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Dealing With Degeneracy

Michigan Eugenics in Context

presented by

Jeffrey Alan Hodges

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DEALING WITH DEGENERACY:
MICHIGAN EUGENICS IN CONTEXT

By

Jeffrey Alan Hodges

A Dissertation
Submitted to
Michigan State University
In partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of History

2001

ABSTRACT

DEALING WITH DEGENERACY
MICHIGAN EUGENICS IN CONTEXT

BY

Jeffrey Alan Hodges

This study examines how changes in the philosophical constructs, organization
and practice of medicine interacted with evolving systems of social and institutional care
to promote negative eugenics measures. As the legal climate changed in regards to such
policies, physicians, directors of correctional, training, support and charitable institutions,
and other social reformers sought to apply sterilization laws as a response to a perceived
increase in the levels of social degeneracy.

Physicians were instrumental in providing “scientiﬁc” validation for eugenic
policies, therefore the publications and personal correspondence of two eminent
Michigan physicians, John Harvey Kellogg and Victor Clarence Vaughan, were
examined to elucidate their respective eugenic beliefs and inﬂuences upon policies within
the state. Both physicians possessed eminent reputations at the state and national level,
and represented the two principal hereditarian perspectives in eugenic thought, in effect,
Lamarckian versus Mendelian inheritance.

National and state records on the number of compulsory sterilizations as compiled
by the Human Betterment Foundation, the Association for Voluntary Sterilization,
Birthright, Inc., and the Sterilization Records of the Archives of the State of Michigan
were analyzed to determine the range of policy variation between states. Individual

sterilization request records and the included supporting information from Michigan

records along with collateral communications between state departments, courts and
institutions in conjunction with contemporary professional and lay literature on eugenics
show the evolution of contemporaneous practice and philosophical constructs within the
state and nation. This analysis demonstrates the wide range of variation in policy between
counties, states and nations. Practices varied over time with regard to patient categories
and the extent to which such policies were applied to the relevant patient populations.
Issues of institutional management (i.e. available personnel, parole, behavioral
management), changing public discourse and judicial ﬁndings acted to modify programs

throughout the period of study.

Copyright
Jeffrey Alan Hodges

2001

For my Parents
Their Nature and Nurture

Forever Entwined

Acknowledgements

The assistance of Dr. Le Roy Barnett and his staff at the Archives of the State of
Michigan were instrumental in providing initial direction and information on the scope of
Michigan’s eugenic program and thus helped enormously in bringing this project to
fruition. Likewise, Dr. Davis Klassen and his staff at the Social Welfare History Archives
of the University of Minnesota provided invaluable assistance in determining the regional
and national contexts through the use of their extensive records. Additionally, I would
like to thank the staffs of the Taubman and Bentley Libraries of the University of
Michigan for their assistance in researching the personal and public records of Drs. John
Harvey Kellogg and Victor Clarence Vaughan.

My professors, graduate colleagues and students at the university, the medical
staffs and friends made and known throughout my medical career all provided a broad
range of input and example regarding the development of my thoughts on this subject.
Unfortunately, they are too numerous to name individually, but my heartfelt thanks is
given to one and all. Finally and most importantly, I must acknowledge my parents, who
through their instruction, support and example, provided me an inclination and

opportunity to develop what I hope is a fair and equitable treatment of this subject.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Introduction:
Chapter One: Humoral Continuities
Chapter Two: Evolution of the American Medical Profession
Chapter Three: Professing American Eugenics
Chapter 4: Personal and Professional Paths to Eugenics
Chapter Five: It’s the Law
Chapter Six: Michigan’s Eugenie Success?
Chapter Seven: Michigan in Context: The National Perspective

Chapter Eight: The International Context: Eugenics Promoting
Sterilization

Chapter Nine: The International Context: Eugenics Without
Sterilization

Chapter Ten: Conclusions
Literature Review

Bibliography

vii

vi

vii

11

33

65

98

130

161

192

233

270

296

325

345

Introduction

This study deals with a particular kind of eugenics, negative eugenics, the study
and elimination of dysgenic traits from within a population. In its most radical form this
led to the promulgation of laws mandating compulsory sterilization and in some cases
euthanasia. Speciﬁcally, this work explores Michigan’s experience with compulsory
sterilization and seeks to contextualize it within the national and international contexts of
those evolving secular, industrializing, technocratic states with eugenic movements.

While a historical analysis of the development of eugenics in Michigan
demonstrates a particular set of qualifying factors peculiar to that state, it also reveals the
multiplicity of factors that led to the adoption of such laws and the evolving use of the
statutes. Almost every regime that implemented such legislation did so for a variety of
reasons particular to their own circumstances. In contrasting Michigan’s circumstances
with those of other jurisdictions, the philosophical underpinnings their decisions often
shared reveal not only the frequent desire for “scientiﬁc” solutions to a range of social
ills, but also a ﬂexibility in promoting eugenic prescriptions in a variety of differing
political, demographic and cultural settings.

Eugenics promised a science that would bring together information from diverse
ﬁelds of empirical study making possible solutions for what many perceived as the
imminent biological, social and cultural degeneration of their societies. Perceptions on
the magnitude, causes and solutions varied with locale and time. In different times and
places, a consensus of political, social and scientiﬁc authorities came together to promote
negative measures as a solution to a speciﬁc perception of social ills peculiar to each

legislative entity. Due to the particular federal system of government in the United States,

these laws were promulgated at the state level, in most other nations they were at the
national level.

This thesis extends previous works on eugenics by providing an insight into the
public and private pronouncements of two of Michigan’s most eminent physicians, Drs.
John Harvey Kellogg and Victor Clarence Vaughan, who spoke often and forcefully on
the subject. These two men’s positions of authority in government and in professional
circles reveals the contemporary professional zeitgeist regarding eugenic thought and
practice. Vaughan and Kellogg’s eugenic perspectives display the diversity of views on
inheritance and the nature of disease processes and how such seemingly disparate
positions could be reconciled to a policy of radical intrusion into the sexual autonomy of
the state’s citizens.

Michigan’s eugenics movement was an early and strong proponent of compulsory
sterilization as a tool in the ﬁght against hereditary social degeneracy; Michigan being
the ﬁrst state to propose such legislation and seventh to adopt. As in many other locales,
eminent physicians seemed to provide the expert opinion that not only promoted such
legislation, but also aided in the practical application of such laws.

Because this study also includes previously unavailable archival research on the
demographics of eugenic sterilization it helps establish the particular distribution of
patient types within Michigan’s program. The data on actual practice has been sadly
lacking since the production of Moya Woodson’s North Carolina study over ﬁfty years
ago. As such, this thesis provides a demographic study that aids in the comparative

analysis of eugenic practice not found in most intellectual histories on the subject.

Thus, this thesis provides a concrete example of policy and practice that allows
more direct comparisons with the few other studies of sterilization laws and programs in
other states and nations which provide similar information (i.e. Larson and Broberg &
Roll-Hansen). In that most recent works on eugenics and compulsory sterilization focus
on intellectual history, this work furnishes information and comparisons seldom available
in other examinations of eugenics policies in the United States.

Variation in the implementation of such policies occurred at virtually every level
of institutional and governmental organization. Differences in practice between states and
nations with such laws revolved around a constellation of issues particular to place and
time. Provinces, states, counties, and individual public and private institutions often
charted their own courses as to how and when to apply these measures. These deviations
resulted from religious, moral, political and sociological differences among those
responsible for executing the provisions of these laws and at times the lay public.
Michigan displayed its own particular range of these variations and in so doing, provides
a valuable set of comparisons with the few other well-documented programs.

