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Heredity in Mental Disease

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Extract

Mr. Briscoe gave an account of hereditary influences affecting reproductive processes, entering into details relative to syphilis and temperaments. He held that deviation from a normal standard of mind and body must indirectly affect the reproductive processes. He thereafter traced the life history of a typical neurotic in a series of clinical pictures. Mr. Briscoe illustrated his paper by photographs of a skull which he had brought from East Africa. The skull was also submitted for examination, and was described as having belonged to a child six years of age, to be generally five-eighths of an inch thick, with completely obliterated sutures. The whole was porous (osteoporosis), and the new cancellous tissue of a columnar appearance, and superimposed upon the original bone. Mr. Briscoe was of opinion that it might be useful to compare such a cranium with deformed palates in relation to brain growth. The heredity of direct mental weakness was then discussed, and Mr. Briscoe was of opinion that 90 per cent. of the insane have a heredity of insanity.

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1896 

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