The Authors describe the methodology of an analytic electroacoustical study of the spoken voice of MZ twins of prepuberal age.

The study was intended to reveal any possible analogies of the vocal spectrum and to ascertain the extent of the genetic conditioning of such analogies. For this purpose the Authors analyzed electroacustically a recorded material obtained as follows:

a) during free conversation,

b) by applying a laryngophone to the larynx in order to identify the fundamental laryngeal frequency,

c) after introducing in both cotwins a critical variant by application to the ears of a deafening tone.

Identical studies were carried out on a control material including DZ pairs and pairs of random-coupled non-related individuals very similar as to age and build.

The results can be summed up as follows:

1. The curves representing the vocal spectrum at the various frequency for each MZ pair reveal a marked similarity both in the general trend of the vocal curve and in the values at each point of the curve. The similarity is specially marked in the vicinity of the voice's fundamental frequency.

2. The location of the fundamental laryngeal frequency in the majority of MZ pairs has been found to be very close, and in many cases even coincidental.

3. Neither the analogies in the vocal spectrum nor the location of the fundamental frequency have been significantly modified by deafening.

4. The control material (including DZ pairs and random-coupled pairs of individuals having different heredity but similar as to age and build) has revealed marked dissimilarities both in the curves of the vocal spectrum and in the location of the fundamental laryngeal frequency.

On the basis of these results the Authors conclude that there is a similarity in the spoken voice of MZ pairs of prepuberal age they have examined, and this similarity is to be largely ascribed to morphological and functional factors of similarity of a genetic nature in the laryngeal generator.

Following some observations on the pathogenesis and clinical manifestations of « Xeroderma Pigmentosum «, two histologically ascertained cases are reported, as studied in the dermosyphilopathic Clinic of Berlin's Free University.

In the first case it was possible to prove parental consanguinity, already mentioned by Siemens as proof of irregular recessive inheritance. In the second case the lack of sufficient familial information suggests a non-genetic origin. In both cases it was possible to rol out venereal disease as the causin factor, and the disease appeared only after the third year of age, at 10 years in one case, with onset at the cornea. In the latter case the EEG reveals variations indicating the existence of organic brain disturbances which (associated with the ocular alterations) suggests the occurence of a neuroectodermosis.

In any case it would be wise to warn Xeroderma patients that in the case of consanguineous marriage, there is the danger of the recessive disease (latent in both parents) becoming real; otherwise the physician may, after such a marriage, support the possible request for sterilization on the part of the patient.

The results of a genealogical study of human ovarian carcinoma are presented.

In this investigation 4160 individuals are included: out of these 1892 belong to 138 proband families (experimental sample) and 2268 to 138 control families (control sample).

The following facts clearly emerge:

1. There is a highly significant proportion of cancer cases among relatives of the probands.

2. The incidence of cancer cases is highly significant either in probands' generation or in parents' and grand-parents' generations.

3. The higher frequencies are found in mothers' and sisters' groups.

4. The sites preferably interested pertain to the gastro-enteric and genito-mammarian apparatuses. The ovary is relatively highly represented.

These facts are an evidence of a not casual aggregation of cancer cases in probands' families. Therefore a family factor must be postulated, at least as a co-factor, in the pathogenesis of the ovarian cancer. Nothing however, may be said, on the basis of this research, about the real nature of that factor, even though the orientation towards the hypothesis of its hereditary nature seems sufficiently founded.

Of 200 students from Southern Sweden 32 per cent were non-tasters for phenyl-thio-urea.

Three pairs of male twins concordant for muscular dystrophy are presented. Two of these pairs are shown to be monozygotic and affected with the Duchenne form of muscular dystrophy. The third pair is probably dizygotic. The clinical and genetical features of each pair of twins are discussed. Pedigrees with photographs of the twins are presented.

The study of three sibships has demostrated that Madelung's deformity is transmitted by dominant monomerous hereditary character with variable expressivity mosty sexcontrolled.

The AA. have studied the pedigree of a family with Marfan's Syndrome (M.S.) including 90 persons of four generations. 37 subjects were examined both from a general and from an ophcalmological point of view. Furthermore reliable informations have been obtained about 13 more subjects related with them. Out of the total of 50 persons about whom the A A. have gathered sufficient evidence, 22 turned out to be affected by « ectopia lentis », 20 by various skeletal malformations, all of them included in the general picture of M.S. In 5 more cases some signs of cardiac involvement have been found. The percentage of affected subjects in the whole family was 40%, whereas the hereditary transmission of this syndrome appeared to be typical of a presumably single autosomal dominant character.

This is the first report in the literature of a consanguineous marriage between two subjects both affected by M.S. Out of 9 children who were born from this couple, 4 presented the M.S. (2 of them in a particularly severe form), 3 died during infancy, one was a stillborn and only one was a healthy individual.

The number of cases of this syndrome described in the medical literature is in continuous increase. Furthermore the growing prominence it is assuming in general medicine, owing to the skeletal, cardiac and vascular anomalies, stimulates to a more thorough knowledge of its hereditary transmission, in the hope of achieving a useful social prophylaxis.

A pedigree of «cup-shaped» ears (as described by Potter), with 7 cases in 5 generations. The abnormality is heredited as a dominant.

A recessive pedigree of retinitis pigmentosa and Laurence-Moon-Bardet-Biedl syndrome. The retinitis affects all male children of a normal couple; the only female child shows a complete Laurence-Moon-Bardet-Biedl syndrome. The pedigree of the family shows no other case of the disease in six generations.

After a synthetic review of the literature, the Author reports the results of his statistical researches on the parental age of 739 congenitally malformed children born, from 1942 to 1957, at the Istituto Provinciale di Maternità of Milan.

Concerning the mongolism it seems proved the influence of some particular factors correlated with the maternal age, while on the contrary the paternal age and the birth-order seem to have no influence. About the other malformations examined in this research the parental age and the birth-order appear without relevance.