The History of Coria

Huntington's disease was well known for centuries, referred to as magrams by New Englanders since the 1600s. Back in colonial New England, people with Huntington's were treated as witches and publicly burned to death. By the early 20th century, geneticist William Bateson had used genealogies from affected families to figure out that Huntington's follows a pattern of autosomal dominant inheritance. This means that getting just one faulty copy of the gene from either parent is enough to cause the condition. But it would take another 80 years for researchers to track down the actual gene responsible.