The Boy With Two Heads

In 1783, a boy was born with two heads. The second head was upside down, with the neck pointed straight up. Shockingly, the second head was fully functional. The boy claimed he could hear the other brain telling him things

In May of 1783, the “Two-Headed Boy of Bengal” was born into a family of peasants. The midwife assisting the boy’s mother was horrified with his appearance and immediately chucked the newborn into a fire. Fortunately, he suffered only a few burns and managed to survive.

His survival and the fact that only two out of 5,000,000 babies are born with this condition — with a majority dying immediately after birth — made him a medical marvel.

Fame

The boy’s parents exploited his condition. After his burns healed, he was immediately exhibited in Calcutta, earning his family a pretty penny

If no one paid, the boy would be completely hidden in a piece of cloth for hours on end. He was more a prop than a son.

As news of the boy spread across India, wealthier patrons arranged for his viewing. He was taken to the private homes of nobles and civil servants who hosted viewing parties of his unique condition.

That’s when members of the British East India Company found out about him. They later stole the boy for the sake of science.

This is true, actually! The skull is on display in London. The condition is called Craniopagus parasiticus. Fewer than a dozen cases of this type of conjoined twin have been documented in literature. The four year old ended up dying, not from the twin, but a cobra bite.

The so-called "Two-Headed Boy of Bengal" was born in 1783 and died of a cobra bite in 1787. His skull remains in the collection of the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of London. Craniopagus parasiticus is an extremely rare type of parasitic twinning occurring in about 4 to 6 of 10,000,000 births. In craniopagus parasiticus, a parasitic twin head with an undeveloped body is attached to the head of a developed twin.

Descriptions

The boy’s skull (1783), Wikimedia Commons While the boy did have two heads, they weren’t how one would commonly imagine a two-headed being. The boy’s second head grew out of his main head as if they were stacked on each other.

Both of the boy’s heads were about average in size for his age, with the second head slightly smaller resting on a neck-like stump. The second head also had a few irregularities compared to the first — with eyes and ears not fully formed, and its tongue and jaw disfigured.

While the second head was rarely conscious, it did act independently from the other at times.

When the child laughed or cried, the second head sometimes didn’t match the action. If the first head was asleep, the eyes on the second head darted around as if observing its surroundings. But the heads also acted in unison in some instances.

Interestingly, when the boy was fed through the first head, the tongue on his second face would salivate. Witnesses also say that the second head would instinctively suckle when presented with a breast.

Medical cause

Today the boy's condition is known as Craniopagus Parasiticus, a parasitic twin over the developed head. The cause of this extremely rare condition is the failure of the embryo to split during the development of twins in the womb.

Because this condition is rare, there is only one viable treatment for it: the removal of the parasitic twin.

Unfortunately, this type of surgery is deadly because arteries in the head are so intertwined that bleeding would be difficult to control.

In December of 2003, this procedure was attempted on a girl with Craniopagus Parasiticus, but she passed away eleven hours into the surgery. A similar procedure was done to a boy in Egypt in 2005, but he passed away due to brain infection.

As for our “Two-Headed Boy from Bengal”, there were no recorded complications from his condition. Unfortunately, he died from a cobra bite just four years after his birth.

Stolen for science

Soon after the boy was buried, an agent from the East India Company robbed his grave. After dissecting the boy’s corpse, they discovered that he had two separate brains and that both received nutrients through the same system.

When experiments were finished, the boy’s body was putrefied, and his skull was presented as a gift to an English surgeon named Everard Home.

Today, the “Two-Headed Boy’s” skull is still on display at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of London.

While the second head was rarely conscious, it did act independently from the other at times.

When the child laughed or cried, the second head sometimes didn’t match the action. If the first head was asleep, the eyes on the second head darted around as if observing its surroundings. But the heads also acted in unison in some instances.

Interestingly, when the boy was fed through the first head, the tongue on his second face would salivate. Witnesses also say that the second head would instinctively suckle when presented with a breast.

Source: https://historyofyesterday.com/the-boy-with-two-heads-93d164ede1a5?gi=b01eb8136af3

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