The Woman Who Walked Into the Sea : Yale University Press : 9780300158618 : 0300158610 : 02 Feb 2010 : A groundbreaking medical and social history of a devastating hereditary neurological disorder once demonized as &;the witchcraft disease&; When Phebe Hedges, a woman in East Hampton, New York, walked into the sea in 1806, she made visible the historical experience of a family affected by the dreaded disorder of movement, mind, and mood her neighbors called St.Vitus's dance. Doctors later spoke of Huntington&;s chorea, and today it is known as Huntington's disease. This book is the first history of Huntington&;s in America. Starting with the life of Phebe Hedges, Alice Wexler uses Huntington&;s as a lens to explore the changing meanings of heredity, disability, stigma, and medical knowledge among ordinary people as well as scientists and physicians. She addresses these themes through three overlapping stories: the lives of a nineteenth-century family once said to &;belong to the dise