In 1862, the English doctor John Langdon Down, who was the director of a home for mentally handicapped children, described the case of one of the children, who was short and had stubby fingers and unusual eyelids. The boy's condition was later labelled by this doctor's surname. ----. In 1959, the French paediatrician Jérome Lejeune discovered that these children have three copies of chromosome 21, instead of two.