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Pediatrics began under the most unfavorable conditions that are difficult to imagine nowadays. Children at the start of the 19th century were considered as negligible. The death rate was tremendous, increased by the work of children in factories as soon as 6 years of age in textile industries. In upper classes, infants were fed by a wet nurse, far from their parents and death rate was high as well. The emergence of pediatrics was the result of work carried out in adult medicine in the first half of the 19th century: clinical anatomic method, knowledge of contagious diseases even before the discovery of bacteria, birth of bacteriology. During the whole century, infectious diseases contributed in a large part to children mortality, as that of adults, by cholera, typhus, variola, diphtheria, measles and tuberculosis. Progresses noted during the 2nd part of the century resulted from beginning of hygiene, antisepsis, nutrition improvement, taking consideration of children as human being asking for protection. In contrast, therapeutics as serotherapy, vaccinations at the break of the 20th century played a secondary role., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.)

Since antiquity philosophers and scientists tried to explain the cause of congenital malformations. In early modern medicine maternal imagination was largely accepted as their true cause, This concept was rejected by Blondel, a London physician. Around 1750 Wolff introduced the Hemmungsbildung as the cause of congenital malformations, a concept adopted in 1781 by Blumenbach. Later on Soemmerring (1784), Crichton (1785) and Meckel the younger adopted Blumenbach's concept. In 1824 Suringar further developed it. More and more the excessive development of fetal blood vessels or nerves was rejected as a possible cause, although from time to time these ideas were adopted again. In the early 1800s Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1811) and Vrolik (1817) developed a classification of monstra. These attempts urged Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (Etienne's son) and Vrolik the younger (Gerard's son) to develop it further. Nevertheless, around 1840 Vrolik had to admit that although we are well acqainted with the various malformations, we are still ignorant of the primary cause of these phenomena. Meanwhile the dispute between the adherents of the theory of preformation and those who had adopted the concept of epigenesis exercised many minds. In the second half of the eighteenth century the latter theory became more and more adopted and this fact cleared the way for the ideas introduced by Wolff and Blumenbach, because it was consistent with the idea of a gradual development of fetal structures.

The mythology of the Greeks and Romans is full of monsters of fiction: giants, cyclops, centaurs, hydras, Gorgons… The accounts of travelers, reproduced in the Natural History of Pline l'Ancien reported the existence, in distant countries, of men with a dog's head (baboons), of men with a single tall foot (sciapode), beings whose face is embedded in the chest (or acephala blemmyes), to which must be added a wide variety of men with no mouth, no nose, or equipped with giant ears or feet turned backwards, as well as hermaphrodites. Teratology reports on monstrous births, which have constituted the factual basis from which the imagination conceived adults whose morphology corresponds to the monsters of legend. Newborns sirenomelia were behind the legend of sciapode and sirens. Cyclopia have inspired the legend of the cyclops. Anencephaly probably explains the description of headless or blemmyes. The genesis of the legend of baboons may have multiple origins: firstly the existence of people suffering from congenital hypertrichosis, on the other hand, the influence of Egyptian mythology where the god Anubis has a dog's head. The acardiac fetus may explain some monstrous forms, features the work of Hieronymus Bosch. The significance of the monsters of legend, their genesis, their persistence through the ages is complex. By approaching teratology, we added a new field of exploration of real monsters of antiquity and Middle Ages., (Copyright © 2010. Published by Elsevier SAS.)

This short article concerns two images which relate art and the history of medicine. The first is a fresco by Andrea Mantegna, from the period 1465-1474, when he was at the Gonzaga court of Ludovic III. This painting includes a female dwarf. Modern ideas on dwarfism are briefly discussed and another dwarf, Morgante, from the court of the Medicis in Florence, is described and illustrated.

The congenital sternal fissure of Eugene Groux is outstanding in every respect: at first, it constitutes a sole case in history of medicine, for this fissure was complete (from the manubrium to the xiphoid process). Secondly, it was an object of medical examinations for over 2000 physicians all around the world. Thirdly, the patient himself wrote a monograph devoted to his malformation (1859). We analyze in this paper the monograph of Eugene Groux, as well as the anatomicomedical conclusions which followed this exceptional case.

Ancient medical writers and biologists elaborated different theories to explain the phenomenon of multiple births. The earliest extant texts are in the Hippocratic collection and in the physiological treatises of Aristotle. They express opposed ideas: for the Hippocratics multiple births are the result of an ideal conception, for Aristotle they are regarded as anomalies associated with notions of monstrosity and excess. These views shed light on ancient collective imagery. Three themes in particular are found in non-medical literature and iconography: twin birth as a model of ideal fecundity, the ambiguous status of twins of different sexes, and the relation of multiple births to monstrosity and animality, as evidenced by the motif of twins born from one egg.

The cultural topic of malformations is universal by its questionning. Malformations and inherited diseases have been observed and represented since Antiquity. These sculptures and pictures inform about mentalities and behaviours in front of severe birth defects. Dysmorphic syndromes can be identifiable, like achondroplasia, whereas others dwarfisms are arguable. Hermaphroditism has a cosmic meaning. Failing that rational explanation, major abnormalities were considered as monsters of supernatural origin.

The term endo-brachyoesophagus (EBO) became part of the specialised vocabulary of all those interested in the pathology of the esophagus at the beginning of the 1950s, when J.L. Lortat-Jacob identified the existence, in certain patients suffering from reflux, of the endoesophageal ascent of a mucosa of gastric type, without any change in the gross topography of the gastro-esophageal junction. A similar lesion had been described at this same time in Great Britain by N.R. Barrett. Since then, numerous clinical and experimental arguments have been advanced in support of the acquired origin of this disorder, in the context of progressive gastro-esophageal reflux disease. However, the possibility of its regression after the treatment of reflux and its histologic presentation, though of major importance, remain unsettled. It is now generally acknowledged that EBO is one of the digestive lesions most prone to malignant degeneration, to the extent that it is now generally classified as precancerous, and all the most sophisticated procedures have been currently suggested and exploited in the attempt to detect EBO of potential malignancy. Within this field, ultramicroscopic study, enzyme assays and the techniques of flow cytometry are being used to better define this problem and to specify the point after which it is legitimate to abandon the medical treatment of reflux in favor of more aggressive methods, even surgical resection of the esophagus. The OESO Group, created in 1978, is currently conducting an international multidisciplinary and multicenter study to deal with the epidemiologic and therapeutic problems of this disorder.

The Alsatian medieval chronicles report numerous examples of monstrous births; with the development of printing, fly sheets appear in order to relate exceptional phenomena. In 1652, a chair of anatomy was created; embryology and teratology, at that time solely morphological sciences, depended on anatomy. In 1670, the first anatomical theatre was built, and as early as 1672, a meticulous dissection, exceptional at that time, was performed on a thoracodymus double monster born in Strasbourg. In 1919, when the Faculty of Medicine was reorganized after Alsace was restored to France, for the first time in France, a specific chair and an institute of embryology and teratology were created. This is the beginning of the famous experimental embryology. In 1945, a chair of zoology and experimental embryology was created at the Faculty of Sciences. F. Keibel (1861-1929), P. Ancel (1873-1961), P. Vintemberger (1891-1983), J. Benoit (1896-1982), and E. Wolff, were among the famous embryologists who worked in Strasbourg.