Teratology
The Teratology ( give a wiki. Τέρας Teras "Monster" and -logie ) is generally the doctrine of malformations of the normal physiological development, and mostly related to the development of the embryo, the embryo genesis . Endogenous factors for malformations are genetic diseases that can be inherited or spontaneous. External, exogenous factors that lead to malformations are called teratogens .
External teratogens can be chemical substances , physical influences such as radiation or viruses and lead to malformations in the developmental phase of animals and humans .
In these first three months of pregnancy, all organs and anatomical structures are created in human embryogenesis. A fundamental discovery in teratology is the existence of vulnerable phases in prenatal development. During these phases, different organ systems are differently sensitive to teratogens.
history
Reports of malformations can be found early in history; B. in ancient Babylon as well as with ancient Greek scholars or in the Bible. Until the 16th century, these phenomena were dismissed as "nature play" ( Pliny the Elder ) or interpreted as omen. The latter led to the name "monster" ( Latin monstrum from monere "to warn"). Ambroise Paré published a work in 1573 in which he gave, among other things, heredity, mechanical action and disease of the fetus as possible causes of errors in prenatal development. Teratology established itself as a science through the work of the French zoologists Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire and the German anatomist Johann Friedrich Meckel . Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was the first to investigate which environmental influences caused malformations in the germinal development of vertebrates by inducing malformations in chicken embryos. Meckel was the first to systematically describe various malformations of the human embryo.
literature
- R. O'Rahilly, F. Müller: Embryology and teratology of humans . 1st edition. Hans Huber Verlag, Bern 1999, ISBN 3-456-82821-7 , p. 18-19 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Keith L. Moore, T. Vidhya N. Persaud: Embryology . 5th edition, Urban & Fischer, Munich, 2007, p. 574.
- ↑ Joachim-Hermann Scharf : Beginnings of systematic anatomy and teratology in ancient Babylon. Berlin 1988 (= meeting reports of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, mathematical and natural science class. Volume 120, Issue 3).