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Genesis of Genetics. The growing Knowledge of Heredity before and after Mendel (A brief historical synopsis written in honor of the Institutum Gregorio Mendel and the International Symposium on Medical Genetics held in Rome, 6-7 September 1953)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Claudius Francis Mayer

Summary

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The historiography of genetics is not very extensive. As a tribute to Gregor Mendel the Genesis of modern Genetics is briefly described in its full range, from the Paleolithic Age to Lysenko. Since the earliest times, the knowledge of heredity had been growing in proportion with the development of ideas on reproduction and continuity of the species. For various forms of life, the basic problems of interest remained essentially the same during all historical periods; only the emphasis shifted from the gross to the more detailed, and the answers oscillated between the theories of preformation and epigenesis. Against this historical background, Mendel and the Mendelian laws stand out as the basic foundation of genetics.

The vital growing ideas on generation and evolution of plants, animals, and man are briefly reviewed and exposed as they had occurred before and after Mendel. The historical sketch leads us to ancient Assyria, India, the biblical times, and the classical Antiquity, to the early Greek philosophers and physicians whose works are sampled to illustrate the ancient beliefs concerning the role of male and female semen in generation, and concerning the proportional share of parents in the formation of body and mind of the offspring. The medieval knowledge on heredity is at its highest in the writings of Albertus Magnus whose work represents the refinement of scholastic science.

In these earlier times people did not know the exact functions of the organs of generation, or the true nature of sex. After the invention of the microscope in the 16th, and with a more liberal spirit of research in the 17th centuries, the sexual life and the male and female germ cells of many bisexual beings, including man, were gradually discovered during the 200-year period from 1677 to 1877. This happened with all sorts of speculation about heredity and about the origin and evolution of life. Meanwhile, many practical and theoretical hybridizers saw the various peculiarities in the filial generations, and many observed normal and abnormal characters transmitted from parents to offspring. Yet, none could formulate these observations into a mathematical regularity of inheritance until the reports of Gregor Mendel in 1865 on the result of his plant-crossings.

His discovery was buried, however, until 1900 when other biologists came to the same results, and revived and accepted his rules as the laws of heredity. From then on, modern genetics advanced rapidly and branched into many activities, everywhere fully supporting the views of Mendel. Thus, Mendel is truly the father of genetics, except for communist Russians whose political theories demand the denial of Mendelian heredity and the adherence to older discarded theories.

Genetics has the destiny to solve many practical problems in the life of nations, and to investigate a number of important yet unknown factors, in order to utilize the gene theory of heredity, and the “nuclear energy”, for a wider and brighter service of humanity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Acta geneticae medicae et gemellologiae: twin research , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , September 1953 , pp. 237 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Twin Studies 1953

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119 McCartney, 1. c., quotes Oppian who had recorded similar practice among the Spartans.

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126 McCartney; see Footnote 29 (1. c., 31).

127 Liber 7, Cap. 10, Historia naturalis: “…In Lepidorum gente tres, intermisso ordine, obducto membram oculo, genitos accepimus. Similes quidem alios avo: et ex geminis quoque alterum patri, alterum matri: annoque post genitum, maiori similem fuisse ut geminum”.

128 Liber 7, Cap. 10, Historia naturalis: “Indubitatum exemplum est Nicaei nobilis pyctae Byzantii geniti, qui adulterio Aethiopis nata matre, nil a ceteris colore differente, ipso avum regeneravit Aethiopem”.

129 Liber 7, Cap. 10, Historia naturalis: “Cogitatio etiam, utriuslibet animum subito transvolans, effingere similitudinem aut miscere existimatur”.

130 Liber 7, Cap. 10, Historia naturalis: “Ideoque plures in homine, quam in ceteris omnibus animalibus differentiae: quoniam velocitas cogitationum, animique celeritas, et ingenii varietas multiformes notas imprimat: cum ceteris animantibus immobiles sint animae, et similes omnibus, singulisque in suo cuique genere”.

131 Liber 7, Cap. 10, Historia naturalis: “…Haec facit ubertas soli, temperies caeli, aquarum abundantia, (si libeat credere) ita sub una ficu turmae condantur equitum”.

132 Lib. 24, cap. 102.

133 Lib. 13, cap. 7: “Adeoque est Veneris intellectus, ut cultus etiam excogitatus sit ab homine, ex maribus flore ac lanugine, interim vero tantum pulvere insperso in feminis”.

