Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 March 1917 — 10 PAIR TWINS TO EACH 100 BABIES [ARTICLE]

10 PAIR TWINS TO EACH 100 BABIES

/ —.... THAT’S PROPORTION BORN IN U. S. AND GREAT BRITAIN, PHYSICIANS FIND Greater Number Found In Cold Countries Than In Warm Climes. In England and the United States there are ten pairs of twins among each 900 everage babies born. In, countries of lower latitude the proportion is considerably less; so far as the matter has been studied the relative number of twins in a Warm country has been found much smaller than in a cold country.. For a given proportion of the population nearly twice as many twins are born in Russia as in Spain, for example: It has been found that twins run in families, that is, the tendency to give birth to more than one child at a time is handed down from mother to daughter. If a woman has given birth to one or more sets of twins the chances are that her daughter will do likewise. In about two out cases twins are of the same sex. In the case of ‘‘ldentical’’ twins, however, either both are boys or both are girls. Identical twins are different from the ordinary kind, being practically one person in duplicate and having almost a single Identity, very much as if they were halves of the same individual. The mental, moral and physical attributes of the one are the sama as those of the other. While the ordinary twins resemble each other more or less, identical twins usually cannot be told apart. Another pecu— anguishing characteristic of indentical twins is the extraordinarily close sympathy that exists between them, each being apparently connected with the other through some peculiar psychological medium. "Coalesced” twins, as they are called by doctors, are believed by some authorities to be identical twins who for some reason have not been fully separated from each other. Evidently in the earliest stages of their existence they were formed as a single individual, then, through some strange, unknown psyslological accident, the embryo was partially separated into two parts. While comparatively rare, these physiological phenomena are by no means unfamiliar to the medical profession. Usually .they die in early infancy. In this country triplets occur once in each 7,910 births and quadruplets once in each 371,125. MediCal records show only twenty-nine instances in which five children have been born simultaneously to one mother.—Pathfinder. ,