She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity (77 page)

E
PIGRAPH

Darwin 1868
.

P
ROLOGUE

“most wondrous map”
: National Human Genome Research Institute 2000.

genetic material pieced together from a mix of people
: Wade 2002.

a gene called HEXA
: US National Library of Medicine 2017.

The emperor, clad in black
: Curtis 2013; Parker 2014; Prescott 1858.

sat before the assembly
: Belozerskaya 2005.

“May the Almighty bless you with a son”
: Quoted in Prescott 1858, p. 15.

The Romans did not use their word
: Du Plessis, Ando, and Tuori 2016.

“that person's assets pass to us”
: Quoted in Du Plessis 2016.

The Apinayé of Brazil had it both ways
: Maybury-Lewis 1960.

the sons split their father's land
: Müller-Wille and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger 2007.

Venice's Great Council created the Golden Book
: Johnson 2013.

a pageant that was put on in 1432
: Osberg 1986.

a pair of trees
: Kingsford 1905; Klapisch-Zuber 1991.

the teachings of ancient Greeks and Romans
: Cobb 2006.

Aeschylus
: from
Eumenides.

a tribe known as the Longheads
: Zirkle 1946, p. 94.

“The people of cold countries . . .”
: Quoted in Eliav-Feldon, Isaac, and Ziegler 2010, p. 40.

In the 1200s, the philosopher Albertus Magnus
: Ibid., p. 197.

the Malaysian island of Langkawi
: Carsten 1995.

falcons had the noblest blood
: Oggins 2004.

animals that shared the same blood: a
race
: Eliav-Feldon, Isaac, and Ziegler 2010.

tips for providing a “good race” of horse
: Quoted in Eliav-Feldon, Isaac, and Ziegler 2010, p. 249.

“The good man of good race always returns to his origins . . .”
: Ibid., p. 250.

carried in their blood and embedded in their seed
: Johnson 2013, p. 131.

“From the days of Alexander
 . . .” Quoted in Eliav-Feldon, Isaac, and Ziegler 2010, p. 248.

Jews and
conversos
alike as the Jewish “race”
: Martínez 2011.

blue blood
: Pratt 2007.

a clothes merchant or a moneylender
: Martínez 2011.

“I have found no monsters”
: Columbus, “Santangel Letter.”

They declared Native Americans to be natural slaves
: Pagden 1982.

“For them there is no tomorrow . . .”
: Quoted in Pagden 1982, p. 42.

“Nature proportioned their bodies . . .”
: Ibid.

African slaves
: Sweet 1997.

“possess attributes that are quite similar to those of dumb animals”
: Quoted in Kendi 2016, p. 20.

straight to Brazil, Peru, and Mexico
: Smedley 2007.

the descendants of Ham, one of Noah's sons
: Haynes 2007 and Robinson 2016.

“. . . And from this race these blacks . . .”
: Quoted in Haynes 2007, p. 34.

a small upper jaw that failed to develop
: Peacock et al. 2014.

Don Carlos
: See Hodge 1977; Parker 2014.

a higher rate of infant mortality
: Álvarez, Ceballos, and Quinteiro 2009.

“. . . how could the light trifle of his substance . . .”
: Montaigne 1999.

People did not reproduce; they were engendered
: Jacob 1993.

Luis Mercado
: See Mercado and Musto 1961; Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2012.

“modest in dress . . .”
: Mercado and Musto 1961, p. 350.

A hereditary disease was like a stamp
: Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2012.

“. . . teach the deaf and dumb to speak . . .”
: Quoted in Mercado and Musto 1961, p. 371.

“most beautiful in features . . .”
: Quoted in Langdon-Davies 1963, p. 15.

“He seems extremely weak . . .”
: Ibid., p. 62.

“He has a ravenous stomach . . .”
: Quoted in Cowans 2003, p. 189.

“without allowing the least dismemberment . . .”
: Quoted in Langdon-Davies 1963, p. 256.

his clothes were foul
: Schwartz 2008.

a blue-and-white sign informing visitors
: Dare 1905.

Luther Burbank
: For biographical details on Burbank, see Beeson 1927; Burbank and Hall 1939; Dare 1905; Dreyer and Howard 1993; Janick 2015; Pandora 2001; Smith 2009; Stansfield 2006; Sweet 1905; Thurtle 2007.