134 Lucretius: “Semper enim partus duplici de semine constat”.

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139 The Arab knowledge on generation will be included in one of my early future publications. I have historical evidence contrary to the opinion which is generally held at present by animal breeders as to the origin of artificial insemination.

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141 Ibid., 80.

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144 Cf. his Opera omnia. Venez., 1591 (De legibus).

145 For the full description of the theories of Albertus Magnus on constitution, complexion, genotype, phenotype, etc. see my study: Die Personallehre in der Naturphilosophie von Albertus Magnus. Kyklos, Lpz., 1929, 2: 191–257 Google Scholar.

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150 Lib. 3, De animal., tr. 2, c. 8, 162.

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158 In his Rariorum aliquot stirpium per Hispaniae observatarum libri (Antw., 1576); cf. Zirkle, Footnote 40 (p. 69).

159 Reprinted in Schurig, Syllepsologia. Cap. 9, Sect. 5: De gravidarum imaginatione, p. 651 (Dresd., 1731):

“Atqui graves tradunt sophi,

quodcumque matres interim

imaginantur fortiter,

dum liberis dature opera

eius latenter, et notas

certas et indelibiles

modoque inexplicabili

in semen ipsum congeri.

Quibus receptis intime

simulque concrescentibus

a mente matris insitam

natus refert imaginem”.

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175 In his Exercitationes de generatione animalium (Lond., 1651)Google Scholar the introduction contains these words: “…omnia… ex ovo progigni… primosque conceptus… ova esse”. But at another place his definition of ovum is 1) any beginning that is capable of living, and 2) anything that has the nature of an egg though it does not look such. Cf. Lippmann, Footnote 47, (l. c., p. 58).

176 De mulierum organis generationi inservientibus. Delft, 1672. Also in his Op. omn., Leiden, 1677Google ScholarPubMed.

177 It was Nicolas Steno who saw the female gonads in viviparous fish, and first called them ovaries. His work: Musculorum descriptio (1667).

178 de Graaf, R.: Op. omn., p. 302 Google Scholar: “communis femellarum testiculorum usus est, ova generare, fovere, et ad maturitatem promovere… potius mulierum ovaria, quam testes appellanda veniunt… illi ad generationem summopere necessarii existant; quod… confirmat ipsa femellarum castratio, quam sterilitas infallibiliter concomitatur”.

179 The true mammalian ovum was discovered by Karl Baer in 1827.

180 See e. g. Kerckring's, Theodor Anthropogeniae iconographia (1671)Google Scholar, in which cases of ovarian pregnancy are reported.

181 See his Miscellanea medico-practica. Ulm, 1698.

182 In his treatise on the Pancreas, Brunner doubted the ovist theory.

183 Among the skeptics were Peyer (1685), Harder (1687) and all the socalled animalculists.

184 It was Pouchet in the 19th century who claimed the glory of discovery for Louis Gardin. I could not check the right of this claim. Others who were mentioned as discoverers of the spermatozoon are Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656-1725), and Stenon (1638-1687).

185 Leeuwenhoek was also practical breeder of Dutch rabbits and Belgian pigeons. For this reason J. Boeke considers him a precursor of Mendel, But Leeuwenhoek only mentions how rabbits are bred by crossing wild gray males with domestic females of any color, and the paternal gray will dominate in the offspring, cf. his Epistola de generatione ranarum, 26 July, 1683 (In his Op. omn., v. 1, 49).

186 Lamzweerde, J. B., Historia molarum uteri. Leiden, 1868 Google Scholar: “…attamen aeque ac semen masculinutn omnium partium corporis feminini rudimenta et virtutem seminalem complectitur” (p. 72).

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198 His breeding experiments are in the memoir “Esquisse des amusements philosophiques que les oiseaux d'une basse-cour ont à offrir” which appeared in: Art de faire éclore et d'élever en toute saison des oiseaux domestiques de toutes espèces, etc. Par., 1749.

199 Parthenogenesis had been observed in 1667 by Goedart in the female of Orgyia gonostigma (cf. Metamorphosis et historia naturalis insectorum, pars 2, p. 106, 1667; 2. ed. Lond., 1685). – Thereafter it was noted by Leeuwenhoek (1695), Blancard (1696), Albrecht (1706), Réaumur (1741).

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