George Huntington

He first read the paper before the Meigs and Mason Academy of Medicine in Middleport, Ohio on February 15, 1872, and then published it in the Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia on April 13, 1872.

Their longitudinal observations combined with his own were invaluable in precisely describing this hereditary disease in multiple generations of a family in East Hampton on Long Island.

In a 1908 review, the eminent physician William Osler said of this paper: "In the history of medicine, there are few instances in which a disease has been more accurately, more graphically or more briefly described."

His son, George Lee Huntington, who was born there in 1811, studied medicine at New York University and spent the rest of his life working at his father's practice.

In a lecture he gave to the Neurological Society of New York in 1909, Huntington said:"Over fifty years ago in riding with my father on his professional rounds, I saw my first cases of 'the disorder,' which was the way in which the natives always referred to the dreaded disease.

Driving with my father through a wooded road leading from Easthampton to Amagansett, we suddenly came upon two women, mother and daughter, both bowing, twisting, grimacing.

On February 15, 1872, George Huntington gave his classic presentation on chorea to the Meigs and Mason Academy of Medicine in Middleport, Ohio at only 22 years old.

In that lecture he described the disease to the medical community, highlighting three characteristics: A summary was published in the German literature of Adolf Kussmaul and Carl Wilhelm Hermann Nothnagel in 1872 and, subsequently, the eponym was used more often by European authors.

"[9] In a 1908 review article, the eminent physician William Osler said of this paper: "In the history of medicine, there are few instances in which a disease has been more accurately, more graphically or more briefly described.

More than a few of these unlucky people were tried for witchcraft in colonial courts, and also in other ways, were persecuted because their involuntary movements were interpreted as "a derisive pantomime of the sufferings of the Savior during crucifixion.

The most complete clinical description, even including the dementia component, was published as early as 1859 by Johan Christian Lind, the doctor from the Setesdal district in Norway.

[12] In 1874, he transferred to New York and, apart from 2 years in North Carolina, spent the rest of his life practicing medicine in Dutchess County.