1907 - 8 .] An Account of a Brachydactylous Family. 
35 
IV. — An Account of a Brachydactylous Family. By H. Drinkwater, 
M.D. (Edin.), M.R.C.S. (Loud.), etc. Communicated by Professor 
D. J. Cunningham, F.R.S. 
(MS. received August 10, 1907. Read November 4, 1907.) 
Abnormalities of the digits occur under a great variety of forms, and 
with such frequency that most medical men interested in the subject 
are more or less familiar with them. 
In studying such cases one cannot fail to be struck with the fact 
that, although the tendency to abnormality may be inherited, the in- 
heritance is not always “ true,” i.e. the precise form is not accurately 
reproduced in the offspring. Especial^, perhaps, is this the case where 
the abnormality consists in a deficiency of digits. One individual of a 
family may have four fingers, another three, and another two, or even 
one, and that one very imperfect. Such cases have often been recorded 
(see 1886, vol. ii. p. 976). 
To students of heredity such cases are not nearly so interesting as 
those abnormalities which are practically identical in successive genera- 
tions; for the latter show more clearly the influence of heredity in 
reproducing the variation from the normal type. 
It was early in the present year that I first noticed the brachy- 
dactylous condition of the hands of one of my patients — a married 
woman. There appeared to be an entire absence of the middle phalanx 
from the first, ring, and little fingers, and from all the toes, from the 
second to the fifth inclusive, whilst the middle phalanx of the middle finger 
and the first phalanx of the thumb and big toe were extremely short 
in each instance. She told me that several of her relations showed 
the same peculiarity ; they had short fingers and were “ double-jointed,” 
like herself, and in fact that all the members of her family had either 
quite normal digits or they were all short, both in hands and feet. Here 
then was a family well worth studying from the point of view of heredity. 
This abnormality does not seem to have been recorded as occurring 
in this country, and I was not aware that ft had been recorded elsewhere 
until some weeks after my investigations commenced. Then Mr Bateson 
forwarded me a copy of a paper by William C. Farabee,* in which 
* In March 1905. Peabody Institute, Harvard. 
