Malformed birth

Meaning

The main treatise says that excessive precision, overstepping, haste, or inconstancy can yield a malformed birth instead of the expected result. The birth-image makes the failed product an outcome of mismanaged development and leads into the pun contrasting hoped-for elixir with NIXIR. It is not a modern medical account of congenital difference.

A separate use occurs in the dialogue when the alchemist challenges Nature about a work that ends as a Mißgeburt despite an apparently good beginning. That is his objection, not Nature admitting failure. The cross-reference to sin, grace, and soul keeps that disputational use accessible without merging its speaker and purpose with the main treatise's warning.