Book Review

HUMAN PEDIGREE STUDIES. Proceedings of aConference Organized by the Galton Institute,

London, 1998. Peel RA, editor. The Galton Institute,1999. ISBN 0950406643. No price given.

A review of the relationship between Galton andDarwinism in its search for a theory of biological in-heritance during the second half of the 19th century;between Galton and the formation of human genetics;between Galton and his followers and the emergingMendelism of the early 20th century; between Galtonand eugenics in this century in England and elsewhere;and even that between the use of Galton’s pedigreeconventions and eugenic means would require a booklarger than the one at hand. And in any event many ofthese ramifications of Galton’s life and work have beendiscussed at length and in depth in such volumes asthat by D.W. Forrest on Galton (1974); Daniel Kevles:“In the Name of Eugenics” (1985); Robert Proctor: “Ra-cial Hygiene” (1988); Mark Adams “The Wellborn Sci-ence (1990) on eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil,and Russia; Robert Jay Lifton (1986) on “The Nazi Doc-tors” in general with special treatment of Mengele andhis major professor of human genetics, von Verschuer,at the University of Frankfurt; and more narrowly byPauline M.H. Mazumdar (1992) on “Eugenics, HumanGenetics and Human Failings: On the Eugenic Societyin Britain.”

Nevertheless, this small book of 117 pages has a defi-nite appeal and interest to historians of eugenics andgenetics, not the least because two of the contributingauthors are our distinguished colleagues in medicaland human genetics, Elizabeth Thompson and RobertResta, both of Seattle, Washington.

Considering the vast body of literature on Galtonism,to a substantial part contributed by Galton himself, theEditor’s Introduction by Robert Peel, President of theGalton Institute, is an admirably succinct introductionto Galton’s work in heredity (and its initial impetusand motivation), and his introduction (1869) and use ofthe pedigree in Anglo-American human genetics andeugenics. And while I have strong reservations aboutthe statement that: “In collaboration with Darwin, Gal-ton thus anticipated Mendel’s ratios as well as the con-cept of diploid inheritance,” I still find Peel’s treatmentof Galton a useful introduction to the biometrical as-pects of genetics, and the scientific use of the humanpedigree.

Anthony Camp was the former Director of the Soci-ety of Genealogists, London, and is the present Presi-dent of the Federation of Family History Societies; heprovides a fascinating history of the construction offamily histories and of genealogy, primarily from aBritish perspective, however, with an appropriate tip-of-the-hat to modern computerization and access topublic records, especially through the Genealogical So-ciety of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

of Salt Lake City, Utah, which has also benefited somuch of research in human genetics by my fellow fac-ulty members at the University of Utah.

The contribution of Pauline M.H. Mazumdar, Profes-sor of the History of Medicine, Institute of History andPhilosophy of Science and Technology at the Universityof Toronto to the volume is the Galton Lecture of 1998:“Eugenics, the Pedigree Years” in which she reviewspedigree “methods” from Galton in 1869, the ResearchCommittee of the Eugenics Education Society, set up inresponse to the Royal Commission on the Poor Law andits eugenic effects, to R.A. Fisher who joined the Re-search Committee after the (first) war, to the eugenicscommittee of the American Breeder’s Associationwhose subcommittee on Feeblemindedness addressedthe issue of annihilating the “hideous serpent of hope-less vicious protoplasm,” to C.B. Davenport and theEugenics Record Office of the Carnegie Institution ofWashington and his “enforcer” Harry H. Laughlin, toWilhelm Weinberg who attempted heroically, but inthe end unsuccessfully, to impose proper methods ofsegregation analysis and correction of ascertainmentbias on the work of the psychiatrist Ernst Rudin, whoeventually reverted to primitive genealogism, aban-doning Mendelism for “empirical genetics prognosis”and, in 1934, becoming one of the authors of the text onthe “Law on the Prevention of Genetically DefectiveOffspring” of 14 July 1933. On the title page of thatiniquitous tome Rudin is identified as the Professor forPsychiatry at the University and Director of the KaiserWilhelms-Institute for the Genealogy and Demographyof the German Research Institute for Psychiatry at theUniversity of Munich. For further details on the historyof British eugenics readers are urged to consult Pau-line Mazumdar’s above-mentioned authoritative book.

Elizabeth Thompson, the author of the well-knownbook on Pedigree Analysis in Human Genetics, is Pro-fessor of Statistics at the University of Washington,Seattle, and offers an excellent review on Human Pedi-grees and Human Genetics, addressing such issues asMendel’s laws and chance events, founder effects inhuman populations, pedigree relationships and geneidentity probabilities, complexity in human pedigrees,and the genetic analysis of complex traits.

Robert Resta, a well-known genetic counselor-humanist brings two contributions to this volume: anupdate of his earlier paper on the rise of the pedigree inhuman genetics (J Genet Counsel 2:235–260, 1993),and a very well-written and carefully considered chap-ter on the “Social, ethical and technical implications ofpedigree construction: what the maps tell us about themapmakers” with the instructive example of the Eu-genics Education Society’s publication of the Wedge-wood-Darwin-Galton pedigree, stressing the genius ofselected men but omitting the citation of the severalindividuals who were mentally retarded, epileptic, ad-dicts, deaf and/or consanguineous, including the men-

American Journal of Medical Genetics 92:298–299 (2000)

© 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

tally retarded Charles Waring Darwin, born whenEmma was 48 and probably suffering from Down syn-drome, dying at 18 months.

David Hawgood, an author and publisher in London,provides a useful chapter on computers for research,storage, and presentation of family histories, drawingextensively on his experience constructing his ownpedigree using publicly available records in the UK.

I for one greatly enjoyed the book learned much fromit, and recommend it enthusiastically to all seeking anintroduction to human genealogy, pedigrees, and theinvolvement of eugenics in their history.

John M. OpitzUniversity of Utah,Salt Lake City, Utah

Book Review 299