Tuberculosis, heredity and environment / by Karl Pearson ... being a lecture delivered at the Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics, March 12, 1912.

  • Pearson, Karl, 1857-1936.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Tuberculosis, heredity and environment / by Karl Pearson ... being a lecture delivered at the Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics, March 12, 1912. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    l8 TUBERCULOSIS, HEREDITY the production of tuberculosis, we should anticipate that the relation as to phthisis between husband and wife would be at least as intimate as between father and son. By the time a son reaches the average age of onset he is largely removed from close contact with his father, but husband and wife are always together. Now in my data we had only the particular's as to the parents of phthisical children and as to their brothers and sisters. You will notice that we need a fourfold table ; we need the number of phthisical and non-phthisical children of non-phthisical fathers and mothers. This datum can be supplied if we estimate the number of individuals in the community who suffer from phthisis at any time of their life. We have further to make a correction for the history of the phthisical families when com¬ pleted. According to Dr. Thompson 50 per cent, of a family with tubercle are ultimately tuberculous. I have taken 33%, as actually observed in incomplete families, and the 50% observed by Dr. Thompson in completed families as the two ends of my scale. I have also considered the difference in result which arises from supposing first 10% and then 13% of the com¬ munity—not to die, but to suffer at some time from tuberculosis. The general conclusion is that the resem¬ blance between parents and offspring lies between 0-40 and o-6o. Dr. Goring was more fortunate than I was. His data actually provide the number of tuberculous persons in his population, and the only corrections he had to make were for completion of family history. This he did in three different ways—(i) by including only those individuals over 14 years, and then by including only those over 23 years, and again, (ii) by taking 33 %, and (iii) 50% to be ultimately tuberculous.