Eugenics in Michigan was in many ways similar to movements throughout the
industrialized world as would be expected in a political entity such as an industrializing
Mid-West state. Regional diversity in the application of negative eugenic measures
among counties and institutions reﬂected patterns in many other states, and likewise
changed over time as it did in other states. Differences in these patterns were often
contingent on when such measures were enacted. The legal status of the laws (e. g.
constitutionality issues) and perceptions of the utility of the measures for the general or

institutional populations changed over time and thus practice varied accordingly. Again,

Michigan’s example is instructive in that its laws were adjusted to the changing legal
climate and several of the judicial challenges to the law set important legal precedents.

Local, national and international eugenics societies provided means of sharing an
evolving body of eugenic knowledge, but these platforms presented diverse and disparate
perspectives, which individuals and groups used to advance agendas particular to their
own concerns. So dissimilar were these perspectives that many opponents to the eugenics
movements claimed it was not a science at all. Michigan physicians, though often diverse
in their philosophical outlook on eugenics, were instrumental in providing the cover of
“scientiﬁc” support for such policies.

Whether eugenics, the “science of being wellborn,” was a science is best
answered by analogy. While climatology is considered a science, the pronouncements
made by its practitioners and sundry interested parties regarding the causes and effects of
global warming vary. Some see imminent peril for ecosystems throughout the world as a
consequence of modern societies’ alterations to “natural” ecosystems, while others see a
natural cycle little affected by human actions. Considering the incredible complexity of
global weather patterns and the inadequacy of their modeling techniques, researchers call
for more study, while those discerning changes affecting the ecological systems of the
world call for action before further, possibly irreversible, deterioration occurs.
Perceptions on the problem differ from society to society and within societies depending
largely upon a subjective cost-beneﬁt analysis of those concerned.

Eugenics at the beginning of the twentieth century provides a similar situation for
analysis of the sociology of knowledge in different societies. The study of eugenics

covers a wide array of scientiﬁc and social endeavors. People of virtually all political

persuasions and religious passions could ﬁnd something in eugenics from pronatalist to
birth control advocacy. This study deals with a particular kind of eugenics, negative
eugenics, the study and elimination of “dysgenic” traits from human populations.

The science of eugenics drew on many different ﬁelds of study: physical anthropology,
criminal anthropology, genetics, biometrics, zoology, botany, criminology, social
statistics, psychiatry, the social sciences and many as yet undelineated subspecialties of
the biological sciences. Its proponents were generally reformers, which is not to say that
some reactionary conservatives didn’t also ﬁnd something of use to their agendas.

Most eugenicists, professional and lay, perceived an evolving threat of
accelerating social degeneracy. New bureaucratic structures and their elaborating means
of accumulating data provided a plethora of information supporting such arguments, but
unfortunately, suitable means of analyzing the information had yet to mature causing a
great deal of uncertainty as to the magnitude of the problems. Eugenics seemed to
promise a way of avoiding the threat of imminent hereditary degeneration within
advanced societies and possibly implementing proposals that would lead to a higher
evolution of the human species.

Evidence for degeneration in industrial societies arose from numerous sources.
Statistics on increases in crime, alcoholism, prostitution, pauperism, degenerative
diseases and most frighteningly supposedly inherited mental and physical disorders led
many to believe that these societies faced an array of problems that conceivably would
result in regression if not social collapse. Michigan eugenicists revealed these same fears

and spoke forcefully for preventative eugenic action in dealing with the perceived

increase in social degeneracy, though supporters often revealed vastly different
perspectives on the causes of such degeneracy.

Most believed that the problems of modern society arose from within as they were
seemingly unknown in less advanced societies. Blame was laid at the feet of social
welfare programs seen as supporting the reproduction of dysgenic elements in society
(e.g. poor relief and institutional care), differential birth rates among various segments of
the population and the social mores that some considered responsible for these changes
(e.g. upper and middle class reluctance to raise large families), changes in personal
behaviors (e. g. use of intoxicants, prorniscuity and even changes in dietary practices), and
environmental degradation.

Each state and nation that chose negative eugenics as a means of dealing with
these problems did so based on their own analysis of their perceived problems, but not
without input from national and international compatriots. Almost everywhere where
such legislation was enacted, common perceptions as to the causes of a diverse range of
social dilemmas, speciﬁc to each locale led to a community of interest that cut across
political, social and intellectual borders. Michigan doctors, Kellogg and Vaughan,
demonstrate the breadth of communication among eugenically-minded physicians within
the state, national and international scientiﬁc communities.

Being from a family, all of whom work or worked in the biological sciences,
speciﬁcally medicine, and thus being a biologist at heart, I visualize and analyze history
from a scientiﬁc perspective, one tinged with a great deal of the biological in the broadest
sense. For this reason, as a means of analyzing complex situations or historical forces, I

use a multifactorial approach, which seeks to look at changes in evolving societies of

knowledge, development and elaboration of economic, institutional and governmental
systems, social and political perceptions of the internal and external forces inﬂuencing
the health and well—being of the state, and ﬁnally the inﬂuence of individuals in
promoting or dispelling consensus on issues of compulsory sterilization. Michigan
provides a good example of how a local sociology of knowledge interacts with those
more encompassing bases of knowledge at the national and international levels.

Because of advances in the health sciences in the latter half of nineteenth century,
physicians became the contemporary authorities on a range of issues associated with
contemporary social problems. This was a natural evolution, in that, the most evident
progress in efﬁcacious public health measures ﬁrst emerged from the efforts of
sanitationists, many of whom, like John Snow, were physicians using a new scientiﬁc
understanding to advance their knowledge of disease processes.

So successful were their efforts across a broad range of medical pursuits (e. g.
public health, surgery, psychiatry, epidemiology and pathology), that with the advent or
transformation of allopathic training into a science based medical practice, these
practitioners epitomized in medicine what was a culture wide trend towards the
rationalization (i.e. application of scientiﬁc principles of analysis) of complex social and
technological relationships. Physicians interested in social issues and armed with new
scientiﬁc methods and philosophies began to “biologicize” social problems as means of
making them amenable to treatment. Drs. Kellogg and Vaughan as two of the state and
nation’s most important medical educators furnish examples of two very different
philosophical medical, eugenic and scientiﬁc outlooks and how they came together to

promote a radical eugenic policy.

Bureaucracies set up to manage the problems associated with the urbanization and
industrialization of society became increasingly technocratic in outlook as a means of
comprehending the type and magnitude of the difﬁculties they faced. Because many of
these issues seemed to be of a novel biological nature (increases in individual social
dysfunction) the public increasingly looked to doctors for remedies to society’s ills and
physicians often willingly provided such prescriptions. For many, eugenics provided a
scientiﬁc philosophy for analyzing and treating those social afﬂictions that could be
associated with heredity.

Physicians as publicly recognized experts in biology, particularly human biology,
provided authority for eugenic analyses and solutions. Doctors, who were particularly
esteemed for their skills and contributions in the pursuit of knowledge, were especially
inﬂuential in persuading the public and government to view social problems from a
eugenic perspective and concomitantly to adopt eugenic measures. What underlay the
appeal of their message was their ability to tap into a widespread prior understanding of
heredity by garbing it in the trappings of modern scientiﬁc philosophy. The conjunction
of earlier hereditarian beliefs with a new scientiﬁc rationale colored and promoted a
certitude that would often lead to secular actions seldom before contemplated.

