Main description:

The essays in this collection examine how human heredity was understood between the end of the First World War and the early 1970s. The contributors explore the interaction of science, medicine and society in determining how heredity was viewed across the world during the politically turbulent years of the twentieth century.

Contents:

Introduction: The History of Human Heredity - Bernd Gausemeier, Staffan Muller-Wille and Edmund Ramsden Part I: Constructing Surveys of Heredity 1 Borderlands of Heredity: The Debate about the Hereditary Susceptibility to Tuberculosis, 1882-1945 - Bernd Gausemeier 2 Championing a US Clinic for Human Heredity: Pre-War Concepts and Post-War Constructs - Philip K Wilson 3 Remodelling the Boundaries of Normality: Lionel S Penrose and Population Surveys of Mental Ability - Edmund Ramsden Part II: Blood and Populations 4 From 'Races' to 'Isolates' and 'Endogamous Communities': Human Genetics and the Notion of Human Diversity in the 1950s - Veronika Lipphardt 5 Between the Transfusion Services and Blood Groups Research: Human Genetics in Britain during World War II - Jenny Bangham 6 The Abandonment of Race: Researching Human Diversity in Switzerland, 1944-1956 - Pascal Germann 7 Post-War and Post-Revolution: Medical Genetics and Social Anthropology in Mexico, 1945-70 - Edna Suarez-Diaz and Ana Barahona Part III: Human Heredity in the Laboratory 8 From Agriculture to Genomics: The Animal Side of of Human Genetics and the Organization of Model Organisms in the Longue Duree - Alexander von Schwerin 9 Cereals, Chromosomes and Colchicine: Crop Varieties at the Estacion Experimental Aula Dei and Human Cytogenetics, 1948-1958 - Maria Jesus Santesmases 10 Putting Human Genetics on a Solid Basis: Human Chromosome Research, 1950s-1970s - Soraya de Chadarevian Part IV: Understanding and Managing Disease 11 The Disappearance of the Concept of Anticipation in the Post-War World - Judith E Friedman 12 'The Most Hereditary of All Diseases': Haemophilia and the Utility of Genetics for Haematology, 1930-1970 - Stephen Pemberton 13 How PKU Became a Genetic Disease - Diane B Paul Part V: Reconstructing Discipline(s) 14 The Emergence of Genetic Counselling in the Federal Republic of Germany: Continuity and Change in the Narratives of Human Geneticists, c.1968-80 - Anne Cottebrune 15 Performing Anger: H J Muller, James V Neel and Radiation Risk - Susan Lindee 16 The Struggle for Authority over Italian Genetics: The Ninth International Congress of Genetics in Bellagio, 1948-53 - Francesco Cassata Notes Index