Mendel and Human Genetics

Abstract

MENDEL left no records concerning studies in human genetics. His biographer Iltis, however, states that Mendel had shown persistently great interest in hereditary phenomena in man and in anthropological and medical problems. He studied the records of old Brunn families for aspects of inheritance and, in his own kindred, made careful observations of peculiarities in hair form, hair color, and body size in successive generations. Regularly he took measures of body dimensions of his growing nephews and he often attended autopsies in a hospital. Had Mendel's time not gradually been completely absorbed by his duties as abbot of his monastery, it might be surmised that he would have reported on his observations on man, expanded them and, with the insight gained from his experiments on peas, been able to clarify problems of human inheritance in such a way as to be counted a direct founder of human genetics. But it hardly changes the situation that Mendel did not make a specific contribution to that field. His basic discoveries in plants could be applied to man without requiring new insights. Human genetics had a slow growth. This has been ascribed to the difficulties which man with his long life span, his small families, and the absence of scientifically controlled matings offers to genetic analysis. It has also been ascribed to the dampening effect on bona fide research which resulted from class and race prejudice within the eugenics movement Undoubtedly both of these aspects had some influence, but perhaps most important was the fact that for decades the best minds working in genetics were interested in the general phenomena of inheritance, not in their expression in specific species. you want to the genetics of rabbits, it has been said informally some forty years ago, study rabbits. If you want to genetics, Drosophila ! Replace the word Drosophila for a still earlier period by pea (Pisum), fowl, sweet pea (Lathyrus), or gypsy moth (Lymantria), and by bread mold (Neurospora), colon bacterium (Escherichia), or bacteriophage for a subsequent one, and it becomes understandable why human genetics remained peripheral to the center of genetic advance. Beyond such influences on the development of a field, its history may depend on extrinsic phenomena, such as the state which related areas have attained. Mendel's paper can serve as an illustration. The reason that it remained without influence for thirty-five years and then, on its rediscovery, was immediately recognized in its importance, depended primarily on what had happened during the intervening period. This period had included the discovery of chromosomes and their behavior in cell division and gametogenesis, an intensive of biological variation, and the formulation, by Weismann, of a conceptual framework for a theory of heredity, development, and evolution. The time was ripe for Mendelism. One additional element should be mentioned which influences the growth of knowledge. This is the limitation of individuals and communication between individuals which leads them to recognize only slowly the significance of new findings, whether made by others or by themselves. The development of human genetics furnishes examples for such delays, as will be shown in the following pages. There are many interweaving threads in human genetics. A few main strands will be followed here in artificial separation from one another. The discussion will halt at the time when human genetics became of age, at the end of the period between the two World Wars.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.