Abstract
In reviewing the literature since 1837 under anomalies of the breast, I noted that the hereditary factor in polymastia was pointed out by Lichtenstern,1Peterquin,2Bonnet,3Neugebauer4and Otani.5 Of the seven cases at Barnes Hospital and the Washington University outpatient clinic, in the last year, it has been possible to trace the heredity of this anomaly in but one family. In this instance it was found in four generations. According to Champneys and Bowley,6Bacon7and Seitz,8there is a distinction to be drawn between true polymastia (micromammae) and accumulations of breast tissue, or glands that histologically resemble breast tissue and are independent of the normally located breasts. They assert that many cases of so-called polymastia described by the earlier writers (Otani,5Iwai9and Kayser10) are merely an hypertrophy and differentiation of the large sweat glands of the
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