In May 1783, a baby was born in a village in Vegas, India with two fully functional heads, joined together at the top of the skull. The midwife who delivered the mother was so frightened by the sight that she threw the newborn baby into the fire. Luckily they pulled it right back and the baby survived – but had lost one eye and one ear from one head.

His two heads functioned normally but independently. They had two separate, fully developed brains and behaved differently.

For example, while one head was asleep, the other was awake. Similarly, one head could cry while the other would show happiness. However, both experienced the pain in the same way.

The parents found in this “monstrous birth” a unique opportunity to become rich and so they went to Calcutta where they exhibited their baby, for a price, to the public.

The child was growing normally, with no other health problems. He died at the age of 4 from a cobra bite.

Doctors and scientists of the time – members of the British East India Company – took the body of the two-headed child to study.

It turned out that – despite his condition – the child did not suffer from any other ailments, and all his organs – including both heads – developed normally during his short life.

The skull of the little boy with two heads is on display at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, as evidence of this amazing medical phenomenon

Back then, he was a monster child whose condition was perhaps due to a divine curse – or on the contrary, it was a sign of divine power.

Today, science would say that the child would suffer from craniopagus parasiticus, an extremely rare disease that affects approximately 2 in 5 million children and worldwide it is estimated that only 10 cases have been recorded.