282 



GENETICS AND EUGENICS 



attempted to eliminate several categories of insanity and to 

 find out more precisely what the law of inheritance of the 

 remaining sort is. They eliminate cases possibly due to 

 injury to the brain, alcoholism, syphilis, tumors, apoplexy 

 and the like. Their material consisted of cases in the state 

 hospital for the insane at Kings Park, N. Y. Careful in- 

 quiry was made as to the pedigree of all patients whose in- 

 sanity was not referable to other than genetic causes. 

 Seventy-two families were thus investigated, representing 

 two hundred and six different matings, with a total of one 

 thousand ninety-seven offspring. These are tabulated to 

 test the hypothesis that insanity is a Mendelian recessive 

 unit-character, as follows: 



TABLE 35 

 Data on Inheritance of Insanity {Rosanqff and Orr) 



* Eight have not yet passed " age of incidence." 



The table seems in a general way to substantiate the 

 hypothesis advanced, that insanity is a recessive character, 

 especially the first category of matings where only insane 

 progeny are expected. But when we look into the method of 

 gathering the data and of compiling the table we become 

 somewhat skeptical of this conclusion. The data have the 

 scientific value of gossip, consisting of answers made by " in- 

 formants " to leading questions designed to bring out any 

 weakness in the pedigree. Like inquiries made concerning 

 any individual in the community would show him an un- 



