The association of sirenomelia with Potter's syndrome.

The Greeks considered congenital deformities to be of divine origin and eventually these monsters were thought to indicate a divine warning of some future calamity and the infant and even the mother were sacrificed to propitiate the gods (Glenister, 1957). The sympodial deformity has been recognized from earliest times and may well have given rise to the myth of the siren. The legendary monster of the Lybian desert, the sciapod, or shadow foot, described by both Herodotus and Pliny (Fig. 1), may well have had a similar origin. This man used his foot as a sunshade when resting. Early writers showed a remarkable degree of wishful thinking and poetic licence in their descriptions of