The Man Behind the Syndrome

Book excerpt: The Man Behind the Syndrome by my friends and colleagues Peter and Greta Beighton is a delightful book which will be read eagedy and with keen intellectual pleasure by all human, medical, and dinical genetieists. The reader with a historical tum of mind will note right away that the book achieyes more than the usual entry in a dictionary of seientific biography. In addition to the standard professional data, it gives a photo and some personal glimpses of the man, allowing the reader to appreeiate his human qualities as weIl. This volume contains, so to speak, the creme de la creme, namely, those in a group whose names are daily on the lips of every practicing dinical geneticist. This interesting and instructive book is commended to all in medical genetics and the history of medieine with the highest enthusiasm and gratitude to its authors for undertaking this labor of love. A second volume is planned for more recently delineated disorders for which an eponym is not yet widely used.