Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineGould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Science
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
Gould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Abnormalities, Human; Medicine -- Anecdotes
"If it be granted that the Biddenden Maids were pygopagous twins, a
study of the histories of other recorded cases of this monstrosity
serves to demonstrate many common characters. Thus, of the 8 cases
which Taruffi has collected, in 7 the twins were female; and if to
these we add the sisters Rosalie and Josepha Blazek and the Maids, we
have 10 cases, of which 9 were girls. Again, several of the pygopagous
twins, of whom there are scientific records, survived birth and lived
for a number of years, and thus resembled the Biddenden terata. Helen
and Judith, for instance, were twenty-three years old at death; and the
North Carolina twins, although born in 1851, are still alive. There is,
therefore, nothing inherently improbable in the statement that the
Biddenden Maids lived for thirty-four years. With regard also to the
truth of the record that the one Maid survived her sister for six
hours, there is confirmatory evidence from scientifically observed
instances, for Joly and Peyrat (Bull. de l'Acad. Med., iii., pp. 51 and
383, 1874) state that in the case seen by them the one infant lived ten
hours after the death of the other. It is impossible to make any
statement with regard to the internal structure of the Maids or to the
characters of their genital organs, for there is absolutely no
information forthcoming upon these points. It may simply be said, in
conclusion, that the phenomenon of Biddenden is interesting not only on
account of the curious bequest which arose out of it, but also because
it was an instance of a very rare teratologic type, occurring at a very
early period in our national history."
Possibly the most famous example of twins of this type were Helen and
Judith, the Hungarian sisters, born in 1701 at Szony, in Hungary. They
were the objects of great curiosity, and were shown successively in
Holland, Germany, Italy, France, England, and Poland. At the age of
nine they were placed in a convent, where they died almost
simultaneously in their twenty-second year. During their travels all
over Europe they were examined by many prominent physiologists,
psychologists, and naturalists; Pope and several minor poets have
celebrated their existence in verse; Buffon speaks of them in his
"Natural History," and all the works on teratology for a century or
more have mentioned them. A description of them can be best given by a
quaint translation by Fisher of the Latin lines composed by a Hungarian
physician and inscribed on a bronze statuette of them:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account