Because I believe that eugenics constituted a scientiﬁc pursuit and that it
represented a primal tension in human society between the drive to reproduce and
societies’ decisions on the allocation of ﬁnite resources, it is important to trace the
historical beginnings and evolution of mankind’s understanding of heredity. Chapter One
covers the development of these understandings and the proposals that emerged from

these beliefs. The change from a humoral understanding of heredity to one based on the

Darwinian idea of evolution and eventually the genetic mechanism for these evolutionary
changes ﬁgures prominently as a means of understanding the continuity of hereditarian
beliefs.

Advances in the biological sciences and in particular medicine made possible
negative eugenic measures, speciﬁcally human sterilization. Because of the increasing
efﬁcacy of medical treatments, the prestige accorded to physicians led to their
preeminence as authorities in ﬁelds associated with the biological sciences. The
elaboration of their professional organizations and their impact on creating local
consensus on eugenics issues is explored in the second chapter.

The third and fourth chapters discuss the national and state medical and eugenics
movements with particular emphasis in the latter chapter on the roles played by Drs.
Victor Clarence Vaughan and John Harvey Kellogg in the Michigan arena. Their
personal histories and inﬂuences were of particular importance to creating a consensus
for the adoption of such laws, and thus are explored in some depth.

Chapter Five deals with the implementation of such laws in various states and the
impact of legal decisions upon the execution of such laws. Changing legal circumstances
affected the implementation and comprehensiveness of the laws and is of great
importance to understanding the diversity in state and national practice.

The sixth and seventh chapters explore what Michigan sought to accomplish and
what actually occurred. These chapters highlight the variation of practices in Michigan
that reﬂect similar disparities in the national context. The latter chapter speciﬁcally seeks
to illuminate the variety of measures in the United States and present some sense of the

regional and temporal variations.

Chapters Eight and Nine describe the international scene with the eighth chapter
speciﬁcally dealing with those nations that implemented such legislation and the ninth
chapter looking at those nations with active eugenics movements and no such legislation.
Because of the association of Nazi eugenics policies with the downfall of eugenics,
Chapter Eight goes into some depth as to the adoption, use and evolution of such eugenic
measures. Chapter Nine examines the role of individuals, and political, social and
religious philosophies that prevented the adoption of such measures. The latter chapter,
by providing a comparison of those eugenics movements that were unable or unwilling to
advance negative eugenic measures, demonstrates how important particular pieces of
eugenic promotion were to accomplishing eugenicists’ goals.

The ﬁnal chapter presents my conclusions on the signiﬁcance of eugenics in the
past. present and future, and the reasons for such widespread variation in practice and the

underlying motivations for such measures.

10

Chapter One: Heredity and its Relationship to Society

Theories regarding the importance of heredity to society were not new, but the
theory of evolution, when summarized without Charles Darwin’s nuances as simply
“survival of the ﬁttest,” provided eugenicists with a means of constructing a hereditarian
paradigm of social relationships with profound repercussions not only for those
designated as “unﬁt,” but in the most extreme case (e. g. Nazi Germany) for whole
populations as well. The expansion of biological knowledge in the 19th and early 20th
centuries provided a means of conceiving both societies and the individuals who
comprised them as biological entities competing within and without for success in a
ruthless endeavor to propagate their kind. The detriment to those less able to compete in
the pursuit of survival and propagation was assumed to be a necessary evil even though it
required that those less “ﬁt” succumb so that those more “ﬁt” survived and advanced.
Concepts of ﬁtness often reﬂected racialist and class biases intrinsic to the class and /or
race seeking to privilege a deﬁnition of its own ﬁtness over its competitors.

This chapter provides an overview of how concepts of heredity changed over time
and how transformations in biology provided a basis for eugenic philosophy and by their
inﬂuence among the educated middle classes made possible policies of eugenic
sterilization. Such policies arose from a fear that social degeneracy was on the rise and
threatened the maintenance or progress of modern industrializing societies. Social
degeneracy meant different things to different people though most agreed that an increase
in the number of certain categories of people constituted a threat to contemporary social
structures. What remained much more vague were the reasons behind such increases in

the proportions of the “socially unﬁt” and what should be done about it. For many

11

eugenicists, the root cause was the propagation of socially dysfunctional individuals
whose failings were in large part of a hereditary nature. Ironically, the origin of modern
eugenics resulted from one man’s interest in the propagation of the “most ﬁt.”

In the mid-19th century, Sir Francis Galton, a pioneer in the use of statistics, put
forth the modern exposition of eugenics, the scientiﬁc study of human heredity and its
applications to social progress. After reading his cousin, Charles Darwin’s Origin of
Species, Galton’s preoccupation with statistics led him to review encyclopedias of
eminent men in an attempt to ascertain the nature of their propagation.l In his ﬁrst
important book, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences (1869),
Galton published his ﬁndings and proposed that a system of arranged marriages between
men of distinction and women of wealth would eventually produce a gifted race. Galton’s
study of the pedigrees of outstanding men demonstrated to him that those of great ability
had a remarkably large number of relatives of near equal ability, far more than random
chance would allow.

His statistical method was based on the use of a Gaussian distribution or “the law

of error,” known more commonly today as the normal bell curve. From this he assumed

 

‘ Kevles, Daniel. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Heredity. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985) pg. 3-13; Both Darwin and Galton’s careers reveal the connection between
medicine and eugenics. Like Darwin, pursuant to his family’s desires. Galton initially pursued a career in
medicine at Kings College Medicine School where he compiled an outstanding record in his ﬁrst year. Yet,
like Darwin he found he abhorred the ﬁeld and went on to Cambridge to read mathematics. Failing to place
a ﬁrst, he accepted a pass and returned to the study of medicine until his father’s death and a large
inheritance left him free to pursue other interests. He embarked upon travels throughout the Middle East
and Africa. His exploits and diplomacy among the Damara, Namaqua and Ovampo of southern Africa in
the early 18503 and the accurate maps he made during his travels earned him a Gold Medal from the Royal
Geographical Society in 1852 and membership shortly thereafter. His geographical exploits also led to
membership in the Athenaeum Club, a mark of his scientiﬁc eminence. Thus like Darwin, Galton
established his scientiﬁc credentials through a system of peer review, which led to a wide ranging
credibility. Galton often said, “Whenever you can, count.” This would epitomize most of Galton’s career
and interests. His fascination with statistics led to varied and sometimes unusual observations. His
statistical observations led him to produce the ﬁrst weather maps of Britain in the 18605, to attempt to
perform a numerical analysis of ﬁngerprints making him a pioneer in their cataloguing.

12

that intellectual ability was normally distributed, in effect, there were an equal number of
men above and below the intellectual mean of the population. Yet some families seemed
to consistently produce gifted individuals.

Galton’s research was constrained by a lack of data as the ﬁeld of statistics was
new itself and thus seldom applied to the biological investigations of the time. In the
1870s he began a study of the sweet-pea plant, Lathyrus odoratus in an effort to establish
certain statistical principles in the measurement of hereditary characters. His observations
led him to derive the “coefﬁcient of reversion” wherein the mean of daughter groups fell
closer to the mean than did the parental groups, which be interpreted to mean that the
characteristics of the offspring were products not only of the parents but of their
numerous forebears. In 1884, in an effort to procure more direct information on the
nature of human heredity, Galton helped establish the Anthropometric Laboratory at the
International Health Exhibition which within the span of a few months had collected data
on some 9000 people. At the same time he published the Record of Family Faculties a
questionnaire on human heredity with prizes of up to 500 pounds offered for the most
complete sets of family data. With the data from these surveys, Galton proceeded from
his analysis to derive the “coefﬁcient of correlation,” which provided a measure of the
degree to which one variable might be related to another, either positively or negatively.

