TRUE DWARFISM 481 



by v. Hansemann although it is certain that at the birth the parents were 

 impressed with the abnormal smallness. He was the fifth child of twelve, 

 and the first dwarf. Later three dwarf children followed, but they did not 

 attain a high age. Between them there were births of normal-sized children, 

 that later also developed normally. 



To the primordial dwarfs belong also the dwarf family Magri, studied by 

 various Italian authors and exactly described by Taruffi. The husband and 

 wife Magri were entirely normally developed; of thirteen children eight 

 survived, five were of entirely normal size, three extraordinarily small. Of 

 these there was a girl 102 cm. tall, in whom menstruation occurred late but 

 who was otherwise normal. A boy of no cm. of bright temperament, but 

 bad character, married in his twenty-sixth year a woman of normal size and 

 had by her two children a boy who was of normal size and a girl who was 

 apparently a dwarf. The third dwarf child of the Magri husband and wife 

 was 109 cm. tall. All three Magris grew taller very slowly. 



Very exactly studied are also the cases of Levi. These I shall now de- 

 scribe more in detail. The first was a forty-nine-year-old man, 109 cm. 

 tall. The lower length was shorter than the upper length. The individual 

 was small already at birth; the genitalia, the secondary sexual characters, 

 and the intelligence developed fully. At the age of twenty, he married a 

 woman of normal size, who after eight years bore a child of extraordinary 

 smallness. Two years later there followed a still smaller child, who died at 

 the age of ten years. At the age of forty-nine years the man was still 

 sexually active. The second case of Levi was that of a twelve and one- 

 half-year-old son of case I. He was 77 cm. tall, and very intelligent. The 

 third case was that of a thirty- three-year-old man, in cm. tall, weighing 

 25 kg. The lower length was 64 cm.; the father was very small, the mother 

 of normal size. The stunting of growth became prominent especially 

 between the eighth and the tenth year. At the age of twenty-eight he 

 married, and his child at two years old of extraordinary diminutiveness. 

 In all cases the ossification and the closure of the epiphyses corresponded to 

 the age. Levi also emphasizes the fact that these cases, like the dwarf 

 described by v. Hansemann, showed a slight retraction of the bridge of the 

 nose and a slight degree of drum-stick fingers. 



The primordial dwarf is hence characterized by the fact that the dwarfism 

 exists already at birth, that apart from the smallness the development pro- 

 ceeds normally, and that the genitalia, the ossification and the epiphysial 

 junctures, and the intelligence develop rather normally. According to 

 Hansemann "infantile" features are found only here and there, for example, 

 cryptorchidism, or in the case of v. Hansemann enlarged thymus, or retention 

 of the lobules of the kidney, abnormal length of mesocolon, funnel-shaped 

 proximal end of the appendix, etc. Levi points out the slight retraction of 

 the root of the nose and the slight degree of drum-stick fingers. 

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