They
all have 24 digits, and infants born with the normal number are
sacrificed as being the offspring of adultery. The inhabitants of
the village of Eycaux in France, at the end of the last century,
had nearly all supernumerary digits either on the hands or feet.
Being isolated in an inaccessible and mountainous region, they
had for many years intermarried and thus perpetuated the anomaly.
Communication being opened, they emigrated or married strangers
and the sexdigitism vanished. Maupertuis recalls the history of a
family living in Berlin whose members had 24 digits for many
generations. One of them being presented with a normal infant
refused to acknowledge it. There is an instance in the Western
United States in which supernumerary digits have lasted through
five generations. Cameron speaks of two children in the same
family who were polydactylic, though not having the same number
of supernumerary fingers.
Smith and Norwell report the case of a boy of fifteen both of
whose hands showed webbing of the middle and ring fingers and
accessory nodules of bone between the metacarpals, and six toes
on each foot. The boy's father showed similar malformations, and
in five generations 21 out of 28 individuals were thus malformed,
ten females and 11 males.
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