Abstract
DR. F. C. CRUIKSHANK read a paper on March 22 at a meeting of the Royal Anthropological Institute entitled "The Ethnological 'Significance of Mongolian Imbecility."He pointed out that Robert Chambers eighty years ago directed attention to the occurrence in England of persons who in adult life are yet a "kind of children"and "of the Mongolian type."In 1866 Dr. Langdon Down definitely described a type of idiocy that he called Mongolian, and that has been recognised ever since by physicians. The homologies of these imbeciles have been discussed by medical men from various points of view, but it is generally held that their resemblances to racial Mongols are only "accidental."Dr. Cruikshank, however, maintained that many of the characteristics of these children are really Mongoloid, while others are definitely simian and exhibit convergence towards the orangoid rather than the chimpanzoid or general type of great ape. It was pointed out that "Mon- j golian imbeciles "adopt the horizontal disposition of the lower limbs in sitting that is characteristic of racial Mongols and of orangs, in contradistinction to the overtical disposition adopted by negroes and other non-Mongoloid races, chimpanzees, and gorillas. The correlation of the "habitual posture "with various struc- j tural peculiarities was insisted upon and discussed. !
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01 April 1921
NATURE of April 14, p. 218, ist col., line 6 from bottom: For F. C. Cruikshank read F. G. Crookshank.
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Mongolian Imbecility. Nature 107, 218–219 (1921). https://doi.org/10.1038/107218b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/107218b0