The conjoined twins have always attracted attention, be it as "perversions" in the freak parade or as medical curiosities. Surprisingly, undivided siblings appear in the world more often than you might imagine. But only some of them gain worldwide fame.
In January 2014, the world spread the news about the separation of the extremely difficult case of Siamese twins. A team of doctors led by Professor Andrzej Kamiński successfully performed the complicated procedure. The children were joined with their bellies, they had a common fragment of the intestine and one urinary tract. One of the brothers left for the operation a bit lossy - he only has one kidney left, while his twin has a full set - but the most important thing is that they are both alive and able to function normally.
Sisters Daisy and Violet Hilton performed on stage for many years. They also starred in two movies.
Two years later, doctors from Montefiore Medical Center in New York, who successfully performed the operation to separate children joined by heads, were equally successful. Anias and Jadon, after 27 hours of extremely difficult surgery, survived, and the gaps in their skulls were replaced with special reconstructions. This is a great success because most conjoined twins are born dead, and if they survive, they cannot be safely separated .
The difficult life of double people
Fortunately, we live in the era of advanced medicine and more and more often we are able to do what seemed almost impossible a few decades ago. For the first time in history, the twins were separated in 1952. It was in Illinois - doctors ensured normal lives for the Brodie twins. The children were fused with their skulls, but shallowly enough that the operation lasting almost 13 hours did not endanger their nervous systems.
As surprising as it may seem, fused twins occur in about 1 in 50 to 100,000 cases. Considering the frequent miscarriages of this type of pregnancy, some scientists have even suggested a figure of 1 in 40,000. The greater frequency was reported by Polish doctors in the 1960s and 1970s:2 cases out of 65,000, and also doctors from the Czech Republic:1 case out of 40,000.
Conjoined twins are born once in 50,000 to 100,000 cases. Pictured is Lucie and Semplano Goviano.
Many unborn babies die shortly after birth as a result of birth defects. Only some survive. Their life has never been easy, and to make matters worse, in the past they had no hope of changing the situation ...
The most famous reunited brothers, Chang and Eng Bunker, are an example of persistence and the fight against opposites. The history of their lives is very rich:they lived a long time and were able to create a happy existence against all odds. They had wives and a total of over twenty children. Before the wedding, they made use of their unusual flaw, earning money by showing themselves in front of the audience. As Yunte Huang writes in his book "Inseparable. Famous Siamese brothers and their encounter with American history ” :
At the age of 17, they were taken by British businessman Robert Hunter and American shipping captain Alba Coffin to the West to tour as natural wonders. Thanks to entrepreneurial talents, the twins later managed to break free from their owners and go on their own tour. Within a decade, they made enough money to settle in a countryside in North Carolina where they bought land and black slaves .
Chained together forever
The famous and enterprising Bunker brothers were very lucky. The fate of Daisy and Violet Hilton's sisters, the buttocks and hips fused together in Great Britain, born in 1908, received much less for it. They quickly became famous - after the screenings in the UK, they toured the USA, where they performed in various performances, including vaudeville and burlesque. They even managed to star in two films:"Dziwoląg" from 1932 and "Chained for Life" from 1951. But no one asked them if such a career suited them.
The girls' mother sold them to her boss, Mary Hilton, as soon as it turned out that there was no chance of separating the children . Together with her husband, Mrs. Hilton raised their twins with a heavy hand and taught them to dance and sing under duress. After the shows in Europe, it's time for America.
When the "owner" died, Violet and Daisy were taken over by a pair of their current managers - Edith and Meyer Meyers. And it turned out ... that it could be even worse. The new caregivers kept the twins locked up and ordered them to learn to play the violin and saxophone. It was only in 1931 that the girls decided to sue their torturers - and they won! They gained freedom and a hundred thousand dollars in compensation. Unfortunately, it happened at a declining moment in their careers.
After the trial, they played roles in "Dziwoląg", but it was more and more difficult for them to find paid jobs. They both got married more than once:Violet's longest marriage lasted ten years, and Daisy's shortest full-fledged relationship lasted ten days. After the premiere of Chained for Life, the twins were mostly busy coming to double screenings with their participation, until finally, in 1961, their manager simply dropped them off in Charlotte, North Carolina, and drove away .
The women were forced to work in a local shop and that was how they lived for the rest of their lives. In 1969, they fell victim to a flu epidemic. Their employer called the police when they failed to show up for work on January 4. They were found dead in the apartment. Tests showed that they died approximately three hours apart.
