Read She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity Online
Authors: Carl Zimmer
E
PIGRAPH
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”
: MartÃnez 2011.
blue blood
: Pratt 2007.
a clothes merchant or a moneylender
: MartÃnez 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
: Ãlvarez, 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 Ãlvarez, Ceballos, and Berra 2015; Hayman et al. 2017.
“wretched contemptible invalid”
: Quoted in Berra, Ãlvarez, 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 âstir 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 townâVacaville . . .”
: 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 âproofs' 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 thingsâplants, animals, and men . . .”
: Quoted in Clampett 1970.
Emma Wolverton
: See Allen 1983; Doll 2012; Smith 1985; Smith and Wehmeyer 2012a, 2012b; Zenderland 1998.