Congenital Malformations

Some are born monsters, some achieve monstrosity; others have monsters thrust upon them! I put myself in the last category. When I first went to work at Southmead Hospital some twelve years ago I was no more or less interested in monsters and congenital malformations than in a great many other things. I soon found however, that this problem was indeed thrust upon me. Monsters and malformations came from all directions?so I began to collect them. Some people collect stamps, some people collect shrubs; I began to collect monsters. The collection rapidly grew in size and now contains over a thousand malformations of all kinds. Southmead Hospital is an interesting place for a pathologist to work in. It not only houses one of the largest maternity hospitals in the country but has, in the same grounds, a general hospital of equal size. The work of the latter tends to give one a sense of proportion and keep one's feet on the ground while the maternity department provides some very valuable material of a specialised nature, including most of the Malformations in the collection. Others have come from other hospitals in the group and elsewhere while not a few have come from cases referred by family doctors, having been born at home.