41 
1907-8.] An Account of a Brachydactylous Family. 
(fig. 5), 90, 93, 99, 101, 102, 156, and 163.) The skin is loose and the whole 
hand is soft and flabby. 
The palm is very compressible, owing to the wide inter metacarpal 
spaces. They are all “ double-jointed,” i.e. the fingers can easily be flexed 
dorsally by slight pressure applied direct to their palmar surfaces. 
A slight lateral pressure makes the palm half an inch narrower, without 
altering the plane of the metacarpals. Radiographs B and C, No. 90, are 
both taken from the same hand. B shows the ordinary condition, C is com- 
pressed by a single turn of a thin bandage encircling it in such a way as to 
No. 163. 
Fig. 4. 
keep it flat at the same time that it is compressed laterally. The narrow- 
ing, therefore, is real, and is not due to a transverse folding of the hand. 
Several individuals can make their finger-joints “ crack ” by ordinary 
flexion. 
On flexing and extending a finger at the basal joint (metacarpo- 
phalangeal joint) slowly , one can feel that the opposing surfaces are not 
uniformly curved as in the normal hand. At certain points the phalanx 
seems to slide over a ridge. This is what one would anticipate from an 
examination of some of the radiographs (Nos. 45, 50 (fig. 8), 88, 101, 
etc.). The ring finger in several instances is bent at the middle, so that 
the tip points towards the middle finger (Nos. 45, 88, 90, 95, 96, 98, 101). 
Free perspiration occurs readily on slight excitement : for instance, it 
