George Huntington

George Huntington (April 9, 1850 - March 3, 1916) was an American physician.

Huntington's disease bears his name because he described the condition in the first of only two academic papers he ever wrote. He wrote this paper when he was 22, one year after getting his medical degree at Columbia University in New York City. Initially he read the paper before the Meigs and Mason Academy of Medicine at Middleport, Ohio on February 15, 1872. It was later published in the Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia, on April 13, 1872. See wikisource for the text of this paper.

His father, George Lee Huntington 1811-1881) and grandfather, Dr. Abel Huntington (1778-1858), were also physicians in the same family practice. Their observations combined with his own were invaluable in precisely describing this disease, which afflicted several generations of a family in East Hampton on Long Island.



William Osler "In the history of medicine, there are few instances in which a disease has been more accurately, more graphically or more briefly described."

In 1874 He returned to Duchess County, New York to practice medicine.

George Huntington should not be confused with George Sumner Huntington (1861-1927), the anatomist. Both men attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. The internet is full of information which confuses the works of these two men.