“His results are so stupendous . . .”
: de Vries 1905, p. 340.

Burbank's postman brought him thirty thousand letters
: Dare 1905.

“the wizard of horticulture”
: Ibid.

“Such a knowledge of Nature . . .”
: Quoted in Palladino 1994.

“. . . a scale so extensive as to suggest magic . . .”
: Quoted in Eames 1896.

“. . . there was no stone in the plum . . .”
: de Vries 1905, p. 334.

“the inherent constitutional life force . . .”
: Burbank 1904, p. 35.

Merino
: Müller-Wille and Rheinberger 2012; Wood and Orel 2001.

Robert Bakewell
: Pawson 1957.

“the Mr. Bakewell who invented sheep”
: Ibid., p. 7.

Mr. Bakewell was born in 1725
: Wykes 2004.

“the smaller the bones . . .”
: Quoted in Young 1771, p. 111.

He chalked his data on slates
: Wood 1973.

Bakewell's new breed
: Wood and Orel 2001.

“only fit to glide down the throat of a Newcastle coal-heaver”
: Ibid., p. 109.

“My people want fat mutton and I gave it to them”
: Quoted in Wood 1973, p. 235.

“this prince of breeders”
: Quoted in Wood and Orel 2001, p. 232.

“had been making observations”
: Ibid., p. 106.

“He has convinced the unbelievers of the truth . . .”
: Quoted in Wykes 2004, p. 55.

Frederick Augustus
: Wood and Orel 2001.

“The Association of Friends, Experts and Supporters . . .”
: Poczai, Bell, and Hyvönen 2014.

Thomas Andrew Knight
: Kingsbury 2011.

“None appeared so well calculated to answer my purpose”
: Knight 1799, p. 196.

“. . . any number of new varieties may be obtained”
: Ibid., p. 196.

“A single bushel . . .”
: Quoted in Kingsbury 2011, p. 81.

“genetic rules of nature”
: Quoted in Poczai et al. 2014.

Napp and his friars got into the breeding business
: Allen 2003.

to pay off the priory's massive debts
: Endersby 2009.

“a lengthy, troublesome and random affair”
: Quoted in Orel 1973, p. 315.

The trouble would not go away
: Gliboff 2013.

“What we should have been dealing with . . .”
: Quoted in Müller-Wille, Staffan, and Rheinberger 2007, p. 241.

semaphore flags or telegraph messages
: Gliboff 2013.

a pair of “antagonistic elements”
: See Van Dijk and Ellis 2016.

“. . . dealing only with individual phenomena . . .”
: Ibid.

Abbot Mendel got so ensnared in tax battles
: Schwartz 2008.

By 1837, there were a million Merinos in Vermont alone
: Vermont Historical Society.

climbed beyond a thousand dollars
: Smith 2009.

hen fever
: Burnham 1855.

Jesse Hiatt
: See Friese 2010; Kingsbury 2011; Pollan 2001.

while she gathered strawberries
: Beeson 1927.

“the wood to bring, weeds to pull . . .”
: Ibid., p. 58.

“. . . not second-hand, but first-hand . . .”
: Quoted in Dreyer and Howard 1993, p. 49.

“Nature was calling me to the land . . .”
: Quoted in Burbank and Hall 1927, p. 9.

The textbooks Burbank read in school
: Dreyer and Howard 1993, p. 270.

if a woman “has a small, taper waist . . .”
: Cutter 1850, p. 242.

“. . . it is impossible for most people to realize the thrills . . .”
: Quoted in Beeson 1927, p. 74.

“The laws governing inheritance”
: Darwin 1859, p. 14.

jotting down notes and questions
: Geison 1969; Bartley 1992.

Bakewell's famous rules
: Wood 1973.

a short pamphlet entitled
Questions
 . . .
: Darwin 1839.

“the greatest treat, in my opinion . . .”
: Quoted in Secord 1981, p. 166.

alienists
: López-Beltrán 2004; López-Beltrán 1995; Noguera-Solano and Ruiz-Gutiérrez 2009.

