INHERITANCE OF TEMPERAMENT. 



97 



hereditary hyperkinesis. Thus (p. 233) in family F f the grandmother 

 after the death of her insane sister was greatly agitated and filled with 

 self-reproaches. Her daughter had periods of great excitement after 

 some irritating incident. This daughter's daughter is somewhat ner- 

 vous; has spells when she can not sleep well. Again (p. 235), in family 

 h, the great grandfather accumulated great riches; his son was very 

 excitable and married a woman who had involutional melancholia. 

 This son's son, Johann, was very frivolous, haughty, erotic, boastful. 

 Admitted to a hospital, he was unusually active, wrote countless letters, 

 was euphoric and boastful. The Wasserman test was negative and 

 the patient was eventually discharged improved. This man married 

 a woman of normal stock, so far as known, and his son, Johann, became 

 (at about 18 years) excitable and delusional. In hospital, rose earlv, 

 wrote many letters, composed verses, was very divertible. The brother 

 of this Johann 2d married L.; was attacked with motor unrest, wan- 

 dered about. Admitted to the hospital, he had delusions of having 

 made great discoveries, showed an elated mood, but soon recovered and 

 was discharged. In all these cases the elated mood is repeated in each 

 generation without a break. All these cases, then, support the view 

 that hyperkinesis depends on a dominant factor. 



The inheritance of hypokinesis is not, from the nature of the case, 

 so clear as that of hyperkinesis. By hypothesis, the hypokinetic factor 

 is recessive to normal or to hyperkinesis. So we may expect hvpo- 

 kinesis to appear in the children when it is not shown by either parent 

 Under such circumstances it should affect only a small fraction of the 

 children; but, on the other hand, evidence of the hypokinetic tendency 

 should appear in the close relatives on both sides of the house, as, 

 indeed, it usually does. It appears probable that the reason for the 

 contrast between Rudin's findings and those of RosanofT and Orr lies 

 in the fact that the hypokinetic state is inherited differently from the 

 hyperkinetic. For Rudin finds that, in some manic-depressive families, 

 inheritance of the psychosis is of the dominant sort as we find is the case 

 with mania, while Rosanoff and Orr find the manic-depressive tendency 

 to be recessive, as we find is the case with depression. But while, on the 

 whole, the data presented by Rosanoff and Orr (191 1) speak for the 

 recessive nature of the psychoses that they deal with (largely dementia 

 precox and depressions ) , yet some families show the dominant inheritance 

 of hyperkinesis. Thus in their chart 39 the grandfather had a violent 

 temper, became violently insane, had to be tied down; his son had a 

 violent temper, "always fighting," and of his children, in turn. 3 have 

 a bad temper. In chart 68 the grandfather was insane, his s< >n eccentric, 

 high-strung, and 3 of this son's 4 children are easily excited or fright- 

 ened. In chart 71, the grandmother was "eccentric," probably insane. 

 her daughter eccentric, miserly, probably insane; and their daughti 

 daughter miserly, "likelier mother," had spells of yelling; insane This 

 case, then, illustrates the same rule of dominance of hyperkinesis 



