MONSTROSITIES IN A SINGLE BODY The abnormality may extend to the body throughout, as in well proportioned giants and dwarfs; or it may affect a certain region or member, as when there is a finger or toe too many or too few. It is common for one malformation to be correlated with others, as in acardiac monsters, in which the non-develop ment of the heart is associated with the non-development of the head, and with other radical defects.
Giants are conventionally limited to persons over 7ft. in height. The normal proportions of the frame are adhered to more or less closely, except in the skull, which is relatively small; but accurate measurements, even in the best proportioned cases, prove, when reduced to a scale, that other parts besides the skull—notably the thigh-bone and the foot—may be undersized though overgrown. The brain-case especially is undersized—the Irish giant in the museum of Trinity College, Dublin, is the single exception to this rule—but the bones of the face, and espe cially the lower jaw, are on a large scale. Giants are never born of gigantic parents; sterility usually goes with this monstros ity. Their size is sometimes ex cessive at birth, but more often the indications of great stature do not appear till later; they at tain their full height before the twenty-first year.
Dwarfs are conventionally limited to persons under 4f t. They are more likely than giants to have the modulus of the body per fect. Where disproportion occurs in the true dwarf it takes the form of a large-sized head, broad shoulders and capacious chest, and undersized lower limbs. Dwarfs with rickets and achondro plasia are perhaps to be distinguished from true dwarfs ; these are cases in which the spine is curved, and sometimes the bones of the limbs bent and the pelvis deformed as the result of disease. As in the case of giants, dwarfs are seldom the progeny of dwarfs, who are usually sterile ; the unnatural smallness may be obvious at birth, but is more likely to make itself manifest in the years of growth. Dwarfs are much more easily brought up than giants, and are stronger and longer-lived; they have usually also strong pas sions and acute intelligence. (See DWARF and GIANT.) Redundancy and Defect in Single Parts.—The simplest case of redundancy is a sixth digit, well formed, and provided with muscles (or tendons), nerves and blood-vessels; it is usually a repetition of the little finger or toe, and may be present on one or both hands, or on one or both feet, or in all four extremities.
The want of one, two or more digits is another simple anomaly ; and, like redundancy, it is apt to repeat itself in the same family. Among the sense-organs there is a remarkable instance recorded of doubling of the appendages of the left eye, but not of the eyeball itself ; the left half of the frontal bone is double, making two eye-sockets on that side, and the extra orbit has an eyebrow and eyelid. The external ear (pinna) has also been found double on one side and its orifice has frequently been found doubled in man and lower animals, and the additional ears lie in a definite relation to the branchial clefts of the embryo. Doubling of any of the internal organs or parts of organs may occur and innumer able cases have been recorded.