"Turns out, the term 'mongolism' first rose to popularity in medical circles when John Langdon Down began categorizing patients as 'Mongolian idiots' and suggested that their condition, now known as Down syndrome, was somehow related to ethnic appearance. A hundred years after Down’s Observations on an Ethnic Classification of Idiots, the Mongolian delegation requested to the World Health Organization that 'mongol' be dropped from official medical use. "