OFFSPRING OF THE INSANE 



Preliminary Report of Study of Ten Families Shows That Taint Ordinarily Does 



Not Manifest Itself in Filial Generation — Imperfection of Dominance 



Suggested by the Results.^ 



A. J. ROSANOFF AND HeLEN E. MaRTIN 



Kings Park State Hospital, Kings Park, Long Island, N. Y. 



A NY study of the ancestors of the 

 / \ insane brings to light cases, 

 / \ not only of insanity, strictly so 

 called, but also of various kinds 

 and degrees of slighter neiu-opathic 

 affection, some of which are not readily 

 and sharply to be distinguished from 

 the normal state. The material of 

 such a study reveals, for the most part, 

 not the manner and frequency with 

 which insanity is transmitted from 

 parent to offspring, but rather the 

 frequency with which slightly neuro- 

 pathic or even normal parents may, in 

 some cases, beget insane offspring. 



It may be that if satisfactory material 

 could be made available for a study of a 

 sufficiently large nmnber of generations 

 of ancestors the inheritance could in 

 every instance be traced to cases of the 

 same kind and gravity of neuropathic 

 disorder as that which is taken as the 

 starting point of the investigation and 

 which all agree upon as being properly 

 designated by the term insanity. 



But the fact is that such material is 

 not made available by even most 

 thorough investigations and that the 

 information secured concerning even 

 the more immediate ancestors is apt 

 to be indefinite and incomplete. 



These considerations have led us to 

 undertake the collection of material 

 for a study of the offspring, in place of 

 the ancestors, of the insane. The 

 object of this report is to describe the 

 plan of our study and some of the ma- 

 terial that has been collected since its 

 inauguration a little over a year ago. 



The first feature of our plan is to 

 select cases of patients who have off- 



spring old enough to make possible 

 a fairly definite judgment as to degree 

 of intellectual development at its height 

 and as to the presence or absence of 

 notable nervous or mental anomalies. 



No matter what theory of the 

 mechanism of heredity may be preferred, 

 it is now generally conceded that, in 

 order to be complete, a consideration of 

 the inheritance of any trait must take 

 into account the facts presented by not 

 one but both ancestral branches. In 

 the present connection, it is hardly to 

 be doubted that whether the offspring 

 of an insane subject will or will not 

 show evidences of neuropathic inheri- 

 tance will depend not only upon the 

 inheritable nature of the one parent's 

 insanity but also on the nature of the 

 mental inheritance from the other 

 parent. 



Accordingly, the second feature of our 

 plan is to collect information concerning 

 the consorts of the patients, the consort's 

 parents and sibships, and other relatives 

 if necessary or advisable. 



The third feature of our plan is to 

 make, as far as possible, direct observa- 

 tions of the offspring. The material 

 is to consist not of ready judgments as 

 to the normality or abnormality of 

 subjects but of biographical facts and 

 records of observation which might 

 serve as basis for such judgments and 

 which, if there be mental derangement, 

 would make possible a comparison of 

 its nature with that of the source of its 

 inheritance. 



The work is necessarily slow; the 

 investigations of some families have been 

 halted for one reason or another at 



' Submitted to the annual meeting of the American Genetic Associatijon, Berkeley, California, 

 August 2-7, 1915. 



355 



