Volume 11

Treasury of human inheritance / edited by Karl Pearson, R.A. Fisher, L.S. Penrose.

Date:
1909-
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Treasury of human inheritance / edited by Karl Pearson, R.A. Fisher, L.S. Penrose. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ments regarding the first indications of the disease and the invariable accompanying dementia be allowed. The reputed cessation of symptoms under the influence of music was probably a psychological effect dependent upon an individual patient; it is not quite clear to me what is meant by the statement that when fully developed the disease “wants the paroxysmal character.” Lyon 1 in 1863 is evidently aware of the main features of the disease, which, he says, is known in the community by the name of “ migrims ” ; tradition, in his experi ence, ascribed the origin of the disease to a visitation upon those who reviled and mimicked Jesus of Nazareth while undergoing crucifixion—they and their children were ever after affected with chorea. This author was particularly interested in the inheritance of the disease and provides several small family histories, which are the earliest recorded pedigrees known to me 2 . In 1872 George Huntington published his famous account of “ Hereditary Chorea ” 3 as he called it, which led to the naming of the disease after him ; Osier writes of this memoir that in the history of medicine there are few instances in which a disease has been more accurately, more graphically, or more briefly described. Huntington, under three main headings, discusses: (1) The hereditary nature of the disease; (2) The tendency to insanity and suicide in the sufferers; and (3) The age of onset of the symptoms. “ The hereditary chorea... is confined to certain and fortunately a few families, and has been transmitted to them, an heirloom from generations away back in the dim past. It is spoken of by those in whose veins the seeds of the disease are known to exist, with a kind of horror, and not at all alluded to except through dire necessity, when it is mentioned as ‘ that disorder ’.... When either or both parents have shown manifestations of the disease... one or more of the offspring almost invariably suffer from the disease, if they live to adult age; but if by any chance these children go through life without it, the thread is broken, and the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the original shakers may rest assured that they are free from the disease.... Unstable and whimsical as the disease may be in other respects, hi this it is firm, it never skips a generation to manifest itself in another....” There is an arresting quality about this author’s first contribution to medical liter ature, which sufficiently explains its position in the history of the disease; Hun tington’s first recollections of the disease dated from boyhood when, on driving with his father on his professional rounds, near East Hampton, they “suddenly came upon two women, mother and daughter, both tall, thin, almost cadaverous; both bowing, twisting, grimacing. I stared in wonderment, almost in fear 4 .” The disease was believed to have been taken from England by emigrants who settled in East Hampton in 1649 and was well established when Huntington’s grandfather went to practise there in 1797; the latter physician was not called upon to treat it, for the sufferers were already well aware that there was no remedy for their malady. This attitude of the patients was confirmed more than a hundred years later when the late Dr Henry of Kemnay describing the family of Fig. 139 writes: “The whole family have been nourished on the shorter catechism, and regard it as a decree of 1 Bill. No. 7. 2 Figs. 68, 73, 141. 3 Bibl. No. 9. 4 Bibl. No. 80.