Heredity in Relation to Mental Disease

Abstract

In the following paper, dealing with the hereditary transmission of mental disease, my conclusions are based on a statistical review of 1200 cases of hereditary insanity admitted into the Cumberland and Westmorland Asylum during a period of thirty years (1865—1895). So far as I can ascertain, no analysis of such a large number of cases of hereditary insanity has hitherto been made by any one observer; there is, therefore, ground for the hope that results of value may accrue from such an investigation. One of the most important contributions to this subject is contained in a paper∗ by the late Dr. Hugh Grainger Stewart, which appeared in the Journal of Mental Science in 1864. That paper was based on the statistics of 447 hereditary cases admitted into the Crichton Royal Institution, Dumfries; the patients belonged mainly to the middle and upper classes of society, with a smaller number of pauper cases. The cases I propose to analyse were almost entirely paupers admitted from the general population of Cumberland and Westmorland. Private patients often come to an asylum from a considerable distance, and from beyond the limits of the district in which the asylum is situated; inferences drawn from the tabulation of such cases are scarcely likely to give so reliable a picture of the features of insanity in any district as when the cases analysed stand for almost the entire insane population of all the districts from which the patients come.