Fig. 19.—Family history showing a form of night blindness. (Condensed form of Nettleship's data.)
"This woman was a handsome girl, apparently having inherited some refinement from her mother, although her father was a feeble-minded, alcoholic brute. Somewhere about the age of seventeen or eighteen she went out to do housework in a family in one of the towns of this State [New Jersey]. She soon became the mother of an illegitimate child. It was born in an almshouse to which she fled after she had been discharged from the home where she had been at work. After this, charitably disposed people tried to do what they could for her, giving her a home for herself and her child in return for the work which she could do. However, she soon appeared in the same condition. An effort was then made to discover the father of this second child, and when he was found to be a drunken, feeble-minded epileptic living in the neighborhood, in order to save the legitimacy of the child, her friends [sic] saw to it that a marriage ceremony took place. Later another feeble-minded child was born to them. Then the whole family secured a home with an unmarried farmer in the neighborhood. They lived there together until another child was forthcoming which the husband refused to own. When, finally, the farmer acknowledged this child to be his, the same good friends [sic] interfered, went into the courts and procured a divorce from the husband, and had the woman married to the father of the expected fourth child. This proved to be feeble-minded, and they have had four other feeble-minded children, making eight in all, born of this woman. There have also been one child stillborn and one miscarriage.
Fig. 20.—Family history showing Huntington's chorea. Last generation incomplete. (Data from Hamilton.)
"As will be seen from the chart, this woman had four feeble-minded brothers and sisters [IV, 6, 10, 15, 16]. These are all married and have children. The older of the two sisters had a child by her own father, when she was thirteen years old. The child died at about six years of age. This woman has since married. The two brothers have each at least one child of whose mental condition nothing is known. The other sister married a feeble-minded man and had three children. Two of these are feeble-minded and the other died in infancy. There were six other brothers and sisters that died in infancy."
The paternal ancestry of this unfortunate woman is hardly less interesting, as may be seen from the diagram. All told, this family history, as far as it is known, includes 59 persons; the mental character of 12 of these is unknown; 10 died in infancy or before their characteristics were known; of the remaining 37, 30 were feeble-minded.
Fig. 21.—Family history showing deaf-mutism. (From "Treasury of Human Inheritance.")