["The devil of Korneuburg"]

In 1827 in Korneuburg, a small town near Vienna, an unmarried servant had gone to church during pregnancy, praying in front of the statue of Saint Michael and looking at the devil's figure attached to the statue. In the 6th month of pregnancy, the servant was delivered of a malformed stillbirth. The Pathologist believed in a correlation between her experience in the church and the malformation of the child. This article deals with the oldest specimen with developmental anencephaly, a special form of acrania (protruding eyes, prominent nose and long arms) from the Pathological-Anatomical Museum in Vienna.