In medicine, a family history (FH or FHx) consists of information about disorders of direct blood relatives of the patient. Genealogy typically includes very little of the medical history of the family, but the medical history could be considered a specific subset of the total history of a family. Accurate knowledge of a patient's family history may identify a predisposition to developing certain illnesses, which can inform clinical decisions and allow effective management or even prevention of conditions. Eugenic Origins and Applications Early mentions of family medical histories in medical literature date from the 1840s. Henry Ancell mentioned inquiring about the family history of a patient in a medical case study in 1842, noting that the patient's presenting concern appears to be present in relatives and remarking on the prolific reproduction of her female relatives. In 1849, W.H. Walshe argued in a lecture at University College Hospital that in addition to a history of the presenting disease itself, a physician should also collect family history. Walshe's lecture does not define or justify the family history, which may suggest that taking one was already in common practice. However, later 19th-century physicians did provide a specific apologia for family histories and in some cases explicitly noted that they were not yet being taken routinely. James Begbie argued that understanding the health of the entire family, including cousins, can help predict otherwise unpredictable illnesses that run in the family. Begbie's use of the family history for both predictive and normative evaluation of the family anticipated Francis Galton, who championed the routine family history as a eugenic strategy in his 1883 text, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development. Galton writes: Francis Galton argued in the early 1900s for the development of eugenic certification based on consulting these histories. Starting in the 1920s, family medical histories were used by government eugenics bodies to evaluate candidates for compulsory sterilization. Eugenics Boards such as the Eugenics Board of North Carolina also considered family medical histories for the issuance of eugenic certificates marking a candidate as fit for marriage and reproduction. The Disability History Museum includes a mock eugenic certificate from circa 1924 which was intended to be sent as a love note. Uses Although sometimes neglected, many healthcare professionals glean information on family morbidity of particular diseases (e.g. cardiovascular diseases, autoimmune disorders, mental disorders, diabetes, cancer) to assess whether a person is at risk of developing