Re: Brain Eater Question

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
anxious triffid  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]@fserve.co.uk> wrote:
>"Doom & Gloom Dave" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in 
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
>
>> Lee Fyock wrote:
>>> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, James Nicoll
>>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>>>> Bill Snyder  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>>>> Arguably we ought to be calling it ______'s Syndrome in honor of
>>>>> whoever originated the term -- if there's any hope of finding out
>>>>> who that was.
>>>>
>>>>  That would be me, I think.
>>>
>>> No, no, no.  With all due credit to James, things like this aren't
>>> named after the person who identified the problem; this isn't like
>>> discovering a new continent or something.
>> 
>>   Generally they do seem to be. I have a book of medical syndromes and
>> eponyms on my desk. It appears virtually all the names of signs,
>> syndromes are either descriptive of the problem eg.Gray Baby Syndrome
>> or named after the doctor or researcher who discovered or did a lot of
>> work on it eg.Marfan Syndrome. 
>> 
>
>There is an interesting discussion on this subject in Stephen Jay Gould's 
>"The Panda's Thumb": the term 'Mongoloid' as a description of a medical 
>condition came into being after a scientist's attempt at creating a social-
>Darwinist ladder of the human races. The white folks are at the top, and 
>other less evolved races are below them. However, certain incidents of 
>atavism still occur, and an example of this is the 'Mongoloid' - one who 
>displays the characteristics of the Mongol race, as described in the work 
>'Observations on an Ethnic Classification of Idiots'. 
>
>Of course, all of this proto-fascism is unacceptable in more modern times, 
>and so the term 'Mongoloid' is relegated and instead the term 'Down's 
>Syndrome' is used... ...named instead after the very man that drew up the 
>Ethnic Classification of Idiots: Dr John Langdon Haydon Down.
>
>(Footnote: the other term used for describing the condition is 'Trisomy-
>21')
>

The above summary is a little confusing.  Was Dr. Down the first person
to characterize "Down's syndrome" or not?  I always thought the term
"Mongoloid" came from the presence of the epicanthal fold.  Or was this
a rationalization after the fact?  And what is the etymology of
"Trisomy"?

Ruchira Datta
http://math.berkeley.edu/~datta