From Neolithic to Full HD
It is from the Bunker brothers that the grown children are today called "Siamese twins". They were born in Siam, and the shows with their participation gained enough publicity to spread the word around the world. Of course, they weren't the first twins in the world.
It was from the Bunker brothers that the term "Siamese brothers" was derived.
This serious developmental defect is mentioned in the remains of Neolithic cultures from the 7th century BC. In what is now southern Turkey, a white marble figurine of conjoined twins has been found, dating back to around 6,500 BC. In the ruins of the royal library in Nineveh, clay tablets with adhesions, also from that period, were found. Some argue that the Roman deity Janus with two faces and the Slavic god Trzygłów may also reflect the births of Siamese twins in the old days .
Children born in this way were often treated as omens, depending on the degree and manner of their union - good or bad. Even the birth of Chang and Eng Bunkers caused quite an esoteric confusion. Yunte Huang writes in "Inseparable" :
The news of conjoined twins caused some stir and reached the ears of the king himself. As an avid interpreter of signs and symbols… Rama II regarded this abnormal birth as an omen of some evil in the kingdom. So he issued a death sentence on the conjoined twins.
Fortunately, the royal order was not carried out in the end. Who knows what we would call Siamese twins today if Chang and Eng had not become famous?
Like it or not, joined people have always been given a lot of attention. It happened that living Siamese twins served as attractions at royal courts, and later - as in the case of the brothers Enga and Cheng or the sisters Daisy and Violet - as show "freaks". Only the development of modern medicine has led to a change in the perception of joined people and attempts to separate them, but ... typically human fascination still does not subside. We are still most interested in the private lives of united people.
Daisy and Violet were brought up for show and forced to perform by their owners.
Today, for example, the twins Abby and Brittany Hensel, born in 1990, are well known. They share practically the entire body except the hearts and lungs, and yet they graduated from college, passed the driving test and became the heroines of the reality TV show .
Equally surprising is the story of Lori and George Schappell, who are joined together by their heads. As if that were not enough, George was initially a woman named Dori, but decided that he was much better off being a man. After his gender reassignment, he made a career as a country musician. For example, he recorded a hit with a fairly obvious title "Skazani na się". His sister is much calmer, works in the laundry and plays bowling, and yet somehow they manage to reconcile extremely different lifestyles.
Two faces of humanity
The story of Kristy and Tatiana Hogan from Canada is also loud. It sounds incredible. The girls are joined together by their heads and share large parts of the nervous system. They feel shared stimuli and can even share emotions without using words. However, the twins' most unique feature is the ability to see together !
After birth, the sisters underwent a series of treatments that allowed them to function efficiently. Powerful support from family and society allowed them to develop in the best possible way. They learned to speak, write and read at a normal age for the developing person. The twins appeared on a TV show and met in the aforementioned Lori and George Schappells.
At the other end of the scale, Masha and Dasha Krivoszlapov, twin sisters with a common lower body, who were transported to a research center in the Soviet Union right after their birth in 1950, can be boldly placed. There, painful experiments were carried out on them, which only ended after seven years! Not only that, the authorities concealed the identity of their mother from them, claiming that she had died in childbirth .
Some conjoined twins are fortunate enough to be born into an environment that enables them to develop. Others have been subjected to cruel experiments at times.
Masha and Dasha went through the hell of a boarding school. They were ridiculed and humiliated at every turn. They had to learn to walk on their own, no one was interested in their development. Only at the age of 35 did they manage to find out the truth about their mother. At the age of 39, they managed to move from the center for the disabled to an apartment in a suburb of Moscow. In 2003, he died of Dasha's heart attack. Masha refused to be separated and left about 17 hours after her sister.
Two cases - Masha and Dasha and Kristy and Tatiana - are extremely different, although their protagonists seem very similar to each other. The societies in which they found themselves showed two completely different approaches to diversity. Siamese twins will definitely be born again and will always remain almost entirely dependent on the people around them - the question is what they will decide to do with them.
Bibliography:
- Jensen, Dean, The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton:A True Story of Conjoined Twins . CA:Ten Speed Press 2006.
- Yunte Huang, Inseparable. Famous Siamese brothers and their encounter with American history . 2019 Poznań Publishing House.
- Krzysztof Kobylarz, The history of treatment of Siamese twins . "Anestezjologia Intensywna Terapia", vol. 46, no. 2/2014.
- Siamese twins separated , "The Examiner", vol. CXL, no. 242/1952.
- The Hogan sisters; how conjoined twins share body and mind , "The Current" 2014.
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