Orissa Siamese Twins

This poster features the Orissa Twins, Radica and Doodica were born in Orissa, India in 1888. They were xiphopagus twins, joined at the chest by a band of cartilage, similar to Chang and Eng. When they were born, the people of their village saw them as symbols of divine wrath and chased the family out of town. Their father wanted to separate the twins himself and was about to do so when a local official stepped in and rescued the girls, turning them over to a local temple. The monks of the temple looked after the twins and gave them their names.

In 1893 they were purchased from their parents by Captain Colman, a showman from London, who took them to Europe to be exhibited. In 1902, Doodica developed tuberculosis and the sisters were separated in Paris by Dr. Eugene-Louis Doyen (1859-1916) with the hope of saving Radica. Dr. Doyen was a pioneering medical filmmaker and filmed the twins' surgery as La Separation de Doodica-Radica. Though the operation was considered a success at first, Doodica died shortly after separation, and Radica also succumbed to tuberculosis in 1903, having lived the last year of her life in a Paris sanitorium.