Address on heredity in relation to insanity, given to the members of the London County Council, at the County Hall, S.W., on June 26th, 1912 / by F.W. Mott.
- Frederick Walker Mott
- Date:
- [1912?]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Address on heredity in relation to insanity, given to the members of the London County Council, at the County Hall, S.W., on June 26th, 1912 / by F.W. Mott. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![(Fig. 10); the other is that in which pauperism^, epilepsy, insanity, tubercu- losis and blindness in successive generations occur (Fig. 11). It would have been a national calamity had the former not been allowed to propagate ; to cut off the lines of propagation in the latter would have been a national benefit. The popular expression, “ he comes from a good stock, or a bad stock,^’ is the result of experience, and quite scientific according to the laws of ancestral inheritance, yet now and then even from an apparently unknown or even bad stock a great man arises. Are we to say that because a parent is insane that therefore the children must necessarily be insane or useless to the race ? God forbid ! The Investigation of Pedigrees. An important point in any scientific investigation is, not to try and (8* ^ ^ (4^ Bund a Fig. 11.—PedigTee showing- pauperism, insanity, and blindness in four generations (Lidbetter). Half-black circles. Insanity, p*. Pauperism, e. Epilepsy, t. Tuber- culosis. Figures denote age at time of attack of insanity. ]u*ove something ; that is to avoid any propagandist tendency. The question of alcohol and insanity is an illustration in point. The Council of Fifty in Massachusetts investigated the number of patients admitted to asylums in which there was an alcoholic history ; it was then suggested that they might investigate the number of total abstainers ; it was found that the}^ were as numerous. The scientific way to approach this question is to* carefully investigate the pedigrees of patients a-dmitted, selected, not because they show a large number of members of the ancestral stocks as being degenerate, or insane, hut selected because a complete family history for](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28060908_0022.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
