Introduction
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2022-08-03T17:51:09+00:00
During the tenth century CE, historians and chroniclers described a pair of conjoined twins wandering through the Byzantine empire. At times the twins’ cheery disposition won strangers over, but their anomalous appearance largely garnered adverse reactions from bystanders who believed that this disability was a form of divine punishment. However, one of the twins’ trips throughout the empire to the capital city of Constantinople was different: one of the pair had died and was still attached to his surviving brother. The sight of the living brother likely pushed surgeons to attempt to separate the two from each other, despite the risks of such a surgery.
While there were hundreds of years of medical tradition preceding this case study, this project will focus on this surgery from the tenth century CE. It presents a page from an illuminated manuscript (Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, MS Vitr. 26-2, f. 131r) detailing the story behind the twins and the surgical procedure that separated them.
While this edition introduces readers to a case of medieval surgery and thus could serve as a source for historians of medicine, we believe that this source has the power to inform other histories. The manuscript itself is a rich source for those interested in manuscript production and scholars studying disability or medieval perceptions of disability might find this record of conjoined twins useful for their own research.
