George Huntington grew up in the ‘drowsy, secluded village’ of East Hampton at the extreme eastern end of Long Island, where both his grandfather and his father practiced medicine.
George Junior graduated from the Clinton Academy in his native town and, in 1868, began his medical studies at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York. He wrote his medical school thesis on ‘Opium’.
He started practicing medicine in his native place and soon reported cases of dementia and chorea in middle-aged persons, which ran in families, conforming to the autosomal dominant mode of transmission.
In 1872, George Huntington gave the first complete description of the disease based on his studies of several generations of one family who exhibited similar symptoms. He described Huntington's disease among residents of East Hampton, Long Island in 1872.
Huntington's disease was not generally recognized until the classic description by George Huntington (1850-1916) in 1872.
In 1874 George Huntington returned to Dutchess County, New York to practice medicine.
George Huntington (1850-1916) - an American physician
