Monstrous Births in Medieval Jewish Philosophy

My paper engages with a rather specific and yet understudied case of natural irregularity: the phenomenon of monstrous births within the Medieval Jewish tradition. How did Premodern Jewish scientists and philosophers consider bodily defects that were evidently disagreeing with the regularity of Nature? What kind of justifications – if any – did Medieval Jewish thinkers provide in order to explain this particular phenomenon in its manifold expressions? Indeed, different theoretical justifications to the incidental irregularity of nature appear to have implied different practices to amend the corporeal exceptionalities of this kind of bodies. But what these practical measures were? And could they actually be implemented? My paper will discuss these central points, focusing in particular on the crucial contribution offered by Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides, c. 1134 – 1204) in his medical works.