Modern medical genetics as a well-defined field of medicine has developed so fast since its origins half a century ago that we cannot bear in mind how long time ago its roots and beginnings came from.
It can be argued that genetics overall was based on measuring the problems of human hereditary features and inherited diseases, since before the twentieth-century acceptance of Mendelian laws of heredity. Thus, medical genetics, viewed from its broadest perspective, is perhaps the oldest area of genetics and not a recent area that it is sometimes believed.