In 1889, Galton published his ﬁndings in the scientiﬁcally inﬂuential Natural
Inheritance. Though the work contained many faulty conclusions on the inheritance of
disease, artistic faculty and alcoholism to name only a few, the methodology seemed to
indicate a scientiﬁc basis for understanding the nature of heredity. Yet, there remained

several problems for Galton’s eugenical program. First, the coefﬁcient of reversion

13

stipulated that the progeny of a given population selected for its extremity from the mean
for a particular trait, if allowed to breed freely would regress to the mean of the initial
population.

For the Lathyrus odoratus used in Galton’s study, this meant that the heavier
seeds selected to reproduce would if not selected again in each generation ultimately
revert to the mean size of the initial population. The implications for human heredity
would be the same; failure to select in each generation would lead to regression towards
the mean of the population, in height, weight, intelligence, et cetera. Only the
predorrrinating inﬂuence of nurture, laws, and customs had power to modify the natural
disposition of a people.

Regression, or the coefﬁcient of reversion seemed to present an insurmountable
problem to Galton’s dream of breeding a more gifted race of Englishmen. Yet Galton
continued to insist that heredity was responsible for the propagation of gifted individuals
though in the preface to the 1892 edition of Hereditary Genius he admitted that “the great
problem of the future betterment of the human race is confessedly, at the present time,
hardly advanced beyond the state of academic interest.”2

The implications of regression for Darwin’s theory of natural selection were
equally unpalatable. The coefﬁcient of reversion suggested that the evolution of new
forms could not come about through the environmental pressure to select for small
variations however adaptive they might be. Animal breeders had long known about the
regression to the natural type and the need to maintain selection pressure to keep the

breed true. The answer seemed to be that consistent selection pressure was required to

maintain distinct species. The problem for both Galton’s and Darwin’s theories of

14

heredity was that they had failed to demonstrate the physiological method of inheritance.
Darwin developed his own theory of gemmules as the repository of genetic information,
but other than narrring the particles gemmules, Darwin’s pangenesis exposition remained
little changed from Hippocrates’ explanation.3

In the 1870s, Galton in an experimental challenge to pangenesis found that gray
rabbits whose blood had been mixed with that of white rabbits (thus with circulating
white gemmules) continued to breed gray rabbits not mongrels, disproving his cousin’s
hypothesis. Yet, as late as 1890, Michigan physician and eugenicist, John Harvey
Kellogg continued to explain in Larnarckian terms how the early onset of sexuality
affected heredity features through Darwin’s gemmules. “If the body is still incomplete,
the reproductive elements must also be incomplete, and, in consequence, the progeny
must be equally immature.” Thus, reproduction by immature individuals resulted in-
children afﬂicted with a range of “congenital maladies” reﬂecting a related immaturity of

the genetic material.4

 

2Kevles. pg. 19

3 Hippocrates. Airs WaterL and Places. Hippocrates elaborating on his theory of how such deleterious
somatic changes become inheritable explains that, “semen comes from all parts of the body, sound from the
sound parts, and unhealthy from the unhealthy parts,” carried by the blood to where it is gathered in the
reproductive organs; On the Sﬂd Disease. Scr. 8: 27 (Pennsauken: World Library, 1996) Referring to
epilepsy, he states the same mode of transmission (i.e. semen) to children, with the somatic disturbance
centering in the brain.

" Kellogg. Plain Facts. Pg. 288, Regarding early maturation and masturbation, Kellogg noted the following
congenital effects. “If sterility does not result, children are liable to be "delicate, puny, decrepit, or subject
to various congenital maladies, especially of the nervous system, to idiocy from deﬁcient development of
the brain, to hydrocephalus, to epilepsy, convulsions, palsy. The scrofulous diathesis, tubercular and
glandular maladies, diseases of the vertebra and of the joints, softening of the central portions of the brain,
and tuberculous formations in the membranes, palsy and convulsions, chorea, inﬂammations of the
membranes or substance of the brain or spinal cord, and numerous other affections to which infants and
children are liable, very commonly result from the practice of self-pollution by either of the parents
previous to marriage. But the evil does not always stop at this epoch of existence; it often extends
throughout the life of the offspring, or it appears only with puberty and mature age."

15

The elucidation of the laws of inheritance fell to another cleric-botanist, Gregor
Mendel.5 Unfortunately for the grandsons of the eminent English physician Erasmus
Darwin, Mendel published his ﬁndings in the proceedings of a local naturalist society in
Brunn, Austria, whose readers failed to recognize its signiﬁcance. It was not until 1900,
16 years after Mendel's death, that his work was rediscovered independently by Hugo de
Vries in Holland, Carl Erich Correns in Germany, and Erich Tscherrnak von Seysenegg
in Austria.6

Galton’s most obvious mistake was not realizing his coefﬁcient of reversion was a
product of measuring traits spanning a continuum of variation: e. g. height, weight and
intelligence. If he had chosen to statistically analyze traits with distinct binary choices
(e. g. eye color), he would have found the same patterns of inheritance Mendel had
discovered. This dominant-recessive inheritance pattern would have shown Galton and
Darwin a means by which hereditary characteristics could be maintained and variably
expressed within a population.

What eluded these 19‘h century researchers of heredity was the physiological

mechanism of genetic stability and change. They consistently relied on a hereditarian

 

sGarrison, Feilding. History of Medicine. (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1966) pg. 516, 670—671

In 1866, Gregor Mendel published his ﬁndings on the common pea plant, Pisum sativum. His methods
differed in two essential respects from those of his predecessors. First, instead of trying to describe the
appearance of whole plants with all their characteristics, Mendel followed the inheritance of single, easily
visible and distinguishable traits, such as round versus wrinkled seed, yellow versus green seed, purple
versus white ﬂowers. Second, he made exact counts of the numbers of plants bearing this or that trait; it
was from such quantitative data that he deduced the rules governing inheritance. Initially, Mendel believed
that the dominant “bloods” consumed the recessive. When Mendel allowed the hybrid plants to self-
pollinate and produce the second hybrid generation, both the dominant and the recessive traits reappeared.
as pure and uncontaminated as they were in the original parent population. Moreover. these traits now
appeared in constant proportions: 3/4 of the plants in the second generation showed the dominant trait and
1/4 showed the recessive, a 3 to 1 ratio. Mendel ‘3 description of how the “bloods” comprised the agents of
hereditary traits again shows the continuing inﬂuence of humoral interpretation.

6 Henig, Robin. The Monk in the Garden: The Lost and Found Genius of Gregor Mendel, the Father of
Genetics. (Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin, 2000) Pg. 114, 124-126143-144; Ironically, Mendel apparently sent
Darwin a uncut reprint of his ﬁndings, which Darwin never read, that well might have led Darwin to a

16

paradigm in which some essence of somatic variations passed through the blood leading
to changes in the semen and eggs; exactly the opposite of what is understood today.7
Michigan eugenicist physicians, John Harvey Kellogg and Victor Vaughan eventually
agreed that what the German biologist August Weismann called the “germ plasm,” (i.e.
the as yet unspeciﬁed but stable hereditary material in spermatazoa and oocytes), was the
focus of hereditary stability and change. The Mendelian Vaughan held that somatic
modifications followed from alterations in the germ plasm, not vice versa. Yet for some
like Kellogg, the biases of the prior medical paradigm continued to inﬂuence beliefs
about the nature of heredity even after embryologists had made this point clear.
Through the ensuing decades, advances in statistics and the natural sciences
seemed to provide a scientiﬁc basis for this new science and data to support the
contention that a social crisis of hereditarian nature existed. The eugenic philosophy and
its broad acceptance among the professional and lay public largely depended upon a
philosophical perspective that celebrated modern science and technology as means of
analyzing and ameliorating such a crisis. Though reformers of various stripes advocated
eugenics, biologists and most particularly physicians, became the leaders in inﬂuencing

governments and the public as to the beneﬁts of such policies.

