From Medical Practice to Theoretical Medicine: An Autobiographic Sketch

Abstract

I should like to begin this short sketch of my life with a few comments concerning my forebears. This will come as no surprise to readers interested in biology, who are well aware of the decisive influences one’s inheritance has in the shaping of one’s life. In my own case it is rather interesting, as two different folk-groups are represented in my pedigree. My father’s ancestors belonged to the Alemanni, a Germanic tribe of the upper Rhine valley formerly under Roman control. In several expansive movements these peoples drove the Romans southward and over the Alps; they then occupied the now German-speaking region of northeastern Switzerland and are considered the principal ancestors of its present population. My mother’s people came from the region of the former kingdom of Saxony, where East European types were to be found along with the Nordic. This divergence between the maternal and paternal inheritance generally is of a certain genetic interest.

Hess, W.R.: From medical practice to theoretical medicine. An autobiographic sketch. Perspect. Biol. Med. 6, 400–423 (1963)

This autobiographic sketch was translated from the original German manuscript by Dr. E. Castagnoli, an American physician, presently in Zürich