Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
"I attended twin brothers so extraordinarily alike, that it was
impossible for me to tell which was which, without seeing them side
by side. But their physical likeness extended still deeper, for they
had, so to speak, a yet more remarkable pathological resemblance.
Thus, one of them, whom I saw at the Néothermes at Paris, suffering
from rheumatic ophthalmia, said to me, 'At this instant my brother
must be having an ophthalmia like mine;' and, as I had exclaimed
against such an assertion, he showed me a few days afterwards a
letter just received by him from his brother, who was at that time
at Vienna, and who expressed himself in these words--'I have my
ophthalmia; you must be having yours.' However singular this story
may appear, the fact is none the less exact; it has not been told to
me by others, but I have seen it myself; and I have seen other
analogous cases in my practice. These twins were also asthmatic, and
asthmatic to a frightful degree. Though born in Marseilles, they
were never able to stay in that town, where their business affairs
required them to go, without having an attack. Still more strange,
it was sufficient for them to get away only as far as Toulon in
order to be cured of the attack caught at Marseilles. They travelled
continually, and in all countries, on business affairs, and they
remarked that certain localities were extremely hurtful to them, and
that in others they were free from all asthmatic symptoms."
I do not like to pass over here a most dramatic tale in the
_Psychologie Morbide_ of Dr. J. Moreau (de Tours), M. édecin de
l'Hospice de Bicêtre. Paris, 1859, p. 172. He speaks "of two twin
brothers who had been confined, on account of monomania, at Bicêtre":--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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