Inquiries into human faculty and its developmentGalton, Francis
Science
Inquiries into human faculty and its development
Galton, Francis
Ability; Eugenics
"Physically the two young men are so nearly alike that the one is
easily mistaken for the other. Morally, their resemblance is no less
complete, and is most remarkable in its details. Thus, their
dominant ideas are absolutely the same. They both consider
themselves subject to imaginary persecutions; the same enemies have
sworn their destruction, and employ the same means to effect it.
Both have hallucinations of hearing. They are both of them
melancholy and morose; they never address a word to anybody, and
will hardly answer the questions that others address to them. They
always keep apart, and never communicate with one another. An
extremely curious fact which has been frequently noted by the
superintendents of their section of the hospital, and by myself, is
this: From time to time, at very irregular intervals of two, three,
and many months, without appreciable cause, and by the purely
spontaneous effect of their illness, a very marked change takes
place in the condition of the two brothers. Both of them, at the
same time, and often on the same day, rouse themselves from their
habitual stupor and prostration; they make the same complaints, and
they come of their own accord to the physician, with an urgent
request to be liberated. I have seen this strange thing occur, even
when they were some miles apart, the one being at Bicêtre, and the
other living at Saint-Anne."
I sent a copy of this passage to the principal authorities among the
physicians to the insane in England, asking if they had ever
witnessed any similar case. In reply, I have received three
noteworthy instances, but none to be compared in their exact
parallelism with that just given. The details of these three cases
are painful, and it is not necessary to my general purpose that I
should further allude to them.
There is another curious French case of insanity in twins, which was
pointed out to me by Sir James Paget, described by Dr. Baume in the
_Annales M. édico-Psychologiques_, 4 série, vol. i., 1863, p. 312,
of which the following is an abstract. The original contains a few
more details, but is too long to quote: Francois and Martin, fifty
years of age, worked as railroad contractors between Quimper and
Châteaulin. Martin had twice slight attacks of insanity. On January 15
a box was robbed in which the twins had deposited their savings. On
the night of January 23-24 both François (who lodged at Quimper) and
Martin (who lived with his wife and children at St. Lorette, two
leagues from Quimper) had the same dream at the same hour, three a.m.,
and both awoke with a violent start, calling out, "I have caught the
thief! I have caught the thief! they are doing mischief to my brother!"
They were both of them extremely agitated, and gave way to similar
extravagances, dancing and leaping.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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