Twinning is rare in humans, and conjoined twins are rarer. One type of conjoined twins is ‘parasitic twins’, also referred to as ‘heteropagus twins’. This kind of birth anomaly presents asymmetrically joined twins, one of which will usually be intensely deformed and depend parasitically on the other, the near-normal one. We present here the report ‘An account of a monster of the human species’ written from Fort St. George, Madras and published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1789. This report consists of two letters: one from Baron Reichel to Sir Joseph Banks and the other from James Anderson to Baron Reichel. The Reichel and Anderson letters impress as the earliest formal record of heteropagus twins in India. The morphogenesis of heteropagus twinning is still unclear. The origin of heteropagus twins is explained as monozygotic by some obstetricians and as dizygotic by others. Until the mid-20th century, medical parlance referred to these humans as monsters and their deformities as monstrosities, which was unfortunate.

中文翻译：

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1789年马德拉斯总统任职时上腹-腹膜异位双胞胎

孪生在人类中很少见，而连体双胞胎则很少见。连体双胞胎的一种类型是“寄生双胞胎”，也称为“异生双胞胎”。这种出生异常表现为不对称连接的双胞胎，其中一个双胞胎通常会严重变形，并寄生于另一双胞胎，即另一个接近正常的双胞胎。我们在此提供从马德拉斯圣乔治堡撰写并于1789年在伦敦皇家学会的《哲学交易》上发表的报告“人类怪物的描述”。该报告由两封信组成：一封来自雷切尔男爵（Baron Reichel）约瑟夫·班克斯爵士（Sir Joseph Banks）和詹姆斯·安德森（James Anderson）到瑞切尔男爵（Baron Reichel）。Reichel和Anderson的信给印度留下了最早的异双生双胞胎正式记录。异双胞胎孪生的形态尚不清楚。某些产科医生将异卵双生子的起源解释为单合子，而另一些产科医生则将其解释为同卵子。直到20世纪中叶，医学界一直将这些人称为怪物，并将其畸形称为怪兽，这是不幸的。