 

method of explaining the physical process of inheritance. Henig suggests that Darwin’s lack of facility with
numbers though would have made his cousin, Francis Galton a better choice for Mendel’s mailing.

7 Kellogg. Plain Facts. Pg. 467-468, Kellogg demonstrated the classical view in this regard stating, "The
sperm is the purest extract of the blood .”; Pg. 104-105, Kellogg elaborated on the mechanism, “The
doctrine of pangenesis supposes that these centers of nutrition form and throw off not only cells like
themselves, but very minute granules, called gemmules, each of which is capable, under suitable
circumstances, of developing into a cell like its parent. These minute granules are scattered through the
system in great numbers. The essential organs of generation, the testicles in the male and the ovaries in the
female, perform the task of collecting these gemmules, and fornring them into sets, each of which
constitutes a reproductive element, and contains, in rudimentary form, a representative of every part of the
individual, including the most minute peculiarities. Even more than this: it is supposed that each ovum and
each zoosperm contains not only the gemmules necessary to reproduce the individuals who produced them,
but also a number of gemmules which have been transmitted from the individual’s ancestors. If this theory
be true, -- and we can see no sound objection to it, - it is easy to understand all the problems of heredity.”

l7

In its more benign form, eugenics cast certain socially dysfunctional members of
society as the hereditarily “unﬁt” within, a growing cancer to be excised or at least put
into remission. The most malignant form held that controlling the cancer within was a
prior necessity for survival among peoples involved in a global Darwinian struggle for
existence. A brief examination of the philosophy behind the most encompassing example
of state sponsored eugenics policies demonstrates to what extremes the philosophy could
be logically taken.

In Germany, a radical eugenic philosophy led to a “logical” conclusion in which
millions died to supposedly preserve or promote a peoples’ chances in the global
competition for cultural and racial survival. Hitler had appealed to the German people for
the creation of a “biological state.” By this he meant a state which would compete on the
world stage through policies emerging from an ideology, which he referred to as applied
biology. Eugenics was the science on which this ideology was to be founded. Eugenics,
as a leading American eugenicist, Charles Davenport, deﬁned it was “the science of the
improvement of the human race by better breeding.”8 To the Nazis this meant the
propagation of the Aryan or Nordic “race” at the expense of other competing ethnicities.
Ultimately, “the applied biology” of the Nazi state called for not only the “propagation of
the most ﬁt,” but the elimination of those who did not or were perceived as not being able
to serve the interests of the state. The Nazi regime would apply both positive and
negative eugenics to the people within its control in an effort to maximize their

usefulness to the “biological state.”

 

8 Davenport, Charles. Heredity in Relation to Human Breeding. (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 191 l) pg. 1

18

Negative eugenics, the prevention of propagating “lives unworthy of living,”
ranged from the Nuremburg codes restricting marriage to the outright genocide of those
deemed “useless eaters” and “inferior peoples.” Positive eugenics, the process of
promoting the propagation of those deemed superior, was also encapsulated in the
Nuremburg marriage codes and the related state tax policies. One aspect of Nazi positive
eugenics was known as Lebensbom, or "Spring of Life." Historian and psychiatrist,
Robert Lifton noted that,
Heinrich Himmler had created this institution as part of his
plan "to breed the SS into a biological elite, . . . [a] racial
nucleus from which Germany could replenish an Aryan
inheritance now dangerously diluted through generations of
race-mixing." Lebensborn administered welfare assistance
to SS families in the service of "racially valuable" children,
and extended maternity and childcare facilities to married
and unmarried mothers. But Lebensbom also engaged in
the kidnapping of "biologically valuable" children (those
who met Nordic criteria) in occupied areas, some of them
fathered by German occupiers.

The goal of all these policies was to improve the state and the “race” through eugenic

selection.

This set of policies followed from a relentless logic framed in evolutionary terms
of competition between the ﬁttest for survival and thus propagation, or vice versa (i.e.
ﬁttest for propagation thus survival), in a vicious cycle of evolutionary competition. This
competition and the resulting “survival of the ﬁttest” was not just between individual
, members of a society but between societies in terms of resources, systems of governance,

culture and ultimately national/racial survival. The logic of this ideology of national/

racial competition delineated not only other societies as competitors to be supplanted by

 

9 Lifton, Robert. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. (New York: Basic
Books, 1986) pg. 43.

19

 

the “superior stock” in this national/racial competition but also the members of ones own
society who burdened and undermined the society’s competition in the struggle for
existence. Such ideas were certainly not new in the sense that civilized peoples had not
observed the results of heredity or the competition between societies.

Proposals for ameliorating undesirable qualities of the human race date from
ancient times. Plato's Republic depicted a society, in which there would be an effort to
improve human beings through selective breeding.10 Little doubt this type of reasoning
had been arrived at countless times before, at least in most every society in which
husbandry existed. What was perhaps new in The Republic, was Plato’s suggestion that
the state through,

the proper ofﬁcers will take the offspring of the good

parents to the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them

with certain nurses who dwell in a separate quarter; but the

offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance

to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious,

unknown place, as they should be.11
Typical of support for later eugenics proposals, Plato rationalized that the state should
beneﬁt from a selection of its progeny for those most capable of supporting social
progress, in effect, his class based notion of a utopia peopled with his vision of the better
kind of human being.

Until modern medical procedures made surgical sterilization possible, selective

infanticide provided the most common means of realizing such eugenic goals though

some 20th century eugenicists continued to advocate euthanasia of defective newborns.

 

1° Plato. The Republic. (New York: Modern Library, 1992) Book 5, Paragraph 175, In regards to human
breeding, “the principle has been already laid down that the best of either sex should be united with the best
as often, and the inferior with the inferior, as seldom as possible; and that they should rear the offspring of
the one sort of union, but not of the other. . ...”

” Ibid. Book 5, Paragraph 19o195.

