| In this
piece, I depict the brothers who are the basis
for calling conjoined twins “Siamese twins” because
they were born in Thailand,
then known as Siam. The brothers exhibited extensively with P.T. Barnum
and
made a fortune. They eventually settled in North Carolina and married sisters.
Every 3 days they lived in the other brother’s home with
his wife and
family. Altogether they fathered 22 children. Chang was often ill, and one fateful night died,
leaving
Eng tethered to a corpse until he also died 3 hours later. The doctor
couldn’t get there in time to separate them, which, with the Civil War-era
medical technology, might not have worked anyway. |