The Amazing Twins

From the news of Hama — Syria — comes word that a woman has given birth to an amazing child with two independent heads, the two bodies uniting at the waist to become one. We came upon the details of a similar story that occurred in the United States, and we have rendered it into Arabic in the hope that doing so may throw light on the situation and clarify many of the questions on the subject: How are such phenomena explained scientifically? And what are their causes?

After mental effort and hesitation, I arrived at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Hartley to ask for a report on their amazing twins. Although the newspapermen called them "the two-headed baby," they are twins from the waist up, their body united below the waist. Medical reports record six cases similar to this one, but no child with two heads has ever been found — and were one born, it would not live.

Mrs. Hartley is a slender woman of twenty-eight, a pale cast over her face, her hair black and glossy, and she wears eyeglasses. She met me at the door of her home, invited me to sit down, then excused herself and hurried off to do her duty by her two babies: "They have two stomachs, so I have to change them a lot." We laughed at that. After she had dressed them in a pink suit tied at the neck with a blue ribbon, she laid them down on a small bed in the room, while I stood observing all this with a smile and with astonishment. Then her husband came in — a man of forty, red-haired, quick-witted, nimble in his movements; he had worked on a farm, moved from it to a mine, then became a mechanic. "They're two beautiful babies," he answered me when I expressed my admiration for them; and he had chosen two names for them. They were lying on their back, turning over from time to time, and I felt my bewilderment melt away at the ease so plain on the parents' faces.

After a little while I asked Mrs. Hartley to let me hold her two precious babies; she smiled her consent, lifted them up, and placed them in my arms. Their body was warm, a fragrant

scent rising from it, and they stared at me, scrutinizing, as I tried to make my arms a cradle for them. Naturally I could clearly feel that the lower part of the body was the lighter in weight. Danny was at ease, taking things as they come, and so he showed none of the uneasiness that met me in Donny's face as he looked at his mother like someone asking what this business was about. During my visit, curious visitors came to the house and asked the mother to let them take a picture of the twins; she received this with every welcome and made the operation easy for them, while her husband talked with me: "I never knew there were so many friends in the world until this happened. People want to offer a great many things when extraordinary things occur... A man we don't know, from California, sent us a check for a hundred dollars, and gifts keep pouring in from every direction."

I could hear the mother talking with her visitors — she has become a famous mother now, and many stream in to write and to photograph. She laughed merrily when I asked her whether she was thinking of another birth: "I don't want children; what I have is enough."

The story of the twins begins in the mother's womb on February 21, 1953, shrouded in mystery, a strangeness in the pregnancy: the fertilized egg began to grow in two halves instead of one part during the first three months of the pregnancy. And we can be certain that the twins inherited this from the family: the father has two twin sisters, and his mother had two twin sisters, and thus the birth of twins can be inherited in a family. We also

know that the division of an egg into two parts is not so very strange. This is shown by experiments tried on fish and birds, by lowering the temperature of the fertilized egg or by neglecting it.

The parents were living, in that harsh month, in a cold dwelling on a farm far from the city, and the family had no means of transport, so it was as if they covered the road on foot. (There is strong proof that hereditary abnormality is the result of weak nutrition in the mother or the father, or a deficiency of the vitamin B known as "Riboflavin." Two rats were given feed rich in this substance, and the young came out healthy, strong, and normal; then after a while they were given food lacking this substance, and the result was that the young were born blind, or with extra organs on their bodies. The experiment was repeated several times, and the result was the same.

Hartley's place of work was fifty miles from his home, and his weekly income was fifty dollars, of which he paid five to a friend who drove him to his work and ten toward the support of two children from a previous marriage, leaving him thirty-five dollars a week — and this to support a wife and three children. Life was not easy or smooth: the clothing was not sufficient, they had no means of heating the rooms of the house, the furniture consisted of a bed and a few chairs, and the water was outside the house. In the dawn of that spring the woman learned that she was pregnant, and she came to visit the family doctor whom she trusted; he also visited her twice during that summer. While he was examining her in November, he fancied he heard the beating of two hearts, and he made certain that he had felt two heads during the examination. On the afternoon of December 11, 1953, Mr. Hartley and his wife came to the doctor's office, and she was advised that she must enter the hospital. He accompanied her to Washington, where the chief of surgeons proposed that she be delivered from the side — "Caesarean" — and on the following morning, at exactly eight o'clock, the surgeon set to work. He said: "I looked for two bodies, but I found only one." He brought out the twins and laid them on the operating table; they were washed, then taken into a room containing an abundant supply of oxygen to help them breathe easily, and they were surrounded with every care to preserve their life.

A long discussion took place over what the doctor could do for these two children — should he allow them to live? But this idea never brewed in

his head, for he is sworn to preserve life, and killing them is counted a crime.

At nine o'clock the family doctor came in asking after the woman; the surgeon turned to him and said: "Go into the next room, and look."

Ten days passed after the birth, and then the medical institution in Indiana issued findings describing the child: he has two heads; the shoulders are normal, but not exactly facing one another; the point of junction begins under the armpit and ends at the base of the trunk, where the body unites and appears as one.

X-ray examination showed two short spinal columns, two hearts, and two stomachs whose intestines join toward the outlet; the lungs likewise are normal, and the brain and the eyesight are normal as well. The nerves of the right leg connect to the right head, and the nerves of the left leg extend to the left head; and the color of the right side appears different from that of the left side.

The husband was not allowed to see his wife until evening, when he brought her some of the photographs that had been taken of the two babies; and the twins were moved from the hospital in a car, accompanied by the necessary emergency equipment. It was a shock to the mother, and she very nearly disowned the child her own womb had carried. The ancients believed that a child born like this was a curse upon its parents, and these beliefs were not refuted until the year 1651, when one of the scientists made clear that this abnormality begins from the moment the embryo is formed. Some believe that the shock of seeing a snake or a frightening animal affects the pregnant woman — but Mrs. Hartley does not believe that.

No sooner had the twins reached the hospital in Indianapolis than the newspapermen and photographers surrounded the hospital, and they were told that the child was in critical condition. When the parents wanted to register the twins under a single identity, the mother asked that the names "Donny" and "Danny" be written down. The family was obliged to move to the city to safeguard the child's life, and thereby received material help that raised their standard of living. Letters began to arrive for the parents, some containing words of consolation or lamentation or religious passages, and some enclosing money orders. And when the twins were baptized, the church counted them as two. I asked the head of the institution where the twins spent the first month of their life whether those in charge had thought it necessary for psychiatrists to counsel the parents; she said no, because their reaction was entirely natural, and they asked to take the babies home.

The fire was burning and warming the corners of the house when the parents arrived with their twins, and their brothers and sisters stood watching for a glimpse of the new baby. One girl said: "Isn't he beautiful?" And another added: "But why does he have two heads?" There was a silence, after which the father said: "God sent him to us that way." The mother moved me deeply with her tenderness and her acceptance of this reality with an open heart; she also followed the doctor's instructions in feeding them. The father was proud of his child, and he told me that if the doctor allowed him, he would put the family in a wagon with the twins and tour the cities exhibiting them, for he would like to educate his children and raise their standard of living.

Adjusting the lives of these two parents to the new situation was not easy; even so, they have gone forward in full contentment and acceptance. I noticed it in the mother as she washed the twins, casting glances of understanding at her husband and guiding her other children without harshness or violence. And when I took my leave of her, a ray of tenderness and mutual understanding went with me and filled my heart with hope!