Der Nachweis von Mendel-Zahlen bei Formen mit niedriger Nachkommenzahl. Eine empirische Prüfung der Geschwister- und Probandenmethode Weinbergs auf Grund von Kreuzungsversuchen mit Drosophila ampelophila Löw

Caution, Overload: The Troubled Past of Genetic Load

“…The mid 1910s saw the establishment of a novel kind of analysis of hereditary relations in German psychiatry. The limitations of simple Mendelian schemes were already becoming apparent, and psychiatrist Ernst Rüdin, greatly assisted by Wilhelm Weinberg (better known today for the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium), developed innovative methods to assess the hereditary risk that the mentally ill posed to their relatives (Weinberg 1912(Weinberg , 1913a(Weinberg ,b, 1929Rüdin 1916; see also Just 1920;Crow 1999). The new statistical toolbox, which quickly acquired international recognition and some of whose results are considered robust to this day, was officially referred to under the heading, "empirical hereditary prognosis" (Rüdin 1933), but was often labeled simply as "statistics of load" (Belastungsstatistik).…”