162 galton.org
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Inquiries into Human Faculty
pair of twins, one was born ruptured, and the other became so at six
months old. Two twins at the age of twenty-three were attacked by
toothache, and the same tooth had to be extracted in each case. There are
curious and close correspondences mentioned in the falling off of the hair.
Two cases are mentioned of death from the same disease; one of which is
very affecting. The outline of the story was that the twins were closely
alike and singularly attached, and had identical tastes; they both obtained
Government clerkships, and kept house together, when one sickened and
died of Bright’s disease, and the other also sickened of the same disease
and died seven months later.
Both twins were apt to sicken at the same time in no less than nine out
of the thirty-five cases. Either their illnesses, to which I refer, were non-
contagious, or, if contagious, the twins caught them simultaneously; they
did not catch them the one from the other. This implies so intimate a
constitutional resemblance, that it is proper to give some quotations in
evidence. Thus, the father of two twins says
“Their general health is closely alike; whenever one of them has an illness, the other
invariably has the same within a day or two, and they usually recover in the same order.
Such has been the case with whooping-cough, chicken-pox, and measles also with slight
bilious attacks, which they have successively. Latterly, they had a feverish attack at the
same time.”
Another parent of twins says
“If anything ails one of them, identical symptoms nearly always appear in the other;
this has been singularly visible in two instances during the last two months. Thus, when in
London, one fell ill with a violent attack of dysentery, and within twenty-four hours the
other had precisely the same symptoms.”
A medical man writes of twins with whom he is well acquainted
“Whilst I knew them, for a period of two years, there was not the slightest tendency
towards a difference in body or mind; external influences seemed powerless to produce
any dissimilarity.”
The mother of two other twins, after describing how they were ill
simultaneously up to the age of fifteen, adds, that
