Chang and Eng Bunker

Chang and Eng Bunker ( Thai: จัน อิน บังเกอร์, pronounced Dschan and In Banker, born May 11, Tambon Mae Klong in 1811, Samut Songkhram in Siam, now Thailand, † January 17th 1874 ) Siamese twins that this malformation were their gave name.

Origin and life

The brothers were born as children of Chinese parents in Siam, and were joined together at the sides of the body. They were discovered in 1829 and presented at county fairs as a sensation. In 1839 they settled in Wilkesboro, were U.S. citizens, and took the name of Bunker. They married in 1843, the two sisters Adelaide and Sarah Yates and had a total of 11 typically developing children. It is reported that Chang developed a taste for alcohol and the wives were wont to occasionally argue, which is why you have set up separate households in which one lived alternately every three days each in the house of the one and the other.

Career and death

A British merchant, Robert Hunter, and an American sea captain Abel Coffin, led a two and a half years of touring exhibition of the twins by the United States and England in the 1829 bis 1831st then took Chang and Eng their own affairs and earned over the next forty years living as an entertainer. In 1870 they were seen for the first time in Germany. During this stay they could be studied for the purpose of separation by Rudolf Virchow. Virchow believed in a successful separation, then it was never carried out.

On the way back from a tour to Russia in 1870 suffered a stroke and Chang Bunker remained paralyzed; Eng was his physical prop for the next three years to their common death on January 17, 1874 at the age of 63 years. With the consent of the widow an autopsy was performed, the report is received with drawings of the overgrown tissue in the College of Physicians mothers Museum in Philadelphia. Accordingly, the two were only grown together and had no vital organ together. This would make a separation, as Virchow they had suggested have been possible.