Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine [101]
by Robert Hunter, a British merchant at Bangkok, who in 1824 saw them boating and stripped to the waist. He prevailed on the parents and King Chowpahyi to allow them to go away for exhibition. They were first taken out of the country by a certain Captain Coffin. The first scientific description of them was given by Professor J. C. Warren, who examined them in Boston, at the Harvard University, in 1829. At that time Eng was 5 feet 2 inches and Chang 5 feet 1 1/2 inches in height. They presented all the characteristics of Chinamen and wore long black queues coiled thrice around their heads, as shown by the accompanying illustration. After an eight-weeks' tour over the Eastern States they went to London, arriving at that port November 20, 1829. Their tour in France was forbidden on the same grounds as the objection to the exhibition of Ritta-Christina, namely, the possibility of causing the production of monsters by maternal impressions in pregnant women. After their European tour they returned to the United States and settled down as farmers in North Carolina, adopting the name of Bunker. When forty-four years of age they married two sisters, English women, twenty-six and twenty-eight years of age, respectively. Domestic infelicity soon compelled them to keep the wives at different houses, and they alternated weeks in visiting each wife. Chang had six children and Eng five, all healthy and strong. In 1869 they made another trip to Europe, ostensibly to consult the most celebrated surgeons of Great Britain and France on the advisability of being separated. It was stated that a feeling of antagonistic hatred after a quarrel prompted them to seek "surgical separation," but the real cause was most likely to replenish their depleted exchequer by renewed exhibition and advertisement.
A most pathetic characteristic of these illustrious brothers was the affection and forbearance they showed for each other until shortly before their death. They bore each other's trials and petty maladies with the greatest sympathy, and in this manner rendered their lives far more agreeable than a casual observer would suppose possible. They both became Christians and members or attendants of the Baptist Church.
Figure 31 is a representation of the Siamese twins in old age. On each side of them is a son. The original photograph is in the Mutter Museum, College of Physicians, Philadelphia.
The feasibility of the operation of separating them was discussed by many of the leading men of America, and Thompson, Fergusson, Syme, Sir J. Y. Simpson, Nelaton, and many others in Europe, with various reports and opinions after examination. These opinions can be seen in full in nearly any large medical library. At this time they had diseased and atheromatous arteries, and Chang, who was quite intemperate, had marked spinal curvature, and shortly afterward became hemiplegic. They were both partially blind in their two anterior eyes, possibly from looking outward and obliquely. The point of junction was about the sterno-siphoid angle, a cartilaginous band extending from sternum to sternum. In 1869 Simpson measured this band and made the distance on the superior aspect from sternum to sternum 4 1/2 inches, though it is most likely that during the early period of exhibition it was not over 3 inches. The illustration shows very well the position of the joining band.
The twins died on January 17, 1874, and a committee of surgeons from the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, consisting of Doctors Andrews, Allen, and Pancoast, went to North Carolina to perform an autopsy on the body, and, if possible, to secure it. They made a long and most interesting report on the results of their trip to the College. The arteries, as was anticipated, were found to have undergone calcareous degeneration. There was an hepatic connection through the band, and also some interlacing diaphragmatic fibers therein. There was slight vascular intercommunication of the livers and independence of the two peritoneal cavities and the intestines. The band itself was chiefly a coalescence
A most pathetic characteristic of these illustrious brothers was the affection and forbearance they showed for each other until shortly before their death. They bore each other's trials and petty maladies with the greatest sympathy, and in this manner rendered their lives far more agreeable than a casual observer would suppose possible. They both became Christians and members or attendants of the Baptist Church.
Figure 31 is a representation of the Siamese twins in old age. On each side of them is a son. The original photograph is in the Mutter Museum, College of Physicians, Philadelphia.
The feasibility of the operation of separating them was discussed by many of the leading men of America, and Thompson, Fergusson, Syme, Sir J. Y. Simpson, Nelaton, and many others in Europe, with various reports and opinions after examination. These opinions can be seen in full in nearly any large medical library. At this time they had diseased and atheromatous arteries, and Chang, who was quite intemperate, had marked spinal curvature, and shortly afterward became hemiplegic. They were both partially blind in their two anterior eyes, possibly from looking outward and obliquely. The point of junction was about the sterno-siphoid angle, a cartilaginous band extending from sternum to sternum. In 1869 Simpson measured this band and made the distance on the superior aspect from sternum to sternum 4 1/2 inches, though it is most likely that during the early period of exhibition it was not over 3 inches. The illustration shows very well the position of the joining band.
The twins died on January 17, 1874, and a committee of surgeons from the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, consisting of Doctors Andrews, Allen, and Pancoast, went to North Carolina to perform an autopsy on the body, and, if possible, to secure it. They made a long and most interesting report on the results of their trip to the College. The arteries, as was anticipated, were found to have undergone calcareous degeneration. There was an hepatic connection through the band, and also some interlacing diaphragmatic fibers therein. There was slight vascular intercommunication of the livers and independence of the two peritoneal cavities and the intestines. The band itself was chiefly a coalescence