John L.H. Langdon-Down (1828-1896) was an English physician best known for his work with mentally-ill children. The disease Down syndrome is named after him. Down was his father's Irish family name (his great-grandfather was the Protestant Bishop of Derry) and Langdon was his mother's family name (from Cornwall).

Career

Down was born in Torpoint, Cornwall. He left school at age 13 to assist his pharmacist father, and aged 19 enrolled at the Pharmaceutical Society of London where he assisted Faraday with his experiments on gases. When his father died in 1853 he entered medical school in London at the age of 25. He graduated in 1858

He became resident physician and superintendant of the Earlswood Asylum and was elected assistant physician to the London Hospital in 1859. He became lecturer on materia medica and therapeutics at the London Hospital Medical College. For the first 9 years following this appointment he continued to live at the Earlswood Asylum.

Mental Health

His time at the Earlswood Asylum resulted in his model for the care of the mentally ill in the UK. Many of Down's publications related to mental illness or its classification. He was a protagonist for the training of the mentally retarded and when he moved to set up consultant practice in London he established a home for training 'feeble-minded' children. He described 'mongolism' in his Letsom lectures entitled On some of the mental afflictions of childhood and youth in 1887.

Death

He had a severe bout of influenza in 1890 and never recovered completely. One morning he collapsed at his breakfast and was dead 10 minutes later at his home in Hampton Wick.

References

• B.G. Firkin & J.A. Whitworth (1987). Dictionary of Medical Eponyms. Parthenon Publishing Group. ISBN 1-85070-333-7
• Learning about Intellectual disabilities and Health