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Letter to the Editor:
—In the October issue of the Archives, Tobin, Bay and Humphreys reported 2 interesting cases of Marfan's syndrome in the adult. The patients in both cases died from dissecting aneurysm of the aorta. Although the authors discuss the heredity of this "relatively rare familial symptom complex" in a special paragraph, they come to the conclusion in one of the following paragraphs concerned with "etiologic factor" that Marfan's syndrome is "of unknown origin," and that even twelve available autopsy reports did "not offer any solution as to the cause of the syndrome."Medical authors, at least those who study and report hereditary familial diseases, should take cognizance of the fact that heredity is an etiologic factor. They also should familiarize themselves with the principles of constitutional pathology, that is, the clinical consequences of human genopathies. The enumeration of the long list of