Giacomo and Giovanni Baptista Tocci, also known as the Italian Two-headed Boy, The Tocci Twins or Doubled Bodied Boy were dicephalus conjoined twins displayed as sideshow performers throughout Europe and America from 1878 at the age of four months until their retirement at the age of twenty in 1897.
Pathology
The twins were of the dicephalus variety, joined from the sixth rib down, with four arms and two legs. They had separate hearts, lungs, and stomachs but shared reproductive organs and a large and small intestine and anus. One twin controlled his respective leg, and did not feel his twin's body.
Behaviour
Giovanni, the left twin, was intelligent, talkative, and an excellent artist, whereas his brother possessed little or no artistic ability and was quiet and introverted. Although an English doctor would later state that Giacomo was idiotic and Giovanni intelligent and artistic, every succeeding doctor stated they were both clever. The twins spoke Italian, French, and German. They settled disputes among each other with their fists. Giovanni liked beer, while Giacomo preferred plain water. They ate, slept, and became sick at different times. Because so much of their time was devoted to travel and exhibition, they never learned to walk and instead scuttled about on all six limbs or were transported in a wheelchair. That their inability to walk was due to the fact that each controlled one leg is completely false - several sets of similarly joined twins have mastered walking.
Life
The twins' father took them to Turin to be exhibited in the freak show, where the twins were examined by professors of the Turin Academy of Medicine. The professors determined they would not live long. However, a Paris tour followed, and they were examined by two doctors in Lyon, France. They determined the twins would live long, against the prediction of the professors at the Turin Academy of Medicine. In August, 1879, the twins were shown before the Swiss Society of Natural Science. A doctor there also determined they were likely to live.
For the rest of the 1880s, they were exhibited in most of the major cities in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Poland, and France almost every day. They never learned to walk as they did not have muscular development in their legs due to almost all of their time being exhibited, and as it made it easier for their parents to exploit them.
In 1891 the boys came to America for an extensive tour and were paid $1000 a week. In March 1892, they arrived in New York and stayed for three weeks. Their one year tour turned into a five year tour as their popularity grew in America. During their visit, author Mark Twain was so inspired by their appearance that he decided to write the short story Those Extraordinary Twins, which later became Pudd'nhead Wilson.
In 1897, at the age of 20, the boys decided to retire in Italy, and bought a high-walled luxury villa near Venice, where they remained secluded. In 1904, rumors state the brothers married two women and had children (which caused a flurry of sexual and legal speculation in French and Italian newspapers), and that they may have still been living in seclusion as late as 1946. The mayhem that followed WWII brought them to oblivion.