• U.S.

Medicine: Scared to Death

3 minute read
TIME

Though Chang and Eng were the original “Siamese twins” exhibited by P. T. Barnum, they were not Siamese but Chinese. And though a popular impression persists that they died within a few hours of each other as an inevitable result of their physical union, this is not true, either. The facts were recorded in century-old medical records, but were generally ignored until Georgetown University’s Dr. Worth B. Daniels browsed around a bookstore, came across a long-neglected autopsy report: Eng died of fright.

Born in 1811, the twins were joined at the lower end of the breastbone, mainly by cartilage and ligaments which stretched and became so pliable that by the time the boys reached their teens they could stand side by side. When they were 32, the twins married Quaker sisters from Trap Hill Township, N.C.; Chang fathered ten children and Eng twelve. But despite their close tie and obvious similarities, the twins’ temperaments and illnesses differed. Eng was abstemious; Chang was a tippler. In 1872, during one of his drinking bouts, Chang had a stroke that left him partly paralyzed.

In 1874, said Dr. Daniels, Chang complained of pains in his chest, though Eng still felt well. Chang’s doctor ordered the twins to stay indoors. But in their turn-and-turnabout living pattern, it was time for them to move from Chang’s house in White Plains, N.C., to Eng’s. They made the switch in a buggy in the damp January cold of the North Carolina mountains. Next night, Eng awoke with a feeling of unease and called in one of his sons. Said the boy: “Uncle Chang is dead.” Eng replied: “Then I am going also.” Within three hours, and before a doctor arrived, Eng had died.

The world’s greatest surgeons, who had repeatedly refused to separate Chang and Eng in life, had probably been right. Without X rays or other modern diagnostic aids, they could not be sure of how much of the twins’ vital organs projected into their unifying band. But the autopsy disclosed that only a small part of Eng’s liver projected into the attachment to his twin. If a bold surgeon had arrived in time after Chang’s death, he probably could have saved Eng.

One of the physicians who examined the bodies of the twins wrote: “In my opinion, Chang died of a cerebral clot. Eng probably died of fright as the distended bladder seemed to point to a profound emotional disturbance.”

More Must-Reads from TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com