“mental alienation is the most eminently hereditary”
: Quoted in Porter 2018.

Treatise on Natural Inheritance
: Discussed in Churchill 1987.

a constellation of disorders
: See Álvarez, Ceballos, and Berra 2015; Hayman et al. 2017.

“wretched contemptible invalid”
: Quoted in Berra, Álvarez, and Ceballos 2010, p. 376.

“It is the great drawback to my happiness . . .”
: Ibid., p. 377.

he saved that profound matter for a book of its own
: Geison 1969.

the strange ways in which animals and plants reproduced
: Müller-Wille 2010.

“minute granules or atoms”
: Darwin 1868.

something that combined
cells
with
genesis
: Browne 2002.

“merely a provisional hypothesis . . .”
: Quoted in Deichmann 2010, p. 92.

“It has thrown a flood of light on my mind . . .”
: Quoted in Browne 2002, p. 286.

improved breeds of cattle grew small lungs
: Darwin 1868, p. 299.

“. . . said to have been trying an experiment . . .”
: Ibid., p. 3.

“While I had been struggling along . . .”
: Burbank and Hall 1927, p. 74.

His cabbage seeds and sorghum won prizes
: Smith 2009.

“Stored in every cherished seed . . .”
: Burbank and Hall 1927, p. 12.

“In short I was a product of all my heredity”
: Ibid., p. 20.

“an inherited sensitiveness about money”
: Quoted in Dreyer and Howard 1993, p. 78.

“These were indeed dark days”
: Ibid., p. 77.

“this already famous Potato”
: Ibid., p. 78.

“Something must happen to ‘stir up their heredities' . . .”
: Burbank and Hall 1939, p. 121.

“. . . it is like stirring up an ant-hill . . .”
: Ibid., p. 95.

“In his laboratory garden he has done for Nature . . .”
: Dare 1905.

“one California town—Vacaville . . .”
: Ibid.

“he stands unique in the world”
: Jordan and Kellogg 1909, p. 79.

“In the present state of science . . .”
: Quoted in James 1868, p. 367.

“made a marked epoch in my own mental development”
: Quoted in Galton 1909.

“It seems hardly credible now . . .”
: Ibid.

“I find that talent is transmitted by inheritance . . .”
: Quoted in Galton 1865, p. 157.

“Men and women of the present day . . .”
: Ibid., p. 166.

Galton became convinced that pangenesis “is the only theory . . .”
: Galton 1870.

“Good rabbit news!”
: Quoted in Bulmer 2003, p. 118.

The experiments proved “a dreadful disappointment”
: Ibid.

“The conclusion from this large series of experiments . . .”
: Galton 1870, p. 404.

“I have not said one word about the blood”
: Darwin 1871.

August Weismann
: Churchill 2015.

“This substance transfers its hereditary tendencies . . .”
: Weismann 1889, p. 74.

“Ever since I began to doubt the transmission . . .”
: Ibid., p. 319.

“All such ‘proofs' collapse”
: Ibid., p. 434.

“We talked for a short time about all kinds of things . . .”
: Quoted in Van der Pas 1970.

a thirty-five-year-old paper by “a certain Mendel”
: Quoted in Schwartz 2008, p. 84.

A British doctor named Archibald Garrod
: Comfort 2012.

“whole problem of heredity . . .”
: Quoted in Schwartz 2008, p. 114.

“perhaps as original as Darwin's”
: Quoted in Pandora 2001, p. 504.

“The sole aim of all his labors . . .”
: Quoted in de Vries 1905, p. 333.

retiring to the village of Lunteren
: Schwartz 2008.

“. . . your experimental investigations . . .”
: Quoted in Dreyer and Howard 1993, p. 132.

“Environment is the architect of heredity”
: Burbank 1906.

the young botanist seemed to be preparing to explode his legend
: Glass 1980.

“great contributions to good taste”
: Quoted in Pandora 2001, p. 496.

The painter Frida Kahlo
: Giese 2001.

“All things—plants, animals, and men . . .”
: Quoted in Clampett 1970.

Emma Wolverton
: See Allen 1983; Doll 2012; Smith 1985; Smith and Wehmeyer 2012a, 2012b; Zenderland 1998.