Sometimes, researchers in a particular field tend to ignore useful suggestions from experts outside their specialty. An example of this is the case of the Hapsburg lip. The curator of the Royal Photographic Collection, Frances Dimond, mentioned this in a published lecture in 1994. She refused to discuss the ‘Hapsburg lip’ in-depth, stating that it resembled a medical condition she wasn’t qualified to address and decided to focus on the ‘Hanoverian Eye, the Coburg Nose, and the Danish Neck’.
Dimond’s statement raises the question of why biomedical researchers have not shown interest in the Hapsburg, Hanoverian, and Coburg lip, eye, and nose ever since. Even though some aspects of these phenomena are well-known, many researchers have not explored the topic further.
Dimond explained that "The true enthusiast for the Coburg nose was, however, the Queen and Prince Albert’s cousin, Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who, possessing a fine nose himself, married a French princess, Clementine, who was similarly endowed, with predictable results." Medical literature also makes sparse references to this issue, with an article published in 1988 by EM Thompson and RM Winter being one of the very few that mentions them in detail.
One year earlier, W Neuhauser wrote about the matter in even greater depth in his study entitled Example of Potentiation of Genetic Traits Due to Inbreeding: the Hapsburg Chin, Burgundian Lip, Spanish Insanity. Though it remains relatively unknown to English-speaking nations due to being published in the German journal Zahnarztliche Mitteilungen.
Recently, a neurologist moved to East Texas and discovered a new and unexpected source of research material. He noticed that due to many generations of inbreeding, the region was full of genetically based neurological phenomena that he had only read about in medical books. Thus, things he thought were rare occurrences turned out to be regular in Texas.
The Royal families of Europe and the regular population of East Texas are both suitable for scientific study and await researchers’ attention.