What will you do if you see a man having 2 faces? Would you
laugh? Would you tease him? Would you feel compassionate towards him?
Seriously, it is not an easy condition.
Edward Mordrake was an heir to an English peerage who had another
face at the back of his head. It is believed that the second face is an undeveloped
twin. The duplicate face could neither eat nor speak out loud but was seen to
“smile and sneer while Mordrake was weeping.” Mordrake reportedly begged
doctors to have his “Demon face” removed, claiming that it whispered to him at
night, but no doctor would attempt it. Scary! It is also believed that it was
the reason why he committed suicide when he was 23 years old.
The 1896 medical encyclopedia Anomalies and Curiosities of
Medicine, co-authored by Dr. George M. Gould and Dr. Walter L. Pyle, gives an
account of Mordrake with no mention as to when he lived. Though the
encyclopedia describes the basic morphology of Mordrake’s condition, it
provides no medical diagnosis for the rare deformity. With no photographs of
Mordrake known to exist—he likely lived many generations before practical
photography became ubiquitous—such a birth defect might have been a form of
craniopagus parasiticus (a parasitic twin head with an undeveloped body), a
form of diprosopus (bifurcated craniofacial duplication), or an extreme form of
parasitic twin (an unequal conjoined twin).
Mordrake’s case is same as the Two-Headed Boy of Bengal. Born
in the village of Mundul Gait in May 1783 into a poor family of farmers. During
the delivery, the midwife was so afraid that she threw the baby into the fire. Good
thing, he survived. His parents decided to make him appear to shows. He became
an attraction in Calcutta and eventually let his family earn large amount of money.
The boy had one head on top of the other, both similar in
size and development to that of a normal child. The second head ended in a
stump and its eyes and ears were not fully developed. It also appeared to
function separately. When the boy showed emotions like crying or smiling, the
second head wouldn’t always match them. When the main head was fed, the second
one produced saliva and would attempt to suckle if was given the opportunity.
Also, the heads had different sleep cycles; when the boy was
asleep, the secondary head would often stay awake.
The Boy with Two Heads from Bengal sooner received an
overwhelming attention, but not a single was medical. He died due to a cobra
bite at the age of four. His corpse was dissected and it was found out that the
boy had two separate properly developed brains. His skull is now being
exhibited at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of London.
Source: TheControversialFiles
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