Abstract
AN interesting study of morbid heredity in man in an isolated community by Dr. J. W. McFeeters, for which the Sir Charles Hastings Clinical Prize for 1937 has been awarded (Brit. Med. J., Feb. 4, p. 218), is made the basis of a suggestion that in view of the facilities for tracing family pedigrees in small isolated communities and the inbreeding imposed upon such communities for generations, similar studies should be undertaken, distributed as widely as possible over the country, before improved communications break down this isolation. The present observations appear to bear out the author's contention that such a series of records is bound to throw light on the occurrence of rare recessive characters, which are much less likely to occur when random mating is the rule rather than the exception. The village here under study consisted of about fifteen hundred inhabitants. Observations of numerous morbid data extended over a period of years, and led to the conclusion that heredity plays an even more important part in many varied conditions than is generally recognized. Of the many conditions studied, eight were chosen for discussion—hereditary cerebellar ataxia, progressive muscular dystrophy, the lymphatic diathesis, otitis media, hernia, cancer of the bowel, rodent ulcer and hyd-ramnios. Among the more significant points which emerge, it is noted that in progressive muscular dystrophy, the condition is definitely sex-linked. It is transmitted by apparently healthy females in three generations. In three cases it was associated with failure to bleed, a peculiarity not previously recorded in this connexion. The incidence of hernia is curiously restricted. Out of twenty cases, fifteen occurred in two families; and heredity evidently played a part even more important than strain. The possibility of the occurrence of a zygotic lethal factor in the male—a possibility suggested with some doubt by Ruggles Gates—receives support from the study of hydramnios, where there may be a relationship of the cases on the paternal, and not the maternal side.
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Morbid Heredity in Isolated Communities. Nature 143, 235–236 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143235c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143235c0