[Artistic sketch of an abnormality from 1683]

Early-modern drawings of malformations are much less known than the woodcuts and etchings of deformed children reproduced and discussed on leaflets or in monographs. The present article publishes for the first time a drawing from 1682 showing the front and rear view of a deformed boy born in Rossla (modern Sachsen-Anhalt). These illustrations and two surviving written testimonia reveal very different attitudes to the malformed child on the part of the various individuals involved. Although the information in the sources is not sufficiently precise to allow an unequivocal retrospective medical diagnosis of the malformations, two possible interpretations are presented.