Of Insects and Hereditary Disease—The Contributions of Edward Cockayne

Born in 1880, Edward Cockayne was an English pediatrician who spent much of his life serving at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London. Although known for being a bachelor with an unpredictable temper, Cockayne was admired as a superb diagnostician with an interest in rare hereditary children’s diseases. In 1933, he published the monograph “Inherited Abnormalities of the Skin and its Appendages,” calling physicians’ attention to the wealth of untouched research opportunities in the field.¹