The Hands of Mongolian Imbeciles in Relation to Their Three Personality Groups

Abstract

The literature relating to mongolism is extensive and for the present purpose it need not be reviewed. The hand has been mentioned in almost every study on mongolism. Crookshank (1931) has given it an important place in his provocative book, The Mongol in Our Midst, without enlarging our knowledge of the now familiar features in shape and crease lines of the hand. Penrose mentions in The Creases on the Minimal Digit in Mongolism (1931) that in a certain number of cases one crease line on the fifth finger is lacking, which makes the fifth finger look almost like a second thumb. Very recently Harold Cummins of the Tulane University, U.S.A., observed a certain anomaly in the dermatoglyphs of the hands of mongoloid imbeciles (1939). He comes to the conclusion that in the finger-tips of these hands there is a noteworthy reduction in the occurrence of the whorls, and that of the five palmar patterns, hypothenar, second interdigital and third interdigital patterns are increased in frequency, while thenar/first interdigital patterns are less frequent, and also that frequencies of hypothenar types depart widely from the normal. C. E. Benda mentions that ossification of the carpal and long bones is early and that growth of the bones comes to an early end; this might account for the short hands in mongolian imbeciles (1939).