For anyone interested in reading about life as missionary doctors in Africa, The Man Next to Me (Harper & Brothers, 1959) is Dr. Anthony Barker’s account of working with his wife Margaret as British physicians running a remote medical mission on a Zulu reservation. Illustrated with photographs, this story still exemplifies how as “a teacher you’ll be taught.” From the chapter “Little Stranger,” he recounts some unusual pediatric practices, both relating to twins: Twin births, traditionally unwelcome in Zulu society, are nevertheless about twice as frequent as they are among white women. The accepted belief is that the father’s life is forfeit if both twins survive. And fathers in former days took no chances -- there were enough hazards in their rough lives without adding to them by neglect of custom -- and disposed of at least one of the pair. It was done without guilt...it was a common sense precaution which a man would be ill-advised to neglect. In modern times men have become convinced that twins can be reared without significant increase in paternal death-rates... But the battle is not yet over. Repeatedly we see twins, the one bouncing and breast-fed, the other a shriveled weasel of a child, whose diet at the hands of its grandmother has been nothing more sustaining than soured maize porridge. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the unpopular twin is farmed out to the loving and perilous care of its grandmother in confident expectation of death. It is murder most elegant, and proves remarkably effective... One night I was called to a home about five miles from the hospital, “The babies are refusing their porridge.”... From a single blanket two tiny shriveled infants were produced, twins, prematurely born and not totaling between them five pounds in weight. “They won’t swallow,” complained the old midwife, producing a grayish gruel in a bottle and plying the pink mouths afresh. I suggested that perhaps a meal of porridge on the first day was a little too much for premature infants, but was quickly shown how wrong I was. “Oh, no doctor, not at all, all my children are always fed on porridge right from birth.” But the twins’ uncooperative refusal of their first meal gave me the trump card. “I think we’d better take them up to the hospital and try what we can do there,” I suggested. The twins were nursed in a wooden box on top of the anthracite cooker. By raising the cot to a greater or lesser height above the stove a controlled temperature could be maintained. Here they flourished and grew slowly into mature babies--without benefit of porridge of any kind.