John Maubray's description of the sooterkin, a strange animal born to human mothers usually along with a normal infant, provoked ridicule when it was published in 1724. It seemed to one commentator that such creatures could only be explained by spontaneous generation. Examination of the seventeenth-century European literature on monstrous births provides many accounts of non-human offspring born to human mothers.These provide an insight into early modern theories of foetal development. Sooterkin births were distinct from other'false conceptions' such as moles, but like moles they were believed to arise from human semen. This theory arose at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the natural philosopher Fortunio Liceti proposed that human semen could degenerate and give rise to a foetus that either resembled an animal or truly was animal in nature.This concept was later extended to the human foetus itself, which it was thought could degenerate in response to external stimuli such as maternal impressions.The theory of seminal degeneration offers an explanation for the increased interest in reports of animals born to human mothers that occurred in the seventeenth century. It is also evidence of sophisticated embryological ideas: foetal development in animals and humans was thought to proceed along similar lines, and abnormalities occurred when the conceptus followed an alternative developmental pathway.
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