Aldred Scott Warthin

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." 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.

In 1930 he published a book "The Creed of a Biologist: A Biologic Philosophy of Life. It he argues in favor of the theory, popular at the time, of the genetic transmission of acquired traits and extols the importance of using Eugenics for the protection and improvement of the race. The book ends with the following postscript: "CREDO :: I BELIEVE IN THE LAW * IN THE IMMORTALITY OF THE GERM PLASM AND THE CREATIVE * PROGRESSIVE EVOLUTION OF LIFE * IN THE VARIABILITY OF THE VALUE OF THE GERM PLASM THROUGH HEREDITY & ENVIRONMENT * IN THE TRANSMISSION OF ACQUIRED CHARACTERS * AND IN THE CONSCIOUS IMPROVEMENT OF THE RACE THROUGH THE LAWS OF VOLITIVE EUGENICS * I BELIEVE THAT THE AIM OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE IS THE PROTECTION * IMPROVEMENT AND CONTINUATION OF THE IMMORTAL GERM PLASM * ....."

Research

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.

Personal life

In 1900 he married another physician, Katherine Angell (born 1869), and they had four children. She died in 1940. His hobbies included golf, raising flowers (especially phlox), and collecting artistic portrayals of death, about which he wrote a scholarly monograph, The Physician of the Dance of Death. He died suddenly of asthma on May 23, 1931. He is buried in South Park Cemetery, Greensburg, Indiana. One of the pulmonary signs of pericarditis is named "Warthin's sound". He discovered a species of snail that was named in his honor. In 1927 his students and colleagues honored him with a Festschrift named Contributions to Medical Science. Warthin-Finkeldey cell His collected papers are preserved in the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.