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LEFT DE'FO^ 303 DEFORMITIES DEFOE, DANIEL (de-fo), an Enf?- lish writer; born in London in 1661. In 1685 he joined the insurrection of the Duke of Monmouth, and had the good fortune to escape; after which he made several unsuccessful attempts at busi- ness, and at last turned his attention to literature. In 1701 appeared his satire in verse, "The Trueborn Englishman," in favor of William III. As a zealous Whig and Dissenter he was frequently in trouble. For publishing "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters" (1702), he was pilloried and imprisoned in Newgate. While in Newgate, in 1704, he began the "Review," a literary and political period- ical which lasted for nine years. In 1705 he wrote a short account of the "Appari- tion of One Mrs. Veal," a fictitious narra- tive. In 1706 he published his longest poem, entitled "Jure Divino," a satire on the doctrine of divine right. In 1719 appeared the most popular of all his per- My DANIEL DEFOE formances, "The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe," the fa- vorable reception of which was imme- diate and universal. The success of De- foe in this performance induced him to write a number of other lives and adven- tures in character, as "Moll Flanders," "Captain Singleton," "Roxana," "Dun- can," "Campbell," "The Memoirs of a Cavalier," "Journal of the Plague," etc. After the accession of George I. he was employed by the government in some un- derhand work connected with the obnox- ious Jacobite press. He died in Loudon, April 26, 1731. DE FOREST, LEE, an American in- ventor, born at Council Bluffs, la., 1873. He received his technical education at the Sheffield Scientific School (Yale), from which he graduated in 1896, then devoted three years to post-graduate work at Yale. He was one of the pioneers in the development of wireless telegraphy in this country. In 1919 he had taken out 120 patents on radio telegraphy and tele- phony, the most important one of which is the Audion, a detector and amplifier, which made transcontinental telephone service possible. In 1907 he became vice- president of the Radio Telephone Co. and of the De Forest Radio Telephone Co. DE FOREST, ROBERT WEEKS, an American lawyer and philanthropist, born in New York City in 1848. He graduated from Yale in 1870 and from the Columbia Law School in 1872. After studying abroad he was admitted to the bar in 1871 and engaged in the practice of law, first with his father and after- ward with his sons. He was a director in many financial institutions and was prominently identified with charitable work in New York City. He was presi- dent of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1913. In 1900 he was chairman of the New York State Tenement House Com- mission and in 1903 was president of the National Conference of Charities and Correction of Atlanta. He was vice- president of the American Red Cross, DEFORMITIES, variations in the form of the body as a whole, or in one or more of its parts, constituting a depar- ture from the normal conditions of struc- ture, and usually implying a correspond- ing divergence from natural and healthy functions. They may be divided into three groups, with reference to their ori- gin — the hereditary, the congenital, and the acquired. The first group is charac- terized by a marked tendency to recur- rence in the line of direct descent from generation to generation, as in those cases where the presence of extra fingers or toes has become characteristic of many members of one family. The chief varieties of malformation, coming under the heading of congenital deformities, are the following: (1) As regards the number of parts. In the Si- ren, two lower extremities are fused into one mass, but dissection shows that all the constituent bones of the limb may be present, though much distorted, in the combined structure. In the Cyclops, the eyes are similarly fused into one irregu- lar structure occupying the center of the face. (2) As regards the size of parts.