Anomalies and Curiosities of MedicineGould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Science
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
Gould, George M. (George Milbrey)
Abnormalities, Human; Medicine -- Anecdotes
Tubby has seen a boy of three in whom the first, second, and third toes
of each foot were suppressed, the great toe and the little toe being so
overgrown that they could be opposed. In this family for four
generations 15 individuals out of 22 presented this defect of the lower
extremity. The patient's brothers and a sister had exactly the same
deformity, which has been called "lobster-claw foot."
Falla of Jedburgh speaks of an infant who was born without forearms or
hands; at the elbow there was a single finger attached by a thin string
of tissue. This was the sixth child, and it presented no other
deformity. Falla also says that instances of intrauterine digital
amputation are occasionally seen.
According to Annandale, supernumerary digits may be classified as
follows:--
(1) A deficient organ, loosely attached by a narrow pedicle to the hand
or foot (or to another digit).
(2) A more or less developed organ, free at its extremity, and
articulating with the head or sides of a metacarpal, metatarsal, or
phalangeal bone.
(3) A fully developed separate digit.
(4) A digit intimately united along its whole length with another
digit, and having either an additional metacarpal or metatarsal bone of
its own, or articulating with the head of one which is common to it and
another digit.
Superstitions relative to supernumerary fingers have long been
prevalent. In the days of the ancient Chaldeans it was for those of
royal birth especially that divinations relative to extra digits were
cast. Among the ancients we also occasionally see illustrations
emblematic of wisdom in an individual with many fingers, or rather
double hands, on each arm.
Hutchinson, in his comments on a short-limbed, polydactylous dwarf
which was dissected by Ruysch, the celebrated Amsterdam anatomist,
writes as follows.--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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