In the cases to be reported I was confronted with a peculiar situation. Four children of the same parents had a disease at about the same age; the characteristics of the disorder in each case were similar throughout the course of the illness. No evidence of a similar condition was found in the family history as far back as the third generation. The father of the children had a four plus Wassermann reaction; one patient had a four plus and one a one plus Wassermann reaction. The first question that arises is, "Has the condition a hereditary basis?"
"Hereditary" is the term applied to a biologic process by which the characters of body and mind are transmitted from parent to offspring. If such a process in the nature of a disease is passed on from generation to generation, the disease is spoken of as a familial disease, in other words,