An account of a child with a double head / [Sir Everard Home].

  • Home, Everard, Sir, 1756-1832
Date:
1790]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of a child with a double head / [Sir Everard Home]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The two Ikulls appear to be almoh: equally perfect at their tinion ; but the fuperior fkull, as it recedes from the other, is becoming more imperfedl and deficient in many of its parts. The meatus auditorius in the temporal bone is altogether wanting. The bafis of the Ikull is imperfed in feveral refpefls, par¬ ticularly in fuch parts as are to connect the Ikull with a body. The foramen magnum occipitale is a fmall irregular hole, very infufficient to give paflage to a medulla fpinalis; round its margin are no condyles with articulating furfaces, as there were no vertebrae of the neck to be attached to it. The fora¬ men lacerum in bafi cranii is only to be feen on one fide, and even there too fmall for the jugular vein to have palfed through. The offa palati are deficient at their pofterior part; the lower jaw is too fmall for the upper, and the condyle and coronoid procefs of one fide are wholly wanting. In mofi; of the other refpefts, the two Ikulls are alike; the number of teeth in both is the fame, and is fixteen. From an examination of the internal flrudlure of the double Ikull, the two brains have certainly been inclofed in one bony cafe, there being no feptum of bone between them. How far they were intirely diftind, and furrounded by their proper membranes, cannot now be afcertained; but from the fympa- thies which were taken notice of by Mr. Stark between the two heads, more particularly thofe of the fuperior with the lower, or more perfedb, I fhould be inclined to believe, that there was a more intimate connedlion between them than fimply by means of nerves, and therefore that the fubftance of the brains was continued into one another. Had the child lived to a more advanced age, and given men of obfervation opportunities of attending to the effedls of this double