Abstracts of Papers Read at the First International Eugenics Congress: University of London, July, 1912 — John Shaqi
Abstracts of Papers Read at the First International Eugenics Congress: University of London, July, 1912International Eugenics Congress (1st : 1912 : London)
Science
Abstracts of Papers Read at the First International Eugenics Congress: University of London, July, 1912
International Eugenics Congress (1st : 1912 : London)
Eugenics -- Congresses
_Nature._--The study of pedigrees in hospital and asylum patients
showing the importance of heredity in nervous and mental diseases.
The nature of the neuropathic tendency; its transmission in different
forms of nervous and mental disease in successive generations. Its
latency and re-appearance in stocks. Relation of neurasthenia to the
neuropathic taint. Conclusions arrived at in relation to heredity
and insanity from a study by a card system of 3,118 related persons
who are at present, or who have been, in the London County asylums.
Among the 20,000 inmates at present resident, 715 are so closely
related as parents and offspring or brothers and sisters. Nature is
always trying to end or mend a degenerate stock if left to itself.
Analysis of data regarding first attack of insanity in 464 parents
and their 508 offspring; the signal tendency to the occurrence of the
disease in a more intense form and at an earlier age in the offspring.
This "antedating" or "anticipation" in relation to Nature's process
of elimination of the unfit. Nearly 50 per cent. of the offspring
affected 20 years earlier than the parent. The same found in uncles
and aunts with nephews and nieces, only not nearly so marked. Seeing
that the unfit are at present able to survive; does nature end or mend
degenerate stocks, or have the lines of neuropathic inheritance only
been partially cut off by this tendency to "anticipation"? What we want
to know is: What is the fate of all the offspring of an insane parent
or parents; for there are a great many facts which show that a disease
may be latent and re-appear in a stock when the conditions of mating
or environment are unfavourable? A collection of pedigrees is required
which will prove conclusively that the offspring of insane parents,
who are free from the insane manifestations during adolescence, will
breed children who will not become insane. Supposing it were shown
that cases discharged as recovered had the seeds of insanity, by the
fact that their progeny were feeble-minded, epileptic, or insane, it
would be a clear indication of taking measures to prevent them handing
on the disease. Recurrent insanity--the birth of children in the sane
intervals. Analysis of pedigrees with a dual neuropathic inheritance
of maternal and paternal stocks compared with single neuropathic
inheritance. Conclusion that a child born of neuropathic inheritance in
both ancestral stocks stands, on an average, the chance of being insane
four times as great as when only one stock is affected. Are there any
types of insanity especially liable to be transmitted in the same form
or another form? The prediction of the racial value of an individual
inheritance can only be predicted by a study of what a man was born
with--Nature, and what happened after birth--Nurture.
THE PLACE OF EUGENICS IN THE MEDICAL CURRICULUM.
(Abstract.)
By H. E. Jordan,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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