OTTENBERG AND BERES 



911 



(the father's group was not determined) were all of group A; in the other, the parents 

 and the four sons were all of group B. 



Von Dungern and Hirschfeld in 19 10 made the first extensive study of the prob- 

 lem, presenting data on seventy-two families. Out of their observations arose a funda- 

 mental relationship which has been repeatedly confirmed by all later workers. They 

 observed that: (i) A or B never occurs in the red cells of a child if not present in one of 

 the parents. (2) When one of these substances is present in both parents it occurs in 

 most of the children. (3) When only one parent has one of these particular substances 

 some of the children inherit it. (4) When a particular substance is absent from both 

 parents no child ever has it. 



TABLE II 



Summary of Data on Inheritance of Blood Groups 



The families in the chart, taken from the protocols of Ottenberg,' illustrate these 

 principles (Chart I). Almost two thousand families with a total of over five thousand 

 children have since been analyzed. The investigations were conducted in all parts of 

 the world. In Table II we have summarized all the data available at the time of writ- 

 ing-' 



We note at a glance the small percentage of exceptions to the rule defined by von 

 Dungern and Hirschfeld, that A or B appear in children only if they are present in one 

 or both parents. Of a total of 5,187 children cited only 27, that is, 0.5 per cent, are 

 exceptions. Only i per cent of the children of group O by marriages were not them- 

 selves O; only 0.5 per cent of children of O by A marriages were of group B, etc. These 

 few exceptions may be expected and explained by errors in technique and by illegiti- 

 macy. 



^Ottenberg, R.: J.A.M.A., 78, 873. 1922. 



' Table II has been prepared from the data of workers listed in Table VII. A new series of 107 

 families studied by K. Landsteiner and P. Levine has very kindly been placed at our disposal by the 

 authors before publication. Only those families were included of which the groups of both parents 

 were known. Studies by F. Schiff {Deiitsche Ztsckr. /. d. ges. gerichtl. Med., 9, 369. 1927), and by 

 N. W. Popoff {ibid., p. 411. 1927) were not included in the table because these authors do not report 

 their data in a way to allow analysis. 



