DOUBLE HEARTS

Evening Star, Issue 12625, 3 October 1905, Page 7

DOUBLE HEARTS

It fc an interesting cp««ti«a hbV many coronets Jioartii in one*bbdy^srevarth. The problem to s«OT«"*cd~by U» following advertisement which recently appeared in a; New York newspaper:—." I ifjw*■*»' «** my two'hearts, the buyer bring . entitled to sains- after my death," It appeara that the person tiMW jsrlvflsged to possess twokearta is one A. Durr, of New Rochdale, New York State. Ha ie said to bo by trmfe « carpenter, and ho is described aa being thirty-five years of age and in good health. He 'works every day and leads a regular •ife. Two yww ago a physician discovered that he was the subject of the cnriods anomaly out of which he is seeking to make an unearned increment. It is stated that it "prominent specialist '* offered Durr £2,000 for permission to remove one of the heart*, but the offer was wiaely' declined. The man 13 said to bavo been offered large sums fop his body after dentil and to h*. keeping the amountß secret in order to inflate the price. America is (the 'British Medical Journal ' thinks) not the only country in -which Nature is over bountiful in the matter oi hearts. By a carious coincidence the 'Journal das Debuts' recently announced, on the authority of ' La Stampa,' that there is at Basle a man named Joseph Do Atai who also rejoices in the possession of two hearts. He, too, wishes to make money out of his malformation, but, more fortairette than his Transatlantic compeer, he has already found a market. The London Academy of Medicine has, we loam, bought his' body for £3,000. Ons would be glad to record such an example of enthusiasm, in the cause of teratology on the part of one of our medical moieties, but is there any of them that could afford to risk such a sum in an enterprise so highly speculative as. the purchase of the body of a living man <wer whom it has no control? It was decided in "resurrection" days that there is no property in a dead body. Does the law recognise any right of property in ib living one that makes it possible for the owner to dispose of it when dead? In any case, even if a double heart is a. marketable commodity, it would be unsale for the vendor to dispose of bis merchandise to a London Aeademy of Medicine which j» not yet "in being." ,