20

With subsistence the norm in earlier centuries, the burdens associated with the rearing of
deformed or unwanted children led to countless deaths. Parents often put the interest of
older, well born children ahead of the younger and/or malformed in whom by an
elementary cost/beneﬁt analysis they had invested less time and effort. To the degree that
state and society turned a blind eye to these practices, there was an implied sanction for
such behavior.12
To the modern reader, Plato’s admonishments concerning the ideal of breeding

citizens for the state seem to presage the rationales for the most heinous aspects of Nazi

Germany’s Lebensborn program and for selective euthanasia of newborns. In the

Republic, Plato assumes that the state would have to act by subterfuge to attain its

 

'2 Hallett, Judith. Fathers and Daughters in Roman Socieg: Women and the Elite Family. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984) Pg. 36-58 The history of infanticide comprises a broad range of Western

human history. The ancient Roman heads of households possessed a legal right of life and death over their
minor children, though the exact nature of the right remains controversial; Piers. Maria. Infanticide. (New
York: W.W.Norton, 1978) pg. 15; Greven, Philip. The Protestant Temperament: Patterns of Child Rearing,
Religious Experience. and the Self in Early America. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988),
Exposure seems to have been the most common way of disposing of unwanted children in ancient times.
The tale of Oedipus is but one of many in ancient lore of a star-crossed child doomed to such a fate.
Reasons for eliminating newborns varied: bastardy, sickness, deformity, starvation and poverty being most
common. Infanticide generally predominated over abortion in past centuries due to the inefﬁcacy of
abortifacients and abortionists. Young children in many cultures met with death in times of social upheaval
when economic necessity demanded, yet the killing of deformed children prevailed in periods of relative
prosperity throughout the world. As Maria Piers notes of infanticidal mothers in Western cultures, “babies
must have appeared to them as strange things-mot as fellow human beings or as helpless creatures, but as
waste, as near inanimate objects that were perhaps despicable. It was this sort of total strangeness vis-a-vis
the newborn that in earlier centuries led to massive infanticide.” Throughout the second millennium in
Europe, infanticidal mothers were put to death if their crime were found out. Yet there existed another
means of ridding oneself of unwanted children. Midwives and wet nurses often performed such tasks and
generally went unpunished. Piers notes of Italian balia, wet nurses in Renaissance Italy, “it seems that
everywhere infanticidal mothers were punished by death. Wet nurses were not. Greven similarly notes an
ambivalence towards young children in colonial America. Hoffer, Peter & Hull, N.E.H. Murdering Mother:
Infanticide in England and New England, 1558-1803. (New York: New York University Press, 1981) pg.
xviii, 4-5, Hoffer and Hull note that in the early modern period in England, infanticide comprised 30% of
homicide cases. “In the seventeenth-century Plymouth, one of three white people executed for killing
Europeans was a white women, for the murder of her infant.”12 Yet in mid-fourteenth century England,
when the practice of infanticide prevailed to no lesser extent, only one case out of 2,933 homicides
involved infanticide. This would seem to indicate the widespread acceptance of infanticide in Western
culture through the Middle Ages. The practice that Plato advocated as state policy differed mainly in degree
from what continued as a not so unusual social practice through much of Western history.

21

goals.l3 Plato’s state would necessarily have to hide its eugenic policies, yet by the
twentieth century some states would publicly espouse such policies. The connection
between Plato’s Republic and the Nazi state has not only to do with the fact that many
Nazis were no doubt familiar with Plato’s works, but that by the beginning of the
twentieth century, the science of eugenics had made the previously unpalatable
acceptable if not desirable with a majority of people in some advanced industrial
societies.
Twenty-three centuries after Plato, Wilhelm Schallmayer, Germany’s preeminent

eugenicist, commented in a similar vein regarding the implications of Darwin’s theories.

From Darwin’s theory of selection it may undoubtedly be

said that selection is the prerequisite for progress, and that

the stronger the selection, the greater the progress. A

further consequence of the theory is that progress is not just

desirable, but at least in the long run, a necessity. From this

necessity there is no escape--nor has there ever been since

the beginning of life. Moreover, without the continuous

[presence] of selection, even the level of development

arrived at so far cannot be maintained?14
While Schallmayer did not directly advocate infanticide or sterilization, the implications
for those who included such practices as means of selection would use his logic to justify
their policies.

In conjunction with the Schallmayer’s Darwinian argument for a necessary

selection of the ﬁttest, new surgical techniques, which by the very act of allowing

intervention in reproductive life before conception, effectively created a new theoretical

 

'3 Plato. The Republic. Book 5, Paragraph 190-195, “These goings on must be a secret which the rulers
only know, or there will be a further danger of our herd, as the guardians may be termed, breaking out into
rebellion. . ..We shall have to invent some ingenious kind of lots which the less worthy may draw on each
occasion of our bringing them together, and then they will accuse their own ill-luck and not the rulers.

’4 Weiss, Sheila. Rice Hygiene and Nationg Efﬁciency: The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1987) pg. 76

22

category of people (i.e. those perceived as the potentially socially “unﬁt” and their
dysgenic forbears), whom the state could choose to disbar from future existence (i.e.
either the potential existence of the as the yet to be conceived, or as one’s existence in
their progeny). These surgical techniques by eliminating procreation without unsexing
the patient in terms of sexual drive or function regarding the act itself also contributed to
a wider acceptance of the procedure among many parties.

Not only did doctors provide a new technology (e.g. vasectomy and
salpingectomy) which made possible a new conception of controlling human
reproductive functions, but as time honored authorities on theories of heredity, members
of the medical profession played an instrumental part in validating eugenic philosophy.
Seeking a means of transforming itself into a publicly-recognized scientiﬁc pursuit, rather
than remaining an artifact of a disproved medical paradigm, the profession adopted a
new, science-based biomedical paradigm. This new medical paradigm not only
rejuvenated the profession’s status but substantiated advocates’ pronouncements
regarding eugenics, even though some hereditarian constructs inherent in the old
paradigm continued to color their views on the nature of heredity and its relevance to
society. While eugenics’ broad appeal among the educated middle classes relied to large
extent upon its scientiﬁc foundations, it also derived support from biases derived from the
previous hereditarian paradigm.

A substantial portion of the non-elitist public lacking the scientiﬁc education or
background necessary to understand the eugenic paradigm, nevertheless, supported such
elitist policies. In Western industrialized societies, the widespread public acceptance of

biases associated with the antiquated hereditary paradigm aided the promotion of eugenic

23

 

policies, and insidiously inﬂuenced eugenic thought concerning the hereditary basis of
the human mental and physical constitution. The earliest theorists on the nature of
heredity had formulated the essential question that eugenics sought to answer, the relative
inﬂuence of environmental and hereditary factors, i.e. the nature versus nurture argument.

The nature/nurture argument described a controversy between those that
advocated the predominance of either environment or heredity upon the development of
mankind. Both camps in this argument polarized what should have been an objective
investigation into the relative inﬂuences of the genes and the environment upon human
development. The differences in the positions of both sides were exacerbated in the
public forum by the media, and the subtleties of the protagonists’ arguments lost in the
maelstrom of the public debate.

As presented in the public debate, behavioralists, as epitomized by B.F. Skinner,
argued that a human being was a psychological tabla rasa, upon which could be written
virtually any behavioral program desired. Skinner’s theories regarding the psychological
malleability of humans paralleled those of Franz Boas, who presented to a congressional
committee investigating immigration a study purporting to demonstrate that certain
aspects of the social environment modiﬁed the inheritance of supposedly immutable
physical characteristics.” Likewise, hereditarian determinists, such as Harry Laughlin

and Charles Davenport, were presented to the public as arguing that physical and

 

‘5 Skinner, B.F. “The Concept of the reﬂex in description of behavior.” (Journal of General Psychology,
1931, pg. 5, 427-458; Skinner, B.F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity. (New York: Knopf, 1971) In the early
19303, Skinner began publishing his researches into the behavioral response, which ultimately led him to
his strict behavioralist stance, later known as Skinnerism; Kraut, Alan M. Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes
and the Immiggant Menace. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995). pg. 5, 146 Boas claimed
that nutrition and certain other aspects of the American environment could alter the supposedly immutable
“racial characteristics” skull shape. As a prominent anthropologist, Boas claims carried signiﬁcant weight
in the scientiﬁc and lay communities; Degler, Carl. In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival

24

psychological characteristics were determined by a strict genetic inheritance, generally
immutable to environmental factors.

