Aldred Scott Warthin
| Aldred Scott Warthin | |
|---|---|
| Born |
October 21, 1866 Greensburg, Indiana,US |
| Died | May 23, 1931 (aged 64) Ann Arbor, Michigan, US |
| Alma mater | Indiana University; University of Michigan Medical School |
| Occupation | Pathologist |
| Known for | Research on cancer heritability, syphilis, etc. |
Aldred Scott Warthin (October 21, 1866 − May 23, 1931) was an American pathologist whose research laid the foundation for understanding the heritability of certain cancers. He has been described as "the father of cancer genetics".
He was born October 21, 1866 in Greensburg, Indiana. His parents were Edward Mason Warthin and Eliza Margaret (Weist) Warthin. As a young man he studied piano and earned a teacher's diploma from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music in 1877. In 1888 he received an A.B. in science from Indiana University.
He then entered the University of Michigan Medical School, earning an M.A. in 1890, an M.D. in 1891 and a Ph.D. in 1893. He did postgraduate study in Vienna and Freiburg, then joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, where he remained for the rest of his career.
In 1892 he was appointed a demonstrator in internal medicine at the University of Michigan. In 1895 he took charge of the pathology laboratory, and in 1903 he was named laboratory director and professor of pathology, positions he held until his death in 1931. He also served as chair of the pathology department for most of that time. He taught more than 3,000 medical students, who described him as "the greatest living teacher of pathology".
He was a master of the American College of Physicians and served as its first vice president. He also served as editor of the Annals of Clinical Medicine (now the Annals of Internal Medicine).
In 1895, a young seamstress of his acquaintance told him about her family's long history of cancer deaths. Intrigued, he researched her family's history, searching death records and administering questionnaires, and found multiple cases of cancer. He followed the family, which he called "family G", for decades, and in 1913 he published their history in the Archives of Internal Medicine. His article was one of the first to make the case that cancer was heritable in humans, and the medical pedigree of family G (which was later determined to suffer from hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer or Lynch Syndrome) is one of the longest and most detailed cancer genealogies in the world. By 1913 he had worked up the pedigrees of 29 cancer-susceptible families. He found one family in which 27 of the 144 descendants of a cancer patient also had cancer. He located several sets of identical twins that developed identical cancers in mirror-image sites. He became convinced that both susceptibility and immunity to cancer could be inherited. He began his genetic studies before Gregor Mendel's principles of genetics became widely known. It took many decades before the heritability of cancer was finally accepted by the medical community, partly through the research of Henry T. Lynch.
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