Huntington was no academic or medical researcher, just a simple family doctor who wrote a landmark description of the fatal hereditary disease now known as Huntington's disease.

Neither was he the first to recognize the malady that now bears his name. In fact, his father, George Lee Huntington, and grandfather, Abel Huntington, were both family physicians who were aware of the disease. The original manuscript of Huntington's classic paper, presented in 1872 to a local medical society in Middleport, Ohio, and published later that year in the Philadelphia-based Medical and Surgical Reporter, contains penciled annotations from his father, offering advice incorporated into the final draft. In Huntington's birthplace--East Hampton, New York--the disease had been prevalent for several generations in families that had emigrated from Suffolk, England. It had also previously been reported by other doctors in Westchester County, New York, and Wyoming County, Pennsylvania.

But Huntington's paper is considered...