A DOUBLE BABY.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 852, 19 August 1871, Page 3

A DOUBLE BABY.

The American papers are exciting themselves, as they well may, over a strange freak of nature in the shape of a baby with a head at both ends. We don't pretend to explain the matter, but give an extract from the description, as published in the Philadelphia " Ledger" : The very curious and interesting double baby, now on exhibition at the Museum at Ninth and Arch streets, was made the subject of a scientific examination and lecture yesterday at the Jefferson Medical College. Dr P. Getchell, who delivered the lecture, had examined the child at the Museum, and felt so much interested in it that he procured permission to introduce it before the faculty of the college and medical students. The child was brought into the amphitheatre of the college, in a little crib, nicely adapted to its peculiar form. The crib was then placed on the revolving table, in full view of the audience, the body of the child being covered by neat bed clothing. At each end of the little bed was a bright and pretty little face, one being plump and cheerful, and the other looking a little thin. Both, however, were very sprightly. As the two faces lay in the crib, they gave the idea of two very short babies lying with their heads in opposite directions and their feet in contact. And this idea was strengthened by the fact that while one face was laughing and one ' set of hands were playing with Dr Getchell's pencil, the face at the other end wore quite a sedate expression, and its eyes were looking about in seeming wonderment at the movements of the lecturer and his assistants. Subsequently the child—or rather the end of the double child—which had been laughing and playing hurt itself with a key which it had in its hands, and began to ory, while the face at the other end began to laugh. . The circulation of the blood at the

two extremities of this double child is perfectly independent. The pulse, at the wrists of one set of arms, had, upon examination, been fouud to be six beats faster than that of the other, while the prick of a pin or pinch of the shoulder attached to one head is not noticed by the other. Sometimes when the one is asleep the other is awake and playing, and again both are asleep.

"During my long commercial experience," says Girard, "I have noticed that no advantage results from telling one's business to others, except to create jealousy or competition when we are fortunate, and to gratify our enemies when we are otherwise.

At a public meeting at Liverpool resolutions were passed against the introduction of the test system in any form in the University Tests Bill. A sharp young woman says there is nothing more touching ins,this life than to see a poor but virtuous young man struggling with a weak moustache. The Persians have a saying, that "ten measures of talk were set down upon the earth, and the women took nine."