554 



The Journal of Heredity 



in a child depends largely on the age of 

 its parents at its birth. Mediocrities, 

 he believes, are likely to be produced by 

 very early marriages, unless the preced- 

 ing generations married late enough to 

 transmit qualities which will overcome 

 the effect of the one early marriage. 

 Men of genius, he finds, are usually 

 produced by parents who are well ad- 

 vanced in years; and when data for 

 previous generations exist, he usually 

 finds that the grandparents and great- 

 grandparents, as well, were mature 

 when they made their contribution to 

 the race. 



Dr. A. J. Rosanoff, first assistant 

 physician at Kings Park Hospital, New 

 York, has been engaged on a study of 

 the distribution of insanity in the 

 United States, and the correlation of 

 this distribution to other conditions in 

 the country. The ntimber of insane 

 persons confined in institutions, per 

 100,000 of the general population, varies 

 from 67.0 in Oklahoma to 413.4 in 

 Massachusetts. These variations ap- 

 pear to the investigator to be in correl- 

 ation, direct or reverse, with the follow- 

 ing factors: per capita wealth jjroduc- 

 tion, percentage of urban population, 

 general prevalence of illiteracy, accessi- 

 bility of institutions, intra-mural condi- 

 tions as reflected in the per capita cost 

 of maintenance, and percentage of for- 

 eign-born ])opulation. Dr. Rosanoff is 

 also working more intensively upon the 

 inheritance of insanity, in particular 

 families. 



THE GATZERT FOUNDATION. 



The case of feeble-mindedness, which 

 hitherto has furnished the most widely 

 worked field for the study of human 

 heredity in the United States, is being 

 attacked in a slightly different way by 

 the Gatzert Foundation of the Uni- 

 versity of Washington (Seattle, Wash.). 

 A clinic, directed by Dr. Stevenson 

 Smith, examines several hundred chil- 

 dren each year and obtains their family 

 histories, whether they be precocious, 

 average or defective. Field workers 

 then fill in the gai)s of this history, de- 

 voting particular attention to the pedi- 

 grees of children who are found to be 

 defective but seem to show no jjatho- 



logical ancestry. This investigation 

 should serve as an invaluable parallel 

 and "control" to the many other inves- 

 tigations of feeble-mindedness, in which 

 particular attention is paid to the 

 pedigrees which show the presence of a 

 taint in the ancestors. 



Dr. David F. Weeks, superintendent 

 of the New Jersey State Village for 

 Epileptics at Skillman, N. J., reports: 



"The aim of the work in eugenics re- 

 search at the State Village has been, 

 since it started in 1910, to obtain a 

 hereditary history of every epileptic 

 patient who came to the colony — not to 

 work up special cases, but to work up 

 all cases. From these histories we hope 

 to learn the laws governing the inherit- 

 ance of epilepsy. 



"We now have filed 672 histories; 

 these cover anywhere from two to eight 

 generations and from 20 to three or four 

 hundred individuals. Each case is 

 analyzed as to the family traits observed, 

 the types of matings from which our 

 patients come, as well as the environ- 

 mental conditions and diseases. The 

 traits which occur most frequently in 

 our histories arc, besides the epileptic 

 convulsion itself, extreme nervousness, 

 migraine, alcoholism of the periodic 

 spree type, and bad temper. In fact, 

 nervous conditions which show periodic 

 loss of control all stand ovit i^rominently 

 in our histories. The epileptic convul- 

 sion seems to behave like a Mcndclian 

 trait of the recessive type. There does 

 not seem to be any one particular type 

 of mating. 



"Besides the regiilar history work we 

 try to keep in close touch with the 

 epileptic 'situation' in the state. We 

 keep a register and each month make a 

 report on the number of cjjileptics in 

 the state whose names are known to us, 

 with the kind of care they are receiving. 



"We also follow uj) discharged cases. 

 By means of a name index we are able 

 to connect and show relationship be- 

 tween many of our patients not known 

 to be related. We hope to work up 

 many sjjecial cases in detail in the 

 future, but at the same time to continue 

 the general line of research as outlined. 

 One special history has been worked out 

 covering over 1700 in(1i\i(luals. 



