The 3,000-year history of conjoined twins

Abstract

The 3,000-year history of conjoined twins Even today we do not fully understand the etiology of conjoined twins.How were such births viewed in the past, when there was even less knowledge about fetal development?Anecdotal reports of viable conjoined twins in European medical history date back more than 1,000 years. 1,2ut the first well-known case was not documented until 1811, when 2 boys-Chang and Eng-were born in Bangkok, Thailand, attached to each other at the sternum.P T Barnum named them the "Siamese twins."As they traveled the world with Barnum's circus, they consulted a multitude of physicians.All, including Rudolf Vircow, concluded that separation would be fatal to both. 3 This prognosis may have been welcomed by the twins because their wealth and fame depended on their conjoined state.They married sisters, sired a total of 21 children, and died within hours of each other at age 61.An autopsy found that they shared no organs.They only shared a small amount of liver tissue, peritoneum, and the hypogastric artery and vein.Death probably came to the surviving twin not from fright, as initially stated, but from slow exsanguination as blood flowing into the already dead twin was not returned. 4rtistic representations of the human body date back 15,000 years.From this earliest period of art itself, the ill and the deformed were portrayed almost as often as the healthy and vigorous. 5Given the superstition and fear that must have accompanied conjoined births-and their rarity-it would come as no surprise if such births had never been portrayed.Nevertheless, excavations of Tlatilco, a small Mexican village that existed about 3,000 years ago, have revealed remarkably accurate clay sculptures of a wide range of facial and cranial duplications.Many of these artifacts are small female figurines with small waists and breasts, short phocomelic arms, and bulging thighs (see figure linked to this article on our web site). 6Although most of the figurines have normal faces, some have double faces with a shared, central, cyclopic eye and normal lateral eyes. 7Oth-....