File talk:John Langdon Down.jpg
From Embryology
John Langdon Down served as medical superintendent at the Royal Earlswood Asylum for Idiots in Redhill, Surrey, England, where he wrote the first paper identifying common traits among patients afflicted with what was originally identified as Mongoloid idiocy:
- "The number of idiots who have arranged themselves around the Mongolian type is so great and they present such a close resemblance to one another in mental power that I shall describe an idiot member of this racial division selected from the large number who have fallen under my observation. The face is flat and broad and destitute of prominence. The cheeks are roundish and extended laterally. The eyes are obliquely placed and the internal canthi more than normally distanced from one another. The palpebral fissure is very narrow. The tongue is long, thick and much roughened. The nose is small. The skin has a slight dirty yellowish texture and is deficient in elasticity, giving the impression of being too large for the body."
- 1959 - French geneticist Jerome Lejeune discovered the chromosome abnormality.
- 1961 - British medical journal The Lancet editor proposed that the name Down's Syndrome.
