Bruno Schulz's 1933 Monograph: On the Hereditary Etiology of Schizophrenia

Summary: This article delves into the nature of psychiatric genetics research conducted in asylums in Western Europe in the mid-19th century by examining four studies published between 1841 and 1864 from Great Britain, France, and Germany. The studies primarily focus on hereditary predisposition to mental illness, with findings consistently indicating that women are more likely to transmit and/or be more sensitive to the receipt of hereditary predisposition. Other questions explored include the relationship between hereditary predisposition and recurrence rates, the degree of transmission homogeneity versus heterogeneity of specific mental illnesses in families, the level of hereditary predisposition among different forms of mental illness, and differences in the proportion of psychiatric patients with hereditary predisposition based on their religion.