Antall József szerk.: Orvostörténeti közlemények 87-88. (Budapest, 1979)
TANULMÁNYOK - Czeizel, Endre: A heredodegeneraciós tan történeti értékelése (angol nyelven)
scientific literature, for instance, in the use of the term Spinocerebellar heredodegeneration» or «spastic heredodegeneration». " By the definition of the general aetiological characteristics of heredodegeneration and their differentiation from exogenic clinical pictures Jendrassik has won everlasting merits. Jendrassik's education and talent in genetics are on a very high level in other respects, too. He soon recognized that there is no difference in the heredity of traits ("biological inheritance") and diseases ("hereditary affections"). He was right to say in 1899 that "...there are two large groups of hereditary diseases: hereditary degeneration and hereditary predisposition that we still cannot differentiate from each other in every case." He wrote in the Orvosi Hetilap in 1898 in connection with epilepsy: "/ believe that the contradictory data of different authors can be explained by the fact that epilepsy is not an independent clinical picture of identical aetiology, but only a symptom due to several different pathological causes in the development of which the inherited predisposition is necessary in most of the cases". He firmly put his opinion: "Acquired characters are never inherited, it is also a misunderstanding when some write about the inheritance of characters «of intrauterine acquisition». That is why the designation «hereditary syphilis» is wrong; this form of syphilis derives from intrauterine infection and therefore should be called syphilis «of intrauterine acquisition»." At that time two forms of heredity were spoken of such as direct, similar and indirect, transforming. Rightly, he did not accept but the former. He denies the latter —when the affection appears in the offspring in another form that only suggests the relation with that of the parents, e.g. tabetic father with poliomyelitic child —and considered it only casual coincidence, the influence of environment or at most the heredity of predisposition. Jendrassik's name deserves the acknowledgement and respect enjoyed in the international literature of genetics. II. KÁROLY SCHAFFER Ernő Jendrassik's disciples tried to carry on his work but as it was said by Károly Schaffer, who developed the doctrine of heredodegeneration on from the aspect of histopathology, in his academic speech on Ernő Jendrassik: "His school will cultivate his doctrine, and tries to work on in his spirit, but we shall miss for ever the presence of his creative genius." Károly Schaffer (fig. 2.) may have inherited or acquired from his sculptor father his sense of forms and structures that made him engage himself very early in neurohistology. His first publication appeared at the age of 23, when still a medical student. From the point of human genetics, however, his later researches relating to Tay — Sachs disease are important. Warren Tay English ophthalmologist announced in 1881 that he perceived on the fundic pictures of a brother and sister affected by muscular weakness a yellowish (nowaday rather said to be reddish-brownish or cerise) spot with a whitish areola. In 1887 Bernard Sachs American neurologist described cerebral deformities causing severe intellectual damage in infants affected by similar disease. At the pathological examination of the brain of his second case, Van Gieson of New u*
