Contributions to teratology : undescribed malformation of the lower lip occurring in four members of one family / by J. Jardine Murray.

  • Murray, J. Jardine.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Contributions to teratology : undescribed malformation of the lower lip occurring in four members of one family / by J. Jardine Murray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    prevented. A month afterwards the wouuds were entirely healed, the fingers were almost free from stiffness, and the little fellow was using his hands as freely as any child of his age. Neither he nor any of his relatives have webbed toes. Being now much interested in the peculiarities of this family, I was permitted to examine each of its members in turn; and I am thus enabled to construct the following table, which exhibits in a very striking manner the hereditary nature of physical malformations:— Father's mother, aged 65 . . Palate very narrow and much arched. Father, aged 41 j Double hare-hp ° ( iwo sacciui m lower lip. *Mother, aged 37. First child (girl), aged 17 . . Two sacculi in lower lip. *Secoiid child (girl), aged 15 +. Third cliild (girl), aged 13+ . \ ^^^^^^^ ^^^?-.l^P; ,. ^° ^> ° (iwo saccuh m lower hp. *Fourth child (ghl), aged 11—. Fifth child (gui), aged 9+ . Palate very narrow aud much arched. [Miscarriage.] *Sixth chUd (boy), aged 5. Seventh child (boy), aged 3 . Webbed fingers, both hands. EigLft cHld (bo,), .ged li . j f„7;t&t:S% All the individuals alluded to in the above table are free from constitutional disease, and enjoy excellent health. The father was born with double hare-lip, and was operated on by the late Mr. Listen. None of his brothers or sisters were thus afiected. His mother's palate is, however, decidedly narrow and unusually arched in formation; and while she was somewhat eagerly accounting for the existence of hare-lip in her son, by the circumstance that, shortly before his birth, she had been frightened by an elephant in Wombwell's menagerie, I was forcibly reminded of Mr. Fergusson's remark that—' Often, while listening to a mother's story about some conjectural cause for her infant's deformity of face, he has thought that a glance at her own features in the looking-glass might have given her a more plausible reason for the condition of her ofisj)ring.'t In the contracted formation of the palate, the fifth child exactly resembles her paternal grandmother. • The mother is in every respect well formed, and her second, fourth, and sixth children are also quite normal in development. She does not inherit any tendency to malforma- tions such as are found among her children. t Practical Surgery, p. 584, 1852 ; p. 5Gi, 1857.