From time immemorial, the birth of freak people caused mystical fear and was considered a harbinger of great troubles.
The cruelty of the world
Information has been preserved that in the ancient world - Babylon, Persia and Mesopotamia - children born with obvious signs of physical deformity were immediately killed, and the wife who brought such a child into the world was released by her husband on all four sides as having defiled his family. Slavic tribes sacrificed such children, who had not yet reached one week of age, as a sacrifice to their gods, in particular to the gods of fertility Svyatovit, Yarila and Veles, since it was believed that the birth of such a child was a sign of impending crop failures and diseases. The Jews had a rite of stoning a mother and her ugly baby, who personified a terrible curse that fell on the entire family for the sins of their ancestors. The blood of a woman and a child was considered sacrificial and therefore had to appease the angry god.
A somewhat different attitude to such facts existed in Ancient Egypt. As in other states of that time, in Egypt the birth of a mutant was perceived as a sign from above. However, these children were not deprived of their lives, but given to temples, where they later became servants of the cults of the Egyptian gods. According to the assumptions of scientists, among the Egyptian pharaohs of almost all dynasties, various deformities were common: from a woolly skin and six-fingered hands to hydrocephalus and three-eyed. For example, it is known for certain that the pharaoh of the XVIII dynasty Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt in 1419-1400 BC, had a small stature, not exceeding 159 centimeters, an elongated skull, protruding ears, disproportionately long limbs and fused toes. Some Egyptologists believethe presence of such physical anomalies among members of the nobility, distinguishing them from ordinary people, may have been considered at that time a sign of special elite.
Children of satan
The really dark times for people with deviations in the structure of the physical body came in the Middle Ages. According to the dogmas of Christianity rooted in society. God created man in his own beautiful and perfect image and likeness. Accordingly, the birth of freak children was attributed to an evil devilish intent, in connection with which such people were called children of Satan. In particular, when a dumb child was born, it was believed that Satan tore out his tongue before birth, so that he would not divulge the secrets of the underworld, the blind child was believed to have eyes burned out by the coals of hellish heat, and the deaf child was recognized as a messenger of the beast. If a mutant child was born, for example, with an extra hand, an eye or without ears, his mother was immediately accused of a criminal connection with a demon and was brought to justice by the Inquisition. So,preserved historical evidence of the birth in the middle of the 15th century in the city of Ravenna in northern Italy of a boy with fused fingers, one eye and donkey ears. After a month-long trial of the church court, the mother of the child, under torture, confessed that with the help of witchcraft spells she had repeatedly summoned the devil and entered into close relations with him. By the verdict of the court, a woman and a baby were burned in the city square in the presence of a large number of townspeople. By the verdict of the court, a woman and a baby were burned in the city square in the presence of a large number of townspeople. By the verdict of the court, a woman and a baby were burned in the city square in the presence of a large number of townspeople.
A similar case was noted in 1601 in Russia, in the village of Kulichki near Moscow, where an elderly peasant woman named Lukerya, who was reputed among her fellow villagers as a witch, gave birth to a girl covered with thick wool and with a "pig" face. The inquest established that a widow and childless woman, wishing to get an assistant in her house in her old age, became pregnant from Satan, and she flew to the nearest forest on a broomstick to meet him. The very next day after the sentencing, Lukerye had her head cut off, and her ugly daughter was drowned in the river.
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For the amusement of the public
However, a little more than a century later, the courtyard of the Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna was overflowing with all kinds of freaks who amused the courtiers …
The 18th century - a bright and brilliant era of the Enlightenment - perhaps for the first time in the history of human civilization recognized the right to exist of mutant people and even found an application for their physiological characteristics: entertainment for the public. Siamese twins, animal people and two-headed children were readily accepted at the courts of the royal persons of Western Europe, performed in theaters and toured as part of circus troupes, earning a lot of money from their physical disability. Many of these artists have become real "stars". So, the Sicilian Pietro Mauly, who had four legs and two sets of male genitals, was incredibly popular, especially among women. Among the Parisian nobility in the middle of the XVM century, the French nobleman Luc Collorad had a resounding fame, from whose body another human being grew in the abdominal cavity,however, smaller, whose face was constantly turned to its "wearer".
In the 19th century, the fashion for armless artists and musicians spread throughout the world. The most famous of these was the German Karl Hermann Huntan, who played the violin with his toes. The skill of the armless violinist was highly appreciated by Johann Strauss himself, who invited Huntan to play with his orchestra in several concerts in Vienna.
Body riddles
Only a century and a half ago, natural scientists hypothesized that all anomalies of the human body are the result of fetal developmental disorders. Subsequently, doctors even deduced a certain pattern, which is that if a woman in the early stages of pregnancy regularly experiences psychological stress or gets severe food poisoning, then she will most likely give birth to a mutant child.
At the same time, such quite materialistic statements sometimes run counter to the strange and sometimes mystical features of physiological deformities. So, in 1936 in France, at the age of 29, a certain Mademoiselle Rasunier, known for the fact that an almost half-meter horn grew in the middle of her forehead, died. A mysterious feature of this horn was that, according to Rasunye, it made sounds similar to the singing of a male choir, which, however, only its owner heard. Shortly before her death, Mademoiselle often complained that the horn was beginning to vibrate strongly, which gave the girl the feeling that her head was breaking into pieces. Indeed, soon the body of the dead Rasunye was found with a cracked skull.
In 1959, John Maybracht shot himself in the United States, who had two faces - the occipital and the main one. Unusual in this, besides the frightening ugliness, was that the double face, who knew how to make articulate sounds, constantly argued with Maybracht, telling him what to do and what not. In fact, one day, following the advice of the back of his head, Maybracht won a thousand dollars, but gradually the despair that gripped John became so unbearable that he took his own life.
Evolution games
Already in the 70s of the last century, such strange anomalies prompted a number of Western scientists to believe that nature does not accidentally give rise to these ugly, in the opinion of modern man, biological forms. In 1996, a resident of Magnitogorsk, a geneticist by profession, Andrei Zavyalov published a small brochure entitled "Games of Evolution". In it, he tried to explain the increase in the number of births of ugly children by the fact that humanity as a biological species in the last two centuries has entered a phase of active transformation. In many respects, this was facilitated by a change in the ecological situation, the biochemical composition of food and water. At the human genetic level, transmutation processes were launched, creating, figuratively, by trial and error, a new human race, which will have to live at the next stage of the development of our planet. Most likely,500 years from now, two-headed or Janus-faced creatures will live in beautiful cities, but unsuitable for human existence in the 21st century, quite satisfied with the construction of their completely new physical body.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №5. Author: Sergey Kozhushko