TWINS ARE NEVER QUITE ALIKE

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 104, 4 May 1935, Page 35

TWINS ARE NEVER QUITE ALIKE

Mankind has always- been interested in, curious about, even excited by "twins.".

Primitive people confused twins with monsters. Among savage people, even in these days, they are sometimes thought to bring ill. luck to the tribe. Twins have been interwoven with legends and myths among the nations of the world from the beginning of time.

A good deal of research has been directed towards this - question of "doubling" in homo sapiens, where on&child birth-is., the* rule, writes Dr. Elizabeth Chesser in the "Daily Mail." What do we ' mean by the "rule"? Ask anyone you .know what the proportion of twins is to single babies, and you..will be interested if you know the answer. I asked three educated women, two business men, a gardener, "a member of Parliament, a Government official, and a woman selling violets on the street corner. The last gave me one clear look which showed her opinion of my mental condition and said, "How should I .know, dearie? I've never had 'em myself." The others put twins as rare as one in a • thousand or more births, when the actual figures are in England and the United States, together about one in seventy births. For every sixtythree single births in Britain there is one of twins.

Thirty-seven per cent, are of the same sex, and these are called identical, homologous^ similar, twins-—as you choose. There is no such; thing, of course, as "identical" human beings, whether among twins, or brothers and sisters born separately who seem absolutely alike.

Identical twins, although they often show extraordinary physical and mental likeness and similar constitutional liability to certain diseases, and even to freckles, differ even at birth in innate or inherited tendencies. Later on'they differ always in some degree, and, in some respects, physically, mentally and psychologically, as can be proved by such physical tests as finger-prints, the Biriet Simon tests for mental capacity, and such psychological tests as "association" and behaviour and emotional reactions.

In getting at the reason tor twins we have certain facts. Fraternal twins may or may not be alike, and may or may not be of the same sex. Identical twins are always of the same sex and are nearly always very much

alike; Sometimes their. nearest relations cannot distinguish them, but it would be interesting to find how many, among a hundred mothers, failed to know Henry from Harold or Mary from Jane from the first day of life. Appearance apart, I believe in maternal intuition—which is knowing through the subconscious—although I remember when I removed a large and hairy mole from a girl's chin the blind mother complained that she did not know any longer the difference between her twin daughters. Experiments on the eggs ..of sea urchins and bees, on many species of "animal" life, have given certain data. First of all, twins are hereditary. Sir Francis Galton, Professor Thorndike, and Professor Meriman—to quote the names of only a few men who have given time to research in this fieldall stress the importance of heredity as a reason for twins. Millions of expectant young mothers must have asked themselves in the history of mankind, "Will it be twins?" Well, it is, outside their determination. No willing or wishing on the mother's part,] no medicines, no scientific aids will give twins to anybody. It rests with some racial, inherited. tendency in the life cells of the father or mother. Certain families are prone to twinning.

Professor Newman quotes a case of a man whose first wife had quadruplets once and twins ten times, and his second wife had triplets three times and twins ten timss.V ' ■

It is interesting to hear that there is. some .relationship between a tendency to: .left-handedness and a tendency to twins. Left-handedness is six times as. prevalent among twins as in the ordinary population (Hirsch).

It is good if you have any near twin relations to know that these children suffer no intellectual disadvantage. Popular belief is that they are less likely to be physically and mentally superior to other children. That is not true. Their intelligence quotients are the same as the little boys and girls who have not had the luck to be born along with another human being who is likely to,prove the satisfying alter ego which most of us long for in vain through, life.

That'twins often think alike and'feel alike, 'that they usually have a great love and sympathy with each other, is well known. Such love makes life more interesting, amusing, and intense.