Ryssia Wolfsohn's 1907 dissertation on the heredity of dementia praecox

In the 19th century, psychiatric genetic studies typically utilized a generic category of insanity. This began to change after 1899, with the publication of Kraepelin's 6th edition containing, among other disorders, his mature concept of dementia praecox (DP). We here review an article published by Ryssia Wolfsohn in 1907 from her dissertation at the University of Zurich entitled Die Hereditat bei Dementia praecox (The Heredity of Dementia Praecox). This work, performed under the supervision of E. Bleuler, was to our knowledge the first formal genetic study of the then new diagnosis of DP. She investigated 550 DP probands admitted to the Burgholzli hospital with known information about their heredity burden. For most probands, she had information on parents, siblings, grandparents, and aunts/uncles. Of these patients, only 10% had no psychiatric illness in their families. In the remaining probands, she found rates of the four major categories of psychopathology she investigated: mental illness-56%, nervous disorders-19%, peculiar personalities 12% and alcoholism 13%. Her most novel analyses compared either total familial burden or burden of her four forms of mental disorders on her DP probands divided by subtype and outcome. In neither of these analyses, did she find significant differences.

Automated summary

This article reviews the first formal genetic study of dementia praecox, conducted in 1907. The study found that only 10% of patients with dementia praecox had no psychiatric illness in their families, while the rest had various types of mental disorders present in their family history. The study also compared the genetic burden of different subtypes and outcomes of dementia praecox, but no significant differences were found.