For the public, the validity of either argument carried real consequences for the
formulation of public policy. Issues of immigration, criminality, education, social
welfare, economic and cultural development often revolved around the dichotomy of
nature versus nurture. This has been true not only in the era of eugenics, but throughout
human history in terms of making decisions regarding who should live, prosper, suffer or
die in times of crisis. Such decisions were previously inﬂuenced by the earlier
hereditarian paradigm, which explained personal mental and physical characteristics
through an individual’s inherited constitution or humoral type and the environmental
inﬂuences, which affected their individual constitutional makeup.

Davydd Greenwood’s The Taming of Evolution, shows how Hippocrates “Airs,
Waters and Places” described both the environmental and hereditarian aspects of his
theory. Hippocrates’ treatise provides a combined medical text and theory of world
history. In passing judgement on the value of diverse societies and peoples, he provides a
typology of cities, their types of climates and the humoral consequences arising from
these differing environments. The environmental principle remains preeminent in the
foregoing even when his analysis takes on the nature of genealogical inﬂuence.
Hippocrates cited the Macrocephali as an example of what would later become known as

a Larnarckian pattern of inheritance.16 Greenwood asserts that such pre-Darwinian (i.e.

 

of Darwinism in American Thought. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) pg. 63, 64, 65-66, 70, 74-
75, 80-82, 90, 155, 166, 185, 194.

’6 Hippocrates. The Genuine Works of Hippocraﬂ. “Airs, Waters and Places” (New York: William Wood,
1886) pg. 170-171; Hippocrates described heredity thus, “I will pass over the smaller differences among the
nations, but will now treat of such as are great either from nature, or custom; and ﬁrst, concerning the
Macrocephali. There is no other race of men which have heads in the least resembling theirs. At ﬁrst, usage
was the principal cause of the length of their head, but now nature cooperates with usage.” Elaborating

25

humoral) inﬂuences remained evident in the literature on race, ethnicity, and national
character even in the period after the general acceptance of Darwin’s theories in the
scientiﬁc community.

The enduring power of this hereditarian perspective can be seen twenty centuries
later in the writings of Jean Bodin (1529-1596). In Six Books of the Commonwealth,
Bodin describes how environment conditions or in Darwinian terms selects for a
particular type of population. His attachment to the older hereditarian paradigm is evident
in his analysis of the diversity of peoples and there places of origin.17 The result of his
analysis provides the geopolitical stereotypes that remain with us today. "Northemers
succeed by means of force, southemers by means of ﬁnesse, people of the middle regions

by a measure of both"18

 

further on the effects of environment, he explains, “Cities exposed to hot winds typically give rise to humid
diseases while those with cold winds produce hard or bilious diseases.” A typology of waters provides a
further elaboration to this environmental schema. “Waters from elevated ground are the best, as are waters
from the east; those from the west are not had; those from the north are poor and from the south unhealthy.
Marshy waters bring about bilious disease and those from rock springs cause diseases of hardness.” The
seasons and climatological change furnish further detail. “Climates that experience the greatest and most
rapid change give rise to the greatest diversity in all animate life, whereas those with little promote
homogeneity.”

‘7 Bodin, Jean. Six Books of the Commonwealth. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955) pg. 149-150, Those who
live at the extremities near the poles are phlegmatic and those in the extreme south, melancholic. Those
who live thirty degrees below the pole are of a more sanguine complexion, and those who are about
midway, sanguine or choleric. Further south they become more choleric or melancholic. They are moreover
tanned black or yellow, which are the colours of black melancholy and yellow choler.

'3 Ibid. Pg.l48. In his major works, Six Books of the Commonwealth (1576) and Method for the Easy
Comprehension of Histog (1583), he developed a theory for the political management of states based on an
analysis of the inﬂuence of environment on human behavior. His theories revealed a continuity with
classical theories of the effect of environments on the one hand and contemporary political theory on the
other. Bodin attempted to differentiate what is "natural," and therefore beyond human control, from what is
"political," and thus subject to human design.

26

The resulting diverse races required different types of political structures that
accorded with the speciﬁc temperament of a people. Since environment conditioned the
physical and social characteristics of a people there were limitations to the range of
political arrangements that particular peoples could accept.

Political institutions must be adapted to environment, and

human laws to natural laws. Those who have failed to do

this, and have tried to make nature obey their laws, have

brought disorder, and even ruin, on great states. 19
In effect, a people’s adaptability to other forms of governance was restricted to the degree
that a speciﬁc range of political arrangements was intrinsic to a people’s racial
temperament. At the turn of the century, the continuity of this belief in the racial nature of
political philosophies would have serious ramiﬁcations for some eugenicists
contemplating the suitability of particular peoples in their body politics.

Demonstrating the tenacity of such tenets even among Michigan’s eugenicists,
Kellogg showed a similar belief in the effects of climate, particularly upon sexual
development and the relevance of this to a peoples’ general physiological and mental
character. For him, the early sexual maturity and indulgence associated with warmer
climates, led to a number of pernicious hereditary effects that would by his reasoning be

exacerbated within populations existing in such climes.20

 

'9 Ibid. pg. 78-81;

20 Kellogg, John Harvey. Plain Facts for (k and Young: Emﬂcing the Natural History and Hygiene of
Organic Life. (Burlington: I.F. Senger & Co., 1891), http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/modeng/modeng0.
browse.html, 1995, Kellogg explained, “In man, puberty commonly occurs between the ages of ten and
ﬁfteen years, varying considerably in different climates. In this country, and in other countries of about the
same latitude, puberty usually occurs at the age of fourteen or fourteen and one-half years in females, and a
few months later in males. In cooler climates, as in Norway and Siberia, the change is delayed to the age of
eighteen or nineteen years. In tropical climates it is hastened. occurring as early as nine or ten years. In
warm climates it is no uncommon thing for a girl to be a mother at twelve; and it is stated “that one of the
wives of Mahomet was a mother at ten.”; Pg. 465 Commenting speciﬁcally on the results of early sexuality,
Kellogg elaborated, “the sad results of excessive indulgences are seen on every hand. Numerous ailments
attributed to overwork, constitutional disease, or hereditary predisposition, know no other cause and need
no other explanation.”

27

An inherent problem of Bodin’s formulation, as with that of previous hereditary
paradigm, was the problem of transformation of hereditary type with environmental
change. When a particular hereditary type is transported to another environment then the
new environmental inﬂuences should prevail to transform the original “natural type.” For
Bodin and his intellectual descendants, the maintenance of the original type could still be
accomplished through the judicious use of social control, particularly through the
avoidance of mixing different human stocks. Thus, nurture prevails over nature, as long
as the hereditary purity of the original stock is maintained. In this formulation, the
mixture of stocks leads to degeneration, as does the dissolution of societal constructs,
themes which remained in vogue with many eugenicists.

This focus on racial purity and social control remained throughout the intellectual
debate regarding the hereditary basis of social progress. Michigan’s most eminent
eugenicists, Drs. Kellogg and Vaughan subscribed to this view of racial purity, as did
many eugenicists. In discussing the deleterious effects of inbreeding in terms of
compounding the effects of “negative unit characters,” Vaughan afﬁrmed a belief in the
undesirability of interracial marriages.

The Eurasians of India, the mulattos of our own country,
and the mixed races of South America and neighbouring
islands are unanswerable arguments against race mixtures.
The bad of each side becomes dominant, and the mongrel

whether man or beast, is no credit to the pure blood on
either side of the house.21

 

2‘ Eugenics: Twelve University Lectures. Pg. 64. This belief derived from humoral precepts and was widely
held. Though anthropologist Franz Boas, among others, pointed out the fallacious nature of such beliefs, it
did little to persuade those inculcated with the received humoral precepts of centuries past.

