Siamese Twins Now and Then

Meet Siamese twins Parichart and Parichat AKA Phee Fai and Nong Fight. The girls were born by Caesarian section on July 10th, 2002, where it was discovered they were joined at the chest.

Separating the girls was carried out by a team of fourteen surgeons, in a ten-hour operation. The girls were just four months old at the time.

Now they are both healthy 15-year-old school girls living in the province of Ratchaburi, still very much sisters but glad to be separated.

Siamese twins or conjoined twins, are very much a rarity, with cases being around 1 in 190,000 births. More often than not, they are girls, with the majority of the births occuring in Asia.

The most famous conjoined twins were brothers Chang and Eng Bunker, born in May, 1811 in Samut Songkhram, not too far from where the girls above were born.

At that time, Thailand was known as Siam, and hence the name Siamese twins emerged.

The brothers were joined at the breastbone.

In 1829, a Scotsman observed the twins and realised their potential. He paid their mother for their services and put them in a "curiosity of the world" show. They moved to the USA and eventually went into business on their own, purchasing farmland in North Carolina.

Here the twins met and married sisters Adelaide and Sarah Anne Yates and between them, they fathered 22 children.

In 1870, Chang began drinking heavily and suffered from a stroke. Amazingly this had no effect on his brother as their organs were not joined in anyway, however, it must have been pretty irritating for Eng.

Chang died in his sleep from Bronchitis in 1874. When Eng awoke, doctor's were called to separate him from his deceased brother but he died three hours later.

Source: Thai Visa