The Two-Headed Boy and Other Medical Marvels (review)

Jan Bondeson. The Two-Headed Boy and Other Medical Marvels. Ithaca, New York, Cornell University Press, 2000. xxii, 295 pp., illus. $29.95.

The Two-Headed Boy is the third book of essays by British physician Jan Bondeson on what we might term medical and natural history oddities or curiosities, all published by Cornell University Press. A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities (1997) covered such varied subjects as spontaneous human combustion, apparent death and premature burial, maternal impressions, the strange case of Mary Toft (who supposedly gave birth to rabbits), tailed people, and the bearded lady Julia Pastrana. The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History (1999) discussed myths, hoaxes, beliefs, and strange facts concerning the animal kingdom. The essays dealt with such topics as learned pigs, mermaids, spontaneous generation, and animals on trial. Bondeson’s latest book "deals almost entirely with various aspects of the history of teratology, the science of monstrous births" (p. xx).

Bondeson has clearly established himself as the master of this genre of literature. His books are all carefully researched, well written, and exceedingly entertaining. The present book is no exception. Although the book is fascinating and at times amusing, it should be made clear that Bondeson takes his subject very seriously. As he notes, he does not dismiss the individuals whose stories he tells as "freaks," but treats them as human beings "born with sometimes appalling congenital deformities" (p. xxi). Among the "monstrous births" covered in the book are Siamese twins, horned humans, extreme hirsutism, dwarfs, and giants.

Like the earlier two books, The Two-Headed Boy is a collection of essays on a related theme. Although the author does bring in aspects of literature and cultural history in discussing the individual cases, he does not attempt to draw wide-ranging generalizations that cut across the boundaries of all of the essays. There is no general conclusion section, for example, and the book ends with just one more essay in the series, this one on the specific topic of "Cat-eating Englishmen and French Frog Swallowers." Given his criticism of much of the recent literature on "freaks" written by social scientists, it may be that Bondeson is hesitant to generalize too broadly. Although he may be right that these works "are weak on historical scholarship and even weaker with regard to medical insights" (pp. xx—xxi), he too readily dismisses their contribution to the literature on the subject. Such works as Leslie Fiedler’s Freaks: Myths and Images of the Secret Self (NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1978) and Robert Bogdan’s Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) are not concerned so much with the individual stories and medical anomalies of particular individuals, but with broader social and psychological issues. Bogdan is especially interested in society’s attitudes toward disability and with the cultural factors surrounding the exhibit of "freaks." Fiedler explores the image and symbolism of the "freak," the "other," in life and art.

The strength of Bondeson’s book is in the details. Occasionally the author goes into more detail than the average reader will want, but the subject is so absorbing and his writing so compelling that the book is never dull. Bondeson has meticulously researched his subject, drawing upon an impressive array of sources (including European sources which, as he points out, have been largely neglected by other recent authors). Scholars will be somewhat frustrated, however, by his decision to document the work with extensive source notes on each chapter rather than using footnotes. Bondeson provides a substantial amount of information on the "medical marvels" that he discusses, corrects many myths concerning them, and gives medical explanations for many of the congenital deformities involved in his case studies. Sometimes, however, he fails to explain technical terms such as perineal, osteodysplastic, and erysipelatous. The book also suffers from...