4 Eugenics Record Office, Bui^letin No. 3 



of eleven patients at this hospital and includes thirty-five different 

 matings, with a total of 221 offspring. This material has been 

 arranged for convenience in the form of pedigree charts. 



One of the first facts that appeared in the study of the pedi- 

 grees was that any form of insanity or even all the forms of 

 hereditary insanity do not constitute an independent hereditary 

 character, but that they are closely related to imbecility, epilepsy, 

 hysteria, and various mental eccentricities that are not usually 

 included under the designation insanity. In other words, the dis- 

 tinction between these conditions as clinical entities cannot, in the 

 light of their manner of origin, be regarded as deeply essential. 



We find as manifestations of the neuropathic make-up in 

 closely related persons cases of feeble-mindedness, convulsions in 

 childhood from trivial causes or chronic epilepsy, cases of grave 

 hysteria, various eccentricities, cases of dementia praecox, manic- 

 depressive insanity, paranoic conditions, involutional psychoses, 

 and the like. 



It is not to be assumed, however, that what we have called 

 here the neuropathic make-up constitutes the basis of all the 

 clinical forms of nervous and mental disease; for on the one 

 hand, some of these conditions, like general paresis or alcoholic 

 polyneuritis, are probably purely exogenous in origin, and, on 

 the other hand, others, like Huntington's chorea, are plainly inde- 

 pendent Mendelian characters. 



The pedigree charts contain a number of instances of neuro- 

 pathic children born of normal parents, but not a single instance 

 of a normal child born of parents both of whom are neuropathic. 



This proves that the neuropathic make-up cannot be dominant 

 over normal ; but that if its transmission occurs at all in a manner 

 corresponding to the Mendelian laws, it must be recessive to 

 normal. 



In preparing the pedigree charts we have made use of tlie fol- 

 lowing symbols and abbreviations. 



□ = male individual. = female individual. A square or a 

 circle unmarked = normal individual. P = normal individual with 

 neuropathic offspring. I = insanity. Cv. = convulsions. E = epi- 

 lepsy. N = feeble-mindedness, hysteria, or other pronounced neu- 

 ropathic manifestation, o within a square = normal individual 

 without offspring, f = died in childhood. ? => data unascertained. 



Number above each mating indicates type of combination. 



