Cardiac Anomalies in Mongolism

In a well-known textbook Maud Abbott is credited with the opinion that " the commonest cardiac anomaly in Mongolian idiocy is a defect of the interauricular septum, especially ostium primum." Reference to her paper shows that she actually wrote that in mongols the defect " in our experience is not infrequently of this type " (Abbott, 1924). She described one case, in which there was also a ventricular septal defect that divided the aortic cusp of the mitral valve.