JOHN LANGDON DOWN : THE MAN AND THE MESSAGE

John Langdon Down was the son of a village grocer. Born in Torpoint, Cornwall, in 1828, he was the 6th child of religious parents. He worked in the family business until he was 18 years old and he then qualified as a pharmacist before ultimately entering medical school at the London Hospital. He won numerous medals and prizes and immediately after taking his medical degree he was appointed medical superintendent of the Royal Earlswood Asylum for Idiots in Surrey. He reformed the institution and his efforts at classification resulted in his description of what he called Mongolian idiocy. His findings were based on measurements of the diameters of the head and of the palate and on his series of clinical photographs. He was a pioneer of the use of photography in hospitals. Mongolian idiocy became a widely used term but in 1961 a group of genetic experts wrote to the Lancet suggesting four alternatives.