THE SIAMESE BOYS.
TOPICS OF THE DAY.
WE were present at a private view of these boys on Tuesday. Many medical and scientific gentlemen were in attendance ; we observed Earl SPENCER, Sir H. HALFORD, Sir ASTLEY COOPER, Dr. WARREN, Dr. BABINGTON, Dr. PARIS, Dr. BRODIE, Dr. GREEN, Dr. THOMAS' Dr. BURROWES, and Dr. BROOKES. The exhibition promises to be interesting nteresting one. In monstrous productions, in general, there is something revolting ; but there is nothing in these boys that can shock the feelings or the delicacy of the most fastidious. The ladies must visit them of course, for why should not they gratify their curiosity, as well as the lords of the creation theirs ?—and we are happy to be able to assure such of the ladies as read the SPECTATOR, that their visits may be paid to the Egyptian Hall without the least conceivable impropriety. Their appearance of extreme youth (for the boys are not in stature more than thirteen, though they are said to verge on nine- teen) is favourable to the exhibition of the twins. There is a kindli- ness that few will fail to feel and to pay to two young people who have hardly ceased to be children, that mature age would not excite, and which if it did few would care to exhibit.
Most of the particulars of the structure and histcry of the boys are already before the public. The manner in which they came before it forms a curious piece of literary history in a small way. The account first reached this country through the New York papers ; and on the 24th ultimo we gave from that source the fullest and most accurate description that has yet been published. It was drawn up by Dr. WARREN of Boston , and has been inserted, with some slight and insig- nificant additions, in Silliman's Journal. The same number, we may remark, contains a lithographic print of the boys, which Mr. CLEMENT has copied for his Observer of last Sunday, and which gives about as correct an idea of their face and figure as an egg does of an oyster. The papers from New York, reached Paris about eight days after they had reached London. They fell into the hands of it member of the Institute, who mixed up the facts they detailed with some small speculations of his own, and delivered the whole at a meeting of that learned body. The French papers copied this manufactured report, and sent it over to England, where it was trans- lated by most of our daily contemporaries ; and lastly, the boys arrived, the Observer reprints Dr. WARRENS notice, together with all the rdimimenti that had subsequently appeared, in addition to a long one of its own ; and our other contemporaries again complaisantly copy an article, the original of which must have been in their possession unnoticed and unpublished for at least six weeks At our visit on Tuesday we" did not elicit any new fact concerning the boys ; but we ascertained, as we have already stated, by the best of all proofs, that the exhibition was a pleasing as well as a curious one. The boys are extremely agreeable, both in expression of coun- tenance and in deportment. They submit to be handled and examined, with a degree of patience and good-humour that is surprising, when we consider the numbers and the tett:zing curiosity of their visitors. They are decidedly Chinese, though born in Siam ; and in features very much resemble the youngest of the two Chinese females that were exhibited, in Pall Mall two years ago. They do not seem to have attracted much notice in their own country. Mr. HUNTER in- deed states, that their strange union was looked on as ominous. None of the nobles, much less the monarch, seem to have interested themselves about them ; but a young Siamese lad that accompanies them says that the children used to follow them about from curiosity. The possibility of effecting their separation by surgical means has been doubted; yet, for anything that we could observe, it would be both easy and safe. The substance that unites them is a prolongation of the lower part of the breastbone, and a portion of the skin of the pit of the stomach ; the band is cartilaginous in part and cutaneous in part. The two extremities of the cartilaginous portion are very slightly if at all united, and might apparently be dissected through and reduced without difficulty. There can be no doubt, that had the mother been de- livered by an European surgeon, her offspring would have been separa- ted immediately on their birth. The cartilage, we may remark, is said to be gradually indurating ; Mr. HUNTER, who has known the boys for five or six years, says that it is much harder now than it was two years ago. In their childhood it must have been extremely soft, for when the twins were born, the head of the one was between the feet of the other. We were told a good deal of the uniformity that is observable in the actions of these boys, but there does not seem the slightest necessity for having recourse to any metaphysical theory in order to explain par- ticulars which naturally grow out of their intimate connexion. Two creatures whose physical structure is so very similar, and who are at all times exposed to the same influences, could hardly fail to act and even to think in the same way. Their pulses are pretty much alike, and the heat is almost simultaneous. That of the boy on the left is however the fuller of the two. Their limbs are extremely well made. The hands are rather large, but handsomely shaped, as are the feet and ankles. They walk and run without effort, and by no means in so awkward a way as their union would lead us to expect. In advancing, the left leg of the one always moves in unison with the left leg of the other. The boys are powerful for their size. They lifted Captain COFFIN, a heavy man, from the floor when we were present, with great seeming ease. To a certain 'degree, the left boy is left-handed. In chopping wood, for instance, the blows of the left hand ..of the one and of the right hand of the other are given simultaneously; but in shaking hands, both of them present the right. They are fond of company, and extremely curious. They were on Tuesday constantly at- tracted towards the door of the hall, from a wish to examine the different apartments of the mansion where they were exhibited. With females they are, by Mr. HUNTER'S account, at once familiar, and take great pleasure in seeing them -about them. They are pleased with instru- mental, but do not care much for vocal music : they say the latter is like crying. They play drafts well, and have begun to study chess. Their skill is, however, so equal, that they never unless requested play with each other. We were also told that they seldom spoke to each other ; but we heard them do so twice during the hour and a half we were in the room. The right-hand boy is evidently the liveliest—he answers almost all the questions put to the pair: he is also, but in a very slight degree, the taller of the two, though the left-hand one ap- pears the stouter. While they were at New York, a person happened to visit them who had but one eye. They immediately asked what he had paid ; and on being told, half a dollar, they 'said he had been cheated—that he ought to have been admitted for half price, as he had but half-sight ! We do not know whether this was Siamese humour or Siamese simplicity. The reader may easily imagine that the annoy- ance they receive from professional inquiries and examinations must have disposed them to entertain no very friendly feelings towards that class of philosophers. There is another anecdote (not a Joe Miller) which shows their feeling and their sagacity : on seeing a funeral, a sight altogether novel to them, they inquired its meaning ; and on being told that it was the ceremony of burying a dead person, they replied, that they thought nobody ought to die where there were so many doctors.
We have only to add to our account, that Mr. HUNTER and Captain COFFIN, the one a Scotchman and the other an American, seem both disposed and capable of giving every information that the most inqui- sitive of their visitors could desire ; 'and from the manner in which the boys regard them, there seems every reason to suppose that they are kindly and humanely treated. They were, it is noticed in Dr. WARREN'S letter, purchlsed from their mother, for a limited period as Mr. HUNTER states, and are to be returned to Bangkok in terms of the mutual agreement. We should rather wish, for the sake of the boys, that provision were made for their decent maintenance in America or Europe, where they are, we doubt not, much happier than they were at home.
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