He faced another nightmare. Their digestive systems were incomplete, their stomachs and intestines poorly connected. The first twin died in less than eighteen hours. The second survived four days, thanks to Sarah’s desperate but futile efforts to nurse him. Barker, notified by telegraph, arrived too late to examine them alive, but he performed an autopsy that revealed the full extent of their internal defects.
His report to Johns Hopkins, written in clinical language that barely concealed his shock, described organs shaped in a primitive and dysfunctional way, as if the genetic instructions for human development had been scrambled beyond recognition. These were the first deaths among Sarah and Benjamin’s children. Nine of them survived against all odds.
These two did not make it. Graves were dug on the property, marked by wooden crosses carved by Benjamin himself. No minister attended the funeral. The family buried the children alone. Three months later, Sarah learned she was pregnant for the twelfth time. Garrett’s correspondence with Barker reveals his disappointment at this news.
He hoped that the twins’ deaths would finally convince the couple to stop, admitting that they likely lacked the knowledge or means to prevent such a pregnancy. Barker’s response was coldly scientific. Another pregnancy would complete the statistical sample, providing data on twelve children born from this unique genetic combination.
The twelfth child, born in November 1899, had deformities combining features already observed in her brothers and sisters, but arranged in a completely new configuration. She had fused fingers like her brother, scoliosis like her older sister, and developmental delays that immediately manifested as muscle hypotonia and difficulty concentrating.
In addition, her bras gauche avait poussé sans main, se terminant par un moignon lisse au poignet. À la fin du siècle, la famille Caldwell comptait dix enfants vivants et deux enterrés dans la terre de la montagne. Le corps de Sarah, ravagé par douze grossesses en dix ans, ne pouvait plus rien supporter. Que ce soit par la grâce de la nature ou par simple épuisement reproductif, ses années de maternité étaient révolues.
La famille, si minutieusement documentée par la médecine, était désormais au complet. In the middle of the night, the medical community’s response to a catastrophe genetically caused by the 19th-century medical community was non-predictable, non-predictable. Barker’s report exhausted the Journal of Heredity in March 1900, accompanied by photographs, measurements, and the genetic information available on three generations of parental literature.
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The medical community’s reaction was immediate and deeply divided. An 18-month battle ensued, revealing profound discrepancies in the scientific approach to human suffering. The initial publication, in July 1900, sparked an unexpected wave of protests. Dr. Edmund Sterling, a prominent Boston physician, published a sharp response, arguing that detailed documentation of such cases served no legitimate scientific purpose.
