164 galton.org
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Inquiries into Human Faculty
effect it. Both have hallucinations of hearing. They are both of them melancholy and
morose; they never address a word to anybody, and will hardly answer the questions that
others address to them. They always keep apart, and never communicate with one another.
An extremely curious fact which has been frequently noted by the superintendents of their
section of the hospital, and by myself, is this: From time to time, at very irregular intervals
of two, three, and many months, without appreciable cause, and by the purely spontaneous
effect of their illness, a. very marked change takes place in the condition of the two
brothers. Both of them, at the same time, and often on the same day, rouse themselves
from their habitual stupor and prostration; they make the same complaints, and they come
of their own accord to the physician, with an urgent request to be liberated. I have seen this
strange thing occur, even when they were some miles apart, the one being at Bicêtre, and
the other living at Saint-Anne.”
I sent a copy of this passage to the principal authorities among the
physicians to the insane in England, asking if they had ever witnessed any
similar case. In reply, I have received three noteworthy instances, but
none to be coin-pared in their exact parallelism with that just given. The
details of these three cases are painful, and it is not necessary to my
general purpose that I should further allude to them.
There is another curious French case of insanity in twins, which was
pointed out to me by Sir James Paget, described by Dr. Baume in the
Annales Médico-Psychologiques, 4 série, vol. 1., 1863, p. 312, of which
the following is an abstract. The original contains a few more details, but
is too long to quote: François and Martin, fifty years of age, worked as
railroad contractors between Quimper and Châteaulin. Martin had twice
slight attacks of insanity. On January 15 a box was robbed in which the
twins had deposited their savings. On the night of January 23—24 both
François (who lodged at Quimper) and Martin (who lived with his wife
and children at St. Lorette, two leagues from Quimper) had the same
dream at the same hour, three a.m., and both awoke with a violent start,
calling out, “I have caught the thief! I have caught the thief! they are
doing mischief to my brother !" They were both of them extremely
agitated, and gave way to similar extravagances, dancing and leaping.
