Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1934

JOHN LANGDON HAYDON DOWN (1828-1896) Observations on an ethnic classification of idiots. (In London Hospital clinical lectures and reports. Vol. 3 (1866), pp. 259-262.) 21.1 cm.

Down decided early in life to become a scientist and, at the age of fourteen, was apprenticed to a physician in his native village in Cornwall. He became seriously ill while working in the Pharmaceutical Society's laboratory in London and, after his recovery two years later, Down completed his medical studies at the London Hospital, where he was appointed superintendent of the Earlswood Asylum for Idiots. He remained at Earlswood for ten years while also serving as assistant physician of the London Hospital. Down later became physician at the London Hospital and also lectured on medicine, materia medica, and therapeutics. Primarily interested in mental deficiency and retardation, he developed a large consulting practice and was successful in establishing a home for mentally retarded children of the wealthy classes. In this paper Down discusses his ideas for classifying individuals of limited mental capacity according to his scheme of ethnic groups, which were Mongolian, Ethiopian, Caucasian, and American Indian. Down describes a young boy, selected from among many similar cases he observed, who typified "a very large number of congenital idiots [who] are typical Mongols" (p. 260). Although his ethnic classification has been abandoned for many years, the term mongolism was used for many years until recently being supplanted by Down's syndrome. "Marriages of consanguinity in relation to degeneration of race" (pp. 224-236) is another contribution by Down in this volume. It is based on a series of 1138 cases of idiocy, in which Down found the condition in the progeny of six percent of the consanguinous marriages and only one half of one percent in nonconsanguinous marriages. Down felt that such marriages most likely do have some effect in producing children with mental deficiency. However he believed that idiocy was not always the result and that other factors can play a major role in such degeneracy. Down points out how vital it is to know the family's history, thus predating modern knowledge of the importance of genetic factors in mental defects. This volume also contains two original papers by John Hughlings Jackson (see No. 2001) and seven papers by Hutchinson (see No. 1946 ff.).

See Related Record(s): 2001 1946

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 4936

Gift of John Martin, M.D.