monsters used as predict, Caspar Peucer (1525 - 1602) brought in 1533 a theoretical base to the comprehension of this particular form of prediction.
According to him, a great prudence has to be brought in the interpretation of the omens.
The original sin prevented the man from having a clear vision of the future.
God thus sent signs to him to predict the future.
But Satan made profitable this need for divination to approach the men and to mislead them.
It was so very difficult to distinguish the signs having to be observed and interpreted.

Moreover, the relationship between the sign, the cause and the effect being of an extreme complexity,
the aim of teratoscopy (science of extraordinary phenomena) was to examine all facts induced because of the interruption of natural and usual bond between cause and effect.

Consequently, prediction using this science remains dubious.

Nowaday, we know that medicine has response for all physical or mental deformities. And so, we know that a child born with them is the result either of genetics, contamined environment and/or food, pollution or the direct consequence of the style of life (alcohol, smoking, drugs) of the parents before his birth.

But we can take profit of the numerous births of children born every day in the world with deformities or the signs of infertility that meet western countries:
they are mainly the sign that human beings have cut the bonds with nature and thus the natural rules are changing drastically for our greater misfortune.