第84章

A more common occurrence of this type is that in which there is fusion of the two heads. Moreau speaks of a monster in Spain which was shown from town to town. Its heads were fused; it had two mouths and two noses; in each face an eye well conformed and placed above the nose; there was a third eye in the middle of the forehead common to both heads; the third eye was of primitive development and had two pupils. Each face was well formed and had its own chin. Buffon mentions a cat, the exact analogue of Moreau's case. Sutton speaks of a photograph sent to Sir James Paget in 1856 by William Budd of Bristol. This portrays a living child with a supernumerary head, which had mouth, nose, eyes, and a brain of its own. The eyelids were abortive, and as there was no orbital cavity the eyes stood out in the form of naked globes on the forehead. When born, the corneas of both heads were transparent, but then became opaque from exposure. The brain of the supernumerary head was quite visible from without, and was covered by a membrane beginning to slough. On the right side of the head was a rudimentary external ear. The nurse said that when the child sucked some milk regurgitated through the supernumerary mouth. The great physiologic interest in this case lies in the fact that every movement and every act of the natural face was simultaneously repeated by the supernumerary face in a perfectly consensual manner, i.e., when the natural mouth sucked, the second mouth sucked; when the natural face cried, yawned, or sneezed, the second face did likewise; and the eyes of the two heads moved in unison. The fate of the child is not known.

Home speaks of a child born in Bengal with a most peculiar fusion of the head. The ordinary head was nearly perfect and of usual volume, but fused with its vertex and reversed was a supernumerary head. Each head had its own separate vessels and brain, and each an individual sensibility, but if one had milk first the other had an abundance of saliva in its mouth. It narrowly escaped being burned to death at birth, as the midwife, greatly frightened by the monstrous appearance, threw it into the fire to destroy it, from whence it was rescued, although badly burned, the vicious conformation of the accessory head being possibly due to the accident. At the age of four it was bitten by a venomous serpent and, as a result, died. Its skull is in the possession of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

The following well-known story of Edward Mordake, though taken from lay sources, is of sufficient notoriety and interest to be mentioned here:--"One of the weirdest as well as most melancholy stories of human deformity is that of Edward Mordake, said to have been heir to one of the noblest peerages in England. He never claimed the title, however, and committed suicide in his twenty-third year.

He lived in complete seclusion, refusing the visits even of the members of his own family. He was a young man of fine attainments, a profound scholar, and a musician of rare ability.

His figure was remarkable for its grace, and his face--that is to say, his natural face--was that of an Antinous. But upon the back of his head was another face, that of a beautiful girl, 'lovely as a dream, hideous as a devil.' The female face was a mere mask, 'occupying only a small portion of the posterior part of the skull, yet exhibiting every sign of intelligence, of a malignant sort, however.' It would be seen to smile and sneer while Mordake was weeping. The eyes would follow the movements of the spectator, and the lips would 'gibber without ceasing.' No voice was audible, but Mordake avers that he was kept from his rest at night by the hateful whispers of his 'devil twin,' as he called it, 'which never sleeps, but talks to me forever of such things as they only speak of in hell. No imagination can conceive the dreadful temptations it sets before me. For some unforgiven wickedness of my forefathers I am knit to this fiend--for a fiend it surely is. I beg and beseech you to crush it out of human semblance, even if I die for it.' Such were the words of the hapless Mordake to Manvers and Treadwell, his physicians. In spite of careful watching he managed to procure poison, whereof he died, leaving a letter requesting that the 'demon face' might be destroyed before his burial, 'lest it continues its dreadful whisperings in my grave.' At his own request he was interred in a waste place, without stone or legend to mark his grave."A most curious case was that of a Fellah woman who was delivered at Alexandria of a bicephalic monster of apparently eight months'

pregnancy. This creature, which was born dead, had one head white and the other black the change of color commencing at the neck of the black head. The bizarre head was of negro conformation and fully developed, and the colored skin was found to be due to the existence of pigment similar to that found in the black race. The husband of the woman had a light brown skin, like an ordinary Fellah man, and it was ascertained that there were some negro laborers in port during the woman's pregnancy; but no definite information as to her relations with them could be established, and whether this was a case of maternal impression or superfetation can only be a matter of conjecture.

Fantastic monsters, such as acephalon, paracephalon, cyclops, pseudencephalon, and the janiceps, prosopthoracopagus, disprosopus, etc., although full of interest, will not be discussed here, as none are ever viable for any length of time, and the declared intention of this chapter is to include only those beings who have lived.

CLASS VIII.--The next class includes the parasitic terata, monsters that consist of one perfect body, complete in every respect, but from the neighborhood of whose umbilicus depends some important portion of a second body. Pare, Benivenius, and Columbus describe adults with acephalous monsters attached to them. Schenck mentions 13 cases, 3 of which were observed by him.