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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.

An evaluation of the operative ledgers of the years 1932 to 1945 revealed that 509 women aged 11 to 44 years underwent involuntary sterilization at the Women's Clinic of Frankfurt University. 156 were pregnant at the time of sterilization, all but eight were aborted. Sterilizations were carried out in 161 women because of "congenital mental deficiency", and in another 178 for a variety of other diagnosis. There was no likewise information on the remaining 176 women available. The records of 272/509 women showed that the sterilizations had been proscribed by special "Boards of Racial Hygiene". The number of sterilizations performed because of "congenital mental deficiency" reached its acme in the years 1936 and 1937, after having been negligible for the preceding years.

n the occasion of the 150th anniversary of his death, the scientific work of the famous German anatomist Johann Friedrich Meckel (1781 to 1833) in Halle is appreciated. The Younger Meckel is counted to the most outstanding figures in the history of anatomy and medicine in the first third of 19th century. According to his founded knowledges in the normal, comparative, and pathologic anatomy and embryology he was able to give a scientific argument of malformations first of all in the history of medicine and biology. The edition of Meckel's Handbook of Pathologic Anatomy (in German language; 1st vol. 1812) is the birth of scientific teratology. Through his contributions to teratology Meckel directly participated in the raising of general pathology and pathologic anatomy to scientific disciplines. Meckel's interceding for C. F. Wolff's theory of epigenesis, not at last by translation of Wolff's paper "De formatione intestinorum" (1768 to 1769) into the German language, accelerated the development of the general and special embryology during the 19th century. In the contemporary medicine the succeeding eponyms are reminding of the imposing German physician and anatomist: the Meckel's diverticulum of ileum (1809), the Meckel's cartilage of the mandibular arch (1820) and the so-called Meckel syndrome (1822).