Historical Perspective: Medical Heredity: An Alternative to Mendelian Inheritance
Main Article Content
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6788-6876
Abstract
Although genetics is central to medicine today, physicians routinely used an alternative system of Medical Heredity well into the 20th century. This reflected general medical experience, and applied to non-inherited disorders as well. There were six major overlapping and interacting components: 1. Heredity, a transmitted force; 2. Diatheses, or predispositions; 3. Polymorphism, or variability; 4. Neuropathic and psychopathic inheritance. 5. Degenerate heredity, or degeneration, a progressive weakening of heredity with transmission. 6. Blastophoria, a prenatal weakening of heredity from adverse influences. Also included were now outmoded concepts of biotypes, atavism, and stigmata of degeneration. Physicians noted familial disorders in siblings, hereditary conditions in multiple generations, and even sex-limited inheritance, seemingly anticipating Mendel. However, this system was better suited to common types of inheritance than to rare genetic disorders. It was supported by eugenics until eugenics was discredited in the late 1940s, and vanished by the late 1950s as molecular biology validated Mendelian genetics and undermined Medical Heredity, while antibiotics and vaccinations reduced support from experiences with infectious diseases.
Article Details
The Medical Research Archives grants authors the right to publish and reproduce the unrevised contribution in whole or in part at any time and in any form for any scholarly non-commercial purpose with the condition that all publications of the contribution include a full citation to the journal as published by the Medical Research Archives.
References
2. Garrod A. The Croonian lectures on inborn errors of metabolism. The Lancet 1908 172(4427):1-7.
3. Rushton AR. Genetics and Medicine in the United States, 1800 -1922. Baltimore Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1994
4. Rushton AR. Genetics and Medicine in Great Britain 1600 to 1939. Bloomington, Indiana: Trafford Publishing, 2009
5. Lubinsky M. 2023. Genesis of a fact: Tay-Sachs disease as a “simple recessive.” J Pediatr Genet 12: 187–192
6. Lubinsky M. Genesis of a Fact: Friedreich Ataxia as a Recessive Disorder. Open J Clin Med Case Repts 2024 10(1):2183.
7. Ribot T. Heredity: A Psychological Study of its Phenomena. Laws, Causes, and Consequences. NY: D Appleton and Co. 1875
8. Cockayne EA. Inherited Abnormalities of the Skin and Its Appendages. London: Oxford University Press. 1933
9. Nettleship E. The Bowman Lecture on some hereditary diseases of the eye. Trans Ophthal Soc United Kingdom 1909 29:i-cxcviii.
10. Myerson A. Inheritance of Mental Diseases. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Co. 1925
11. Kendler KS. Medical genetics in the 19th century as background to the development of psychiatric genetics. Amer J Med Genet B: Neuropsych Genet 2022 189(5):119-127.
12. Kendler KS, Klee A. Karl Grassmann's 1896 paper “critical overview of contemporary theories of the heredity of the psychoses.” Amer J Med Genet B: Neuropsych Genet. 2023;192(3-4):41-52.
13. Lubinsky M. Charles Davenport and epilepsy as a single gene disorder. World J Pharm Med Res. 2024a. 10(1):135-141.
14. Lubinsky M.. Infectious diseases and traditional medical ideas about inheritance. I. General Considerations. J Infec Dis. 2025 9(1) Articles DOI: 10.52338/joid.2025.4520.
15. Davenport CB.. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. NY: Henry Holt. 1911
16. López-Beltrán C. The medical origins of heredity. In: S Muller-Wille and H-J Rheinberg, Eds. Heredity Produced: At the Crossroads of Biology, Politics, and Culture, 1500-1870. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; Pp. 105-132. 2007
17. Hutchinson J. The Pedigree of Disease: Being Six Lectures on Temperament, Idiosyncrasy, and Diathesis. NY: William Wood & Co. 1885
17a.Lubinsky MS. Degenerate heredity: A doctrine in medicine and biology: Perspec Biol Med 1993 37: 77-90.
18. Davenport CB, Muncey EB. Huntington's chorea in relation to heredity and eugenics. Amer J Psych 1916 73(2):195-222.
19. Ashley-Montagu MF. The concept of atavism. Sci 1938 87(2264):462-463.
20. McKusick VA. Genetics and dermatology or if I were to rewrite Cokcayne's Inherited Abnormalities of the Skin. J Invest Dermatol 1973 60(6):343-359.
21. Richards RJ. Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb: A historical misunderstanding. Stud Hist Phil Biol Biomed Sci 2000 31(1):11–32.
22. Fisher RA. Mendelism and biometry. 1911 In: Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics. Including Selected Correspondence of R.A. Fisher with Leonard Darwin and Others. Ed. JH Bennett. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983:50-58.
23. Garrod A. The Huxley lecture on diathesis. Br Med J 1927 2(3490):967-971.
24. Ackerknecht EH. Diathesis: the word and the concept in medical history. Bull Hist Med 1982 56(3): 317-325.
25. Lubinsky M. Infectious Diseases and Traditional Medical Ideas about Inheritance. II. Tuberculosis, Syphilis, and Rheumatic Fever as Models. J Infec Dis 2025a. 9(1) Articles 2025 id -JOID-4529.
26. Cazenave PLA, Schedel HA. Manual of Diseases of the Skin... Notes and Additions by TH Burgess. 2nd Amer Ed Enlarged and Corrected from last French Ed., Additional Notes by H.D. Buckley. NY: Samuel S & William Wood. 1852
27. Vorkastner W. Epilepsy. In: A. Church. (Ed.). Diseases of the Nervous System. NY: D. Appleton and Co.: 1909 1012-1044.
28. Kevles DJ. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 1998
29. McKim WD. Heredity and Human Progress. New York and London: G.P. Putnam's Sons- The Knickerbocker Press. 1901
30. Bing R, Haymaker W. Textbook of Nervous Diseases. Translated and enlarged from the 5th German edition [1938]. St Louis: CV Mosby Co. 1939
31. Burke NHM. Stigmata of degeneration in relation to mental deficiency. Proc Roy Soc Med 1931 24(4): 413-428.
32. Morgan TH. Sex limited inheritance in Drosophila Sci 1910 32(812):120-2.
33. Reid GA. The interpretation of Mendelian phenomena. Nature 1907 77(1986):54-55.
34. Maudsley DH. Heredity in health and disease. Eclectic Mag For Lit Sci Art 1886.44:13-21.
35. McKusick VA. On lumpers and splitters, or the nosology of genetic disease. Perspec Biol Med 1969 12(2):298-312.
36. Pearson K, Nettleship E, Usher CH. A Monograph on Albinism in Man. London: Dulau. 1911-13.
37. Rosanoff AJ, Orr FI. A study of heredity in insanity in the light of the Mendelian theory. Amer J Psych 1911 68(2):221-261.
38. Cairns J, Stent GS, Watson JD (Eds.). Phage and the Origins of Molecular Biology. Cold Spring Harbor: Laboratory of Quantitative Biology 1966.
39. Nasatir ED New organizational goals and membership response: National Foundation volunteers since the advent of the Salk vaccine. NY: Columbia University, Bureau of Applied Social Research. 1962.