440 THE SUPPOSED TRANSMISSION OP MUTILATIONS. 



exactly as possible by an anthropologist and physician, who has 

 worked up the history of the case. Dr. Emil Schmidt communi- 

 cated to this year's meeting of the German Anthropologists' Asso- 

 ciation at Bonn a case which indeed seems at first sight to prove 

 that mutilations of the human ear can be transmitted. As Dr. 

 Schmidt has been kind enough to place at my disposal all the 

 material which he collected upon the subject, I have been able to 

 examine it more minutely than is generally possible in such cases; 

 and I will discuss it in detail, as it seems to me to be of funda- 

 mental importance in the history of human errors upon this subject. 



In a most respectable and thoroughly trustworthy family, the 

 mother possesses a cleft ear-lobe upon one side. She quite dis- 

 tinctly remembers that when playing, between the ages of six and 

 ten years, another child tore out her ear-ring, and that the wound 

 healed so that the cleft remained. Later on a new hole was made 

 in the posterior part of the lobe. She had seven children, and the 

 second of these, who is now a full-grown man, has a cleft ear-lobe 

 on the same side as the mother. It is not known whether the 

 mother possessed an innate malformation of the ear before it was 

 mutilated, but, judging from the present appearance of the ear, 

 this is extremely improbable. Furthermore, the existence of an 

 innate cleft in the ear-lobe has never been previously observed. 

 The parents of the mother did not possess any malformation of the 

 ear. The conclusion seemed to be therefore inevitable that the trans- 

 mission of an artificial cleft in the ear-lobe had really taken place. 



But we must not be too hasty in forming an opinion. AVhen 

 we compare the figures I. and II., representing the two ears, we are 

 first of all struck by the fact that the malformation of the ear of 

 the son has an entirely different appearance from that of the mother. 

 The ear-lobe of the latter is quite normally formed ; it is broad 

 and well-developed, and only exhibits a median vertical furrow which 

 is the result of the mutilation. The ear-lobe of the son, on the 

 other hand, is extremely minute, one might even maintain that it 

 is completely wanting. In my opinion a cleft is not present at 

 all, but the far higher posterior corner of the ear forms the end of 

 its posterior margin the so-called helix. But even if another 

 opinion were pronounced w r ith regard to the interpretation of this 

 part, there is one other circumstance to be taken into account, 

 which appears to me to be absolutely conclusive, and which com- 



