00:00In May 1783, there is a small village called Mundal Gaut in Bengal, India.
00:05A very unusual baby was born.
00:08The child had two heads.
00:10The midwife who helped with the birth was so shocked that she tried to kill the baby
00:14by throwing him into the fire.
00:16Luckily, the baby was saved, though he got some burns on one eye and ear.
00:22At first, the parents were horrified, but soon they realized they could earn money by
00:26showing the child to others.
00:28They left their village and went to Kolkata, where they displayed their baby for money.
00:33The two-headed boy quickly became famous.
00:36People paid to see him, and his parents often kept him hidden under a sheet so no one could
00:42look for free.
00:43Nobles' government officials and wealthy people even invited the family to their homes
00:48for private viewing.
00:49One visitor wrote about the child and shared the accounts with Sir Joseph Banks, the president
00:55of the Royal Society.
00:56Later, the story reached Sarjan Iward home.
00:59The boy's second head did not grow beside the first but on the top of it, upside down,
01:05ending in a short neck-like stump.
01:08The second head had some differences.
01:10Its ears and jaws were smaller, but both heads were the same size and had black hair where
01:16they joined.
01:18The second head seemed to act on its own.
01:20It did not always copy the expression of the main head.
01:24Sometimes when the child was asleep, the second head's eyes were open and moving.
01:29If someone pinched its cheeks, it made a face.
01:32If milk was offered, it tried to suck.
01:34It produced tears and saliva, but its eyes reacted weakly to light.
01:39Despite looking strange, the boy seemed healthy and lived a normal life until the age of four.
01:45One day while his mother was fetching water, a cobra bit him and he died.
01:51Many doctors wanted to buy the body for study, but his parents refused.
01:55They buried him near the Boop Norain River, close to the Tum Lodge.
02:00However, his grip was later robbed by a man named Mr. Dent, an East India Company worker.
02:06He dissected the body and gave the skull to Captain Buchanan, who later sent it to England.
02:11The skull is still kept in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London.
02:17When Mr. Dent studied the heads, he found that the boy had two separate brains, each covered
02:22by its own protective layer and supplied with its own blood vessels.
02:26The boy's condition is now known as Cronio opagus parasiticus, a very rare form of parasitic
02:33twinning.
02:34It happens in only two to three cases out of every five million births.
02:38In this condition, twins start to develop, but do not separate fully, and one twin remains
02:43underdeveloped, attached to the other.
02:46Most babies with this condition are still born or die soon after birth.
02:50Surgery to remove the second head is the only option, but it is very dangerous.
02:55In 2004, a baby named Rebecca Martins was born with this condition in the Dominican Republic,
03:02but she died after surgery.
03:04In 2005, an Egyptian girl survived a 13-hour surgery but died weeks later due to infection.
03:11In 2021, another baby was born with two heads in Romania but sadly survived only a few hours.
03:18If you liked this video, please comment, share and subscribe.
03:21Thank you very much.
Comments