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Genetics and Medicine in the United States, 1800-1922
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Alan R. Rushton. 209 pages. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1994. $45.00.
Although families of bleeders, who were observed always to be male, had concerned important Colonial-era physicians such as Dr. John Otto, scientific genetics in this country did not begin until Gregor Mendel's seminal paper of 1865 was rediscovered in 1900. Alan Rushton, now a pediatrician associated with the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of Rutgers University, traces the history of genetics, which he calls "a young science" that has rapidly become important, in the United States. An early factor in the development of human genetics as a science was the establishment of the Eugenics Record Office in 1910. In 1912, the office's first director, C.B. Davenport, declared: "social progress is largely, if not chiefly, due to socially proper and fecund matings; social decline is largely, if not chiefly, due to socially undesirable fecund matings; permanent social improvement is got only by better breeding"
After extensive discussion, Rushton elucidates his opinion that "a paradigm that incorporates the interaction between genetic and environmental factors will emerge as the predominant model for mechanisms of human disease in the twenty-first century"
The preface includes the interesting story of how this scholarly book was researched. Numerous references and an index increase the book's usefulness. Recommended to anyone interested in the history of the development of our knowledge of heritable diseases.
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