Welsh Journals

GENETICS AND POPULATION STUDIES IN WALES. By Peter S. Harper and Eric Sunderland. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1986. Pp. vii, 433. £ 27.00. Medical practitioners are particularly aware of the importance of a contemporary history, having been taught to diagnose by taking a careful account from the patient, checking it with his records and when possible enlarging it from relevant sources. Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis (1787-1872) had the useful idea of assessing the results of treatment, of making medical statistics as distinguished from vital statistics, following an earlier suggestion by the French mathematician and astronomer, Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827). This shook the empirical foundations of medical practice and eventually led to statistical analysis by age, sex, race, disease, environment and therapy. The historiography of the clinician became submerged in a deluge of analytical data. For the medical historian it was the stage beyond Huizinga's plaint that 'the material of history, not only of whole countries, but of each town, each institution, each incident, is constantly accumulating and expanding in source publications and monographic studies'. This collection of valuable essays by specialists from a variety of disciplines provides a new fount of source material for medical historians and clinical practitioners, as well as demanding attention from all those concerned with Welsh history. It aims at providing an accurate and up-to-date assessment of our knowledge of the people of Wales, their origins, variations and genetic structures. The editors hope that the non-specialist readers will enjoy it. To do so they will at least have to understand the basic tenets of statistics and genetics. The underlying question in this book, and one which all Welsh patriots have to answer, is that asked by Glyn Daniel, 'Who were the Welsh?' in his Sir John Rhys Memorial Lecture in 1954. Historians have deduced, anthropometrists have measured and linguists have studied the area boundaries of dialects. The results of these methods are summarised here, but in addition there is now a bio-technical development which collects and compares the facts concealed in blood samples and other human tissue. The book itself, like all good things Welsh, is divided into three. The first part deals with the archaeology, the ethnic composition of the Welsh people and the language. Parts Two and Three are largely concerned with anthropomorphic, anthropometric and genetic researches, with Part Three itself being medically orientated. The editors say that the book 'originated from an interest in the genetics of Welsh gypsies' and there is a scholarly essay by Mair Williams that traces the origins and pedigrees of the Welsh Romany. The genetics of inherited disease provide natural markers for lines of inheritance and are used by many other contributors. In Peter Harper's chapter on 'Mendelian Disorders in Wales', he outlines the family tree of the large south Wales kindred affected by the tragic disorder of Huntington's Chorea; its founding member came from north Devon in 1854 to Mynydd Islwyn in Gwent. This essay shows the striking change that has been made possible in a study of the true genetic structure of a population, despite the variables introduced by environment and migration.