Despite the genetic heterogeneity of man, surveys of disease among population groups and families are important in the search for possible etiologic mechanisms in obscure diseases. Whereas ulcerative colitis and regional enteritis hitherto had been regarded as characteristically limited to one member of a family, recent observations suggest a more than casual family incidence of these diseases.
Spriggs (1) in 1934, noted ulcerative colitis in 2 brothers and a sister. Moltke (2) recorded 5 families with multiple instances of the disease (mother, daughter, 2; brother, sister, 2; and father, daughter, one). Jackman and Bargen (3) in 1942, described occurrences in