The Siamese twins, Chang and Eng : a biographical sketch.

Date:
[1869]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Siamese twins, Chang and Eng : a biographical sketch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/28 (page 8)
    which time they visited Providence, Philadelphia, and New York, everywhere exciting the most lively interest. THEY GO TO LONDON. Before making a more extended tour in the New World, the curios- ity in regard to* them was so strong in England, that it was deemed expedient not to defer a visit to that country. Accordingly, they em- barked for England, on board the ship Robert Edwards, Captain Sherburne, and were landed at Dartmouth, in Devonshire, in twenty- seven days. The ship was bound to London, and after having landed a great many of her passengers, she was a longer time going from Dartmouth to London than she had been from New York to Dart- mouth, having encountered a succession of severe gales in the British Channel, and lost anchors and cables. Having arrived in the Great Metropolis on the 19th of November, the Twins were visited on the 24th, at the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, by a great number of medi- cal and sientific men, as well as by throngs led only by curiosity. TESTIMONIALS. The strange novelty very naturally excited the wonderment of the world. It seemed an impossibility in the nature of things that two human beings could be so strangely related. The non-scientific could hardly credit their senses. The public, at that time, seemed to need some proof of the reality of what their own eyes saw ! And men eminent for scientific wisdom were more than willing to assure the public, that in regard to Chang and Eng, neither their eyes nor their fingers had deceived them. Accordingly, nearly the whole College of Sur- geons investigated the peculiarity of the Twins, and sent forth a docu- ment, which, though not needed for the same purpose now, is worthy of insertion here, as a strange event in the career of the Twins from Siam. The document was signed by the Hon. Leigh Thomas, Presi- dent of the Royal College of Surgeons ; by the world-renowned Sur- geon, Astley Cooper; by Thomas Copeland, B. C. Brodie, and thirty other Surgeons and Physiologists, hardly less distinguished. It read as follows: “Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, Nov. 24th, 1829. “ Chang and Eng—two youths born in the kingdom of Siam, whose bodies are, by a wonderful caprice of nature, united together as one— arrived in London on Thursday, November 19th, and on Tuesday, 24th, were submitted to the examination of the most eminent professors of Surgery and Medicine of the Metropolis, as well as some other gentle- men of scientific and literary pursuits, in order that through their report (if favorable) the public may be assured that the projected ex- hibition of these remarkable and interesting youths is in no respect deceptive; and, further, that there is nothing whatever offensive to