GENERAL PATHOLOGY 



379 



They were half as long again as the normal animal, and their 

 size was attributed to their having had an excessively rich diet 

 of small water animals which inhabited the mud. The domestic 

 animals show the influence of diet in producing giants ; con- 

 tinued selective breeding has produced large horses, cattle, pigs, 

 sheep, dogs, cats and rabbits, besides giant geese and ducks, 

 and pigeons the size of fowls. 



Dwarfs are much more common than giants, and there are 

 whole races of them in Africa, Eastern Asia, some of the 

 Sunda Islands and in America ; their small 

 size is hereditarily transmitted. 



These pygmies (Fig. 192) have well- 

 proportioned bodies, though their heads 

 are disproportionately large and their 

 arms are too long. Similar pygmies were 

 found in France in palaeolithic times, and 

 in Switzerland in neolithic, and according 

 to Sergi are still quite common in Italy 

 as descendants of the African pygmies 

 which had wandered over the isthmus 

 which once united Africa to the south of 

 Europe. In the fact that their bodies 

 though short are well proportioned, these 

 pygmies closely resemble the much smaller 

 dwarfs which are occasionally born of nor- 

 mal parents and among normal brothers 

 and sisters. These elegant lilliputians have 

 a generally infantile appearance and have 

 never produced any offspring. They are FlG- 

 the result of a total inhibition of develop- 

 ment during intra-uterine life ; there are, however, other dwarfs 

 who when born are normal and like other children ; in the 

 course of their further growth, although the body becomes nor- 

 mally long and powerful, the extremities remain short, and thus 

 their height remains that of a child. These are giants when 

 they sit down and dwarfs when they stand up. Another 

 pathological variety of dwarf is that which remains small and 

 stunted as the result of rickets ; and then there are the 

 saddest of all, the Cretins (Fig. 193), in whom the thyroid 



A Bush W8 m y- 

 (After Fritoch.) 



