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The preparations found in the Trieste Hospital Museum of Pathological Anatomy fit into the context of a medical semiotics which has its origins in the anatomical clinical method. The study of the practices involved in the museum preparation leads back to its purely diagnostic function inasmuch as it convalidates or contradicts the suppositions that, from the symptomatological case history, made from the study of the lesions and the diseased organ. This whole investigative process corresponds to a break in the field of scientific knowledge which marks the birth of a new approach to diagnosis and a new form of nosology, made possible by the great number of sick people and deaths available in a modern hospital. The Museum is permeated with empiricism, morphologism and localisation, and its exhibits fluctuate between macroscopic and microscopic anatomy, between organic and cellular pathology. In the exhibits of infectious and contagious diseases, one can see traces of the revolution brought about by bacteriology and laboratory techniques; in the considerable collection of malignant tumours, one can detect an oncological awareness which relates explicitly to a nosology based on the work of Virchow. The preparations which refer to pathologies that cannot be reduced simply to localisation illustrate an increasing awareness of functional medicine and clinical biochemistry. The Museum has the task of showing and teaching in order to train the hospital doctor. The Museum--through pathological anatomy--directed the community towards a knowledge of healthcare methods destined to change the morbidity and mortality rates due to a certain disease, in relation to those diseases typical of the times.

The golden age of descriptive teratology (congenital anomalies) was between 1750 and 1850. During that period, the study of human congenital malformations, especially those dramatic examples designated as 'monsters', attracted special attention. One of the finest collections in this field was Museum Vrolikianum, the collection of father and son, Gerardus (1775-1859) and Willem Vrolik (1801-1863). Willem, a specialist in teratology, described many of these specimens in his Handbook of Pathological Anatomy (1844) and his teratology atlas Tabulae ad illustrandam embryogenesin hominis et mammaliam tam naturalem quam abnormem (1849). This collection is still an integral part of the Museum Vrolik in the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam. From 1991 to 1994, the collection of congenital anomalies was re-catalogued and re-described according to contemporary syndromological views. We diagnosed rare syndromes with multiple congenital anomalies, rare skeletal dysplasias, closure defects of the neural tube and conjoined and acardiac twins. We came to the conclusion that some anomalies of the conditions diagnosed have been reported only a few times. Certain cases demonstrate relationships between different malformations, and provide critical 'missing links' in the teratological series. For the diagnosis of the clinical syndromes in some of the specimens magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT), spiral CT and radiographical techniques were of crucial importance and are discussed in this paper.

I discuss some of Leibniz's pronouncements about fringe phenomena--various monsters; talking dogs; genies and prophets; unicorns, glossopetrae, and other games of nature--in order to understand better Leibniz's views on science and the role these curiosities play in his plans for scientific academies and societies. However, given that Leibniz's sincerity has been called into question in twentieth-century secondary literature, I begin with a few historiographical remarks so as to situate these pronouncements within the Leibnizian corpus. What emerges is an image of Leibniz as a sober, cautious interpreter, a skeptic one might say but one who is prepared to concede the possibility of many strange phenomena. Leibniz expects these fringe phenomena to take their place among the natural curiosities catalogued as part of a hoped for empirical database intended as means toward the perfection of the sciences.

The collection of malformed ("teratological") specimens of man and other mammals of Gerardus Vrolik (1775-1859) and his son Willem Vrolik (1801-1863), dating from the beginning of the 19th century, continues to function as a central part of the Department of Anatomy and Embryology in the Academic Medical Center at the University of Amsterdam. Recently, many specimens in the collection were reexamined, using radiographic, CT scan, and MRI methods. In order to provide background information concerning Dutch teratological research and anatomical cabinets, some aspects of the history of Dutch morphology during the 17th-19th centuries are briefly described in this paper. Special attention is paid to the scientific work and cabinet of Frederik Ruijsch (1638-1731), who sold this cabinet to Czar Peter the Great; Bernard Siegfried Albinus (1697-1770); Wouter van Doeveren (1733-1783), Andreas Bonn (1738-1818), and Sebald Justinus Brugmans (1763-1819), who sold or donated parts of their collections of malformed specimens to Leiden University; Petrus Camper (1722-1789) and Jan Bleuland (1756-1838), whose collections are still in the Department of Anatomy at Groningen University and the Departments of Anatomy and Pathology of Utrecht University; and Gerard and Willem Vrolik.