ies Sey - PEOPLE. 
Constricted Eyelids Found in Four Generations of a Georgia Family—vVision is 
Normal—Defect is Not Sex-Linked and Might be a Mendelian Recessive 
He P. Stuckey 
> 
Horticulturist, Georgia Experiment Station 
HILE in the mountains of 
\ \ / northeastern Georgia last sum- 
mer, I met a family which is 
interesting from the stand- 
point of the geneticist, because of the 
well-marked inheritance of a peculiar 
type of eye. One of the men of. the 
family and three of his children are 
shown in the photograph opposite. 
I saw a number of members of the 
family and made inquiries about 
others. The pioneer of the family in 
this section was the great-grandfather 
of the children whom I photographed, 
and I have the authority of residents of 
the locality for saying that he showed 
this restricted eyelid. Nothing is 
known about his past, so he must stand 
as the first individual in our family 
history. 
Nothing being known of his wife, it 
must be assumed that she was normal. 
They had a son, whom I saw, and who 
is the grandfather of the children illus- 
trated in the frontispiece. This man, 
now elderly, has the constricted eye- 
lids well marked. 
He married a woman with ordinary 
eyes, and they became the parents of 
nine children, six of whom had the 
slit-eyes, while three had eyes that were 
entirely normal. Among the children 
with the affected eyes are both boys and 
girls, so it is obvious that the defect 
cannot be inherited in a_ sex-linked 
fashion, as is color-blindness and one 
form of night-blindress. 
These nine children form the third 
generation of the family history. One 
of them, the man shown in the frontis- 
piece, married a normal woman, and 
they have four children, three boys 
(shown in the frontispiece) with con- 
stricted eyelids, and one girl who is 
quite normal. 
The knowledge available therefore 
amounts to this—that the defect appears 
in some of the members of four genera- 
tions, and that it is not limited to either 
sex. The history might give rise to a 
suspicion that the trait is a simple 
Mendelian recessive, but of course the 
fact could not be established with the 
data from only one family, and that a 
small one. 
The defect is limited wholly to the 
lids. The eyesight is perfect, and the 
affected members of the family are able 
to earn their living in competition with 
normal individuals. Due to the con- 
striction of the lids, however, the per- 
sons with this trait have difficulty in 
getting clear vision unless they throw 
their heads back or turn them to one 
side, as the children are doing in the 
picture. 
Not being a medical man, I cannot 
tell the exact nature of this affection— 
it may be a failure of the nictitating 
membrane to be absorbed, in which 
case current theories of heredity would 
suggest either the absence of the factor 
for normal development, or the presence 
of an inhibitor for normal development. 
But such speculations are of little value 
when the data are so slender, and I do 
not offer any hypothesis as to the genetic 
nature of the case; I merely offer the 
facts and the photographs, which speak 
for themselves. 
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