Evening star., 1939-08-29
Inheritance Factor
Is Declared Cause
0fSchizophrenia
Genetics Congress Is Told
Genotype Is Specific
By Dr.. KuIImonn
BY THOMAS r.. HENRY,
Star stan Correspondent.

EDINBURGH. Scotland (By Air
MaiD. - Schizophrenia, dreaded
'mind-splitting" malady of youth
which now fills more hospital beds
in the United States than any other
mental disease, is carried by single
inheritance factor from generation
to generation, according to evidence
presented to the World Genetics
Congress meeting here by DR.. Franz
j. Kallmann of New York.
He gave the preliminary results
of studies of 500 pairs of American
twins and their families in the
genetic constitution of which this
form of psychoses appeared to be
present. Up to now the inheritance
factor in schizophrenia has been
greatly complicated by the fact that
the malady takes at least four wide
ly divergent forms and, while 1t
runs in families, does not appear
with the regularity which would be
expected of an hereditary taint.
But the study of the twins, DR..
Kallmann said. tends strongly to the
conclusion that the schizophrenic
genotype is specific, autosomal and
probably single recessive and that
its manifestation is inhibited in about
one-quarter of the taint carriers bv
aid OF a strong constitutional re-
sistance or by the back of further
dispositional factors.
The Physical Type.
The disease is chiefly, although
not exclusively found in persons of
slender, narroW-headed physical
type and is often associated with
tuberculosis.
DR.. Kallmann'S study, however,
gave no support to the hypothesis
that physical type and disposition to
the mind malady were handed down
from generation to generation as a
complex. as some psychiatrists have
maintained. 1t is simply, he pointed
out, matter of less resistance in
those individuals who inherit the
schizophrenia taint and at the same
time have the proper physical struc-
ture. His studies also, he said, rule
out the contention that the heredi-
tary taint is most prevalent in Ger
tain races or that 1t is in some way
induced by intermarriage of too
close relatives, even if they do not
carry the defect in their own germ
plasmS.
Classed in the schizophrenia COM
plex are the syndromes of catalonia,
in which the victim withdraws conf
pletely from the outside world: all
other condition characterized ov ex-
treme Stiffness and giddiness:
paranoiac schizophrenia whose vic
TINS believe enemies are working
against them and who may be very
dangerous to society; and simple
schizophrenia which is character
lied by a progressive loss of intelIi-
gence. Although these manifesto
tlons are widely different they have
the common factors that they
usually appear in adolescence or
early adult years and that all seem
to be primarily associations of che
mind.
The great difference in the svn-
dromes, DR.. Kallmann said, has led
some psychiatrists to the assllmp-
ton that they may be due to four
or more different hereditary taints
The study of the 500 twin pairs, he
stressed, gives no support to this
and seems to rule it out entirely.
Not Racial Taint.
In presenting his report DR.. Kali
mann warned the geneticists and
students of human and animal be-
havlor gathered here from all over
the world, many of them from coua-
tries where various misinterpreta-
lions OF genetics have been raised
almost to the status of national re-
liglons, not to jump to false con-
cluslons on hereditary taints of diff
ierent races by over simplifying the
Interpretation of their data.
:. Glorlfying fatalistic or pseudo-re-
lglous conceptions of heredity as ir-