Death of the Twin Gynaecologists: A patient's notes (1975) | Hacker News Reader

Death of the Twin Gynaecologists: A patient's notes (1975)

vulture.com

53 pointstws14 comments

If you're intrigued by the first part of the title, but want to spare the long read, here are the key excerpts for relief:

> Ultimately, extensive tests conducted by the Medical Examiner revealed that drugs — barbiturates — had caused their deaths, but not because they had suddenly taken a large quantity. Rather, they had been taking large quantities for a long period of time, and it was when they stopped — and had the fatal convulsions typical of barbiturate withdrawal — that they had died.

> In general, the picture that emerges of the Marcuses is of two men who shared a psychological disturbance that antedated their extreme barbiturate addiction and eventual death. It is common for identical twins to share psychological traits and capabilities as well as physical similarities.

The withdrawal part, however, doesn't check out with what's written on their Wikipedia page:

> It was first assumed that the brothers had died of barbiturate withdrawal, but the final report excluded this (the original toxicological report had been in error). Stewart died probably between July 10 and July 14 of a barbiturate overdose. Cyril died between July 14 (when he was last seen out of the apartment, apparently after Stewart had died) and July 17; his body showed no signs of the fatal convulsions accompanying sedative withdrawal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_and_Cyril_Marcus

Barbiturate withdrawal seems unlikely. Feels impossible for two people close together.

Medical Examiners should listened to, you don't get too much better for data, but like everything still questioned. They commonly make simple mistakes.

Then this is a journalist saying what a medical examiner said. (1975 standards, journalism up, medicine down)

I'd start with reading the original report.

(If this is only about the Wikipedia conflict to this article, look at Wikipedias sources and Talk page)

Wow I had no idea Dead Ringers was based on a true story.

The Knick has a lot of historical details and facts mixed in with the fiction of the stories they told over two seasons, it was fun to read up in afterwards.

And I wonder if this 1975 story inspired A Zed and Two Noughts (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Zed_&_Two_Noughts)

I believe it was based on a long magazine article on the case.

I wanted this story to be interesting. But it wasn't.

That was an incredibly unpleasant read

Unless I missed it, this exploration doesn’t touch on what I think is of critical import: what were their parents and childhood like?

It really sounds they were disturbed, possibly mentally unwell people who became drug addicts. The rest would fit.

All in all I think the story is considerably less weird/mysterious than it wants to portray.

Should say [1975]

Not to be overly pedantic, but.. sure, they died in 1975. But the article was published on April 23, 2023. What is the correct label in such cases?

In this instance, "1975" confused me.

The article was originally published in 1975. Note the "From the archives" at the top of the page. Though it is confusing because they republished it with 21 April, 2023 as the date (presumably the date of republishing).

This is a great example for why bitemporal databases are useful :)

Yeh original was 1975, this is a republish, so 2023. Shrug

Reply on news.ycombinator.com