References to ‘black cancer’and ‘fatal black tumors with metastasis’ date to the writings of the legendary Greek physician Hippocrates in the fifth century BC However, it was not until the time of Napolean’s Prussian Campaign in 1806 that ReneLaennec, inventor of the stethoscope, provided the first description of melanoma as a disease entity in his presentation to the Faculté de Médecine in Paris (Bennett and Hall 1994). His 1812 manuscript reporting a case of disseminated melanoma also marks the first published use of the word ‘melanoma’(Laennéc 1812). Several years later, a truly remarkable conceptual leap was made in the context of melanoma by a general practitioner William Norris (Norris 1820) who arrived at the conclusion that melanoma is a hereditary disease. In his 1820 manuscript, Norris wrote:‘it is remarkable that this gentleman’s father... died of a similar disease. This tumor... originated in a mole and it is also worth mentioning that, not only my patient and his children had many moles..., but also his own father and brothers.... These facts, together with a case that has come under my notice, rather similar, would incline me to believe that this disease is hereditary.’This prescient statement is all the more striking by the fact that it was made nearly half of a century before the genetic paradigm was articulated by Gregor Johann Mendel in The