 

28

Likewise, though in a less strident tone, Kellogg agreed that “Marriage between widely
different races is unadvisable. .. such marriages are not only not conducive to happiness,
but are detrimental to the offspring. It has been proven beyond room for question that
mulattoes are not so long-lived as either blacks or whites.”22

This form of racism held that each “pure race” possessed qualities optimized for
the particular environment in which it had arose. The often unspoken, but widely
assumed corollary ascribed optimization of some races to less developed, or in
contemporary terms, primitive regions. The insidious logic of this position insinuated that
peoples from “primitive” areas of the globe though optimized for their environments
remained “primitive” in their development; a rather dubious optimization at best.

For contemporary Michigan eugenicists, the state’s relatively homogeneous
population and social mores that precluded “marriage between widely different races,”
meant questions of race mixing arose principally as an abstract matter of national
immigration policy. Like many eugenicists, their parochial interest in their own ethnic
population meant that Kellogg and Vaughan’s racial attitudes remained for the most part
academic. Yet, however similar their views on miscegenation may have been, their
perspectives on the physiological process of hereditary change and its relevance to the
nature/nurture argument represented the two divergent poles of Larnarckian and
Mendelian genetics.

Kellogg and Vaughan’s respective positions on the physiological nature of

heredity and eugenic policy epitomized the essential paradox inherent in eugenics.

 

22 Kellogg, John Harvey. Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracig the Natural History and Hygiene of
Organic Life. (Burlington: I.F. Senger & Co., 1891), http://etextlib.virginia.edu/modeng/modeng0.
browse.html, 1995, Pg. 151

29

Kellogg believed in a Larnarckian mode of inheritance in which positive or negative
environmental inﬂuences sometimes resulted in inheritable changes. Vaughan subscribed
to the Mendelian position, which held the germ plasm to be immutable to environmental
inﬂuences in the Larnarckian sense, yet both men advocated both positive (e. g. selective
breeding) and negative (e.g. compulsory sterilization) eugenic measures. To the degree
that efforts to improve social conditions aided the survival and propagation of the “unﬁt,”
both men believed such actions to be dysgenic. This did not mean they opposed social
welfare programs, but that they conditioned their support on precluding the propagation
of dysgenic elements in the population. Their positions on positive eugenics differed in
that Kellogg promoted a program of personal environmental improvements (e. g.
euthenics, the avoidance of environmental toxins and adherence to his doctrines of
healthy living) to supplement eugenically positive mating choices, whereas Vaughan
relied principally upon the latter.

What focused both doctors’ interest on the importance of negative eugenic
measures was the perceived crisis of increasing rates of degeneracy. It seems obvious
today that the “degeneracy crisis” resulted from bureaucratic attempts to determine how
to implement social welfare programs that had in an earlier era been primarily the
concern of private charitable organizations. The magnitude of the tasks, which state
agencies now sought to address, proved to be far greater than initially thought. The
previous lack of organizations monitoring the extent of those now deemed “socially
dysfunctional” meant that when prior assumptions based on anecdotal information
collided with the hard data produced by modern bureaucracies, the result was a seemingly

colossal increase in the numbers of the degenerate. From this disparity between prior

30

assumptions and newly surveyed facts regarding the degenerate proportion of the
populace arose the impression of a tremendous upsurge in degeneracy.

For many eugenicists in the isolationist United States, degeneracy was essentially
a home-grown problem marginally affected by immigration. Yet for some like Harry
Laughlin of the Eugenics Record Ofﬁce, immigration restriction was of paramount
importance as it posed a threat to the racial purity of the population and hence the
institutions of the country. The confusion regarding to what extent personal and political
behavior were conditioned by cultural and heredity factors, meant that eugenicists
following Bodin and his intellectual descendants, viewed ethnically disparate immigrants
as a threat to political and social institutions for which they were supposedly not
genetically or culturally predisposed. Reﬂecting the relative importance of this
perspective on local decisions regarding various states’ eugenic policies, compulsory
sterilization laws were most often enacted in states where imrrrigration was minimal and
immigrants either willingly sought assimilation.

Laughlin’s fears regarding the threat of racial degeneracy posed by ethnically
different immigrants most closely paralleled those of some German eugenicists. What
Laughlin viewed as a threat from afar seeking entry to America, these German
eugenicists saw as menace immediately across their borders. Following the First World
War and its disastrous consequences for the German Empire, German eugenicists became
ever more convinced that the encirclement of their nation by ethnically-different, hostile
powers imperiled their existence as a people. Those viewed as dysgenic elements within
the population were seen as compromising the Volk’s ability to compete and survive in

such a hostile situation. The competitive disadvantages imposed by the Versailles Treaty

31

and the results of the Great Depression only served to heighten their apprehensions and
progressively radicalize their eugenic prescriptions.

It was not coincidental that physicians in the two countries provided eugenics’
most valuable advocates. The biomedical paradigm provided physicians legitimacy in
espousing eugenic themes. American’s geographical isolation and widespread belief in
their society’s ability to assimilate immigrants meant that America’s physician-
eugenicists remained less radical than their German counterparts though sympathetic to
the latter’s perceived plight. Though they differed in their emphasis on the relative
importance of internal versus external threats to their respective societies, both countries’
eugenically-minded physicians followed similar paths to their new biomedical and
eugenic paradigms. The next chapter describes how American physicians came to adopt

the practice of scientiﬁc medicine and how this inﬂuenced the development of eugenics

as one of many health reforms.

32

Chapter Two — Evolution of the American Medical Profession

Because physicians came to wield remarkable inﬂuence among professionals and
the lay public, it is important to understand how the American medical profession arose
from its l9tltll century standing as low status ﬁeld composed of incompetent if not
dangerous practitioners through the adoption of a science based medicine. Physicians
associated with the scientiﬁc renaissance of American medicine made especially
inﬂuential promoters of the eugenic philosophy. Two Michigan physicians, Victor
Vaughan and John Harvey Kellogg epitomized the changes occurring in medicine and the
inﬂuence such physicians could exert in espousing eugenic measures.

The progression of scientiﬁc knowledge in the 19th century proceeded at what to
contemporaries seemed an astonishing pace. Though some rare individuals appeared to
keep the ideal of the Renaissance man alive through their mastery of a wide range of
subjects, the age of the specialist seemed nigh. The palpable beneﬁts of reductionist
inquiry showed their merit in the sciences and mechanical arts. In an age of technological
innovation, the empirical process provided a method whereby reproducible result testing
furnished inventors and producers with an arsenal of information for use in originating
new technologies and methodologies.

Through most of the century these innovations remained the province of the gifted
amateur, in the sense that these originators were without graduate degrees or professional
recognition in their ﬁelds. In engineering, Robert Fulton, John Ericsson and Thomas
Edison were prime examples of this phenomenon. In the sciences and mathematics,
Francis Galton and Charles Darwin epitomized the same. Medicine provided country

doctors such as Paul Ehrlich and Robert Koch who beyond making profound discoveries

33

established new ﬁelds within the sciences. Samuel Morse’s development of the telephone
demonstrated the spirit of the age, whereby an individual with a wide range of knowledge
outside his speciﬁc ﬁeld could apply this information to the elaboration of technological
breakthroughs.

Yet, frauds and crackpots of various stripe competed with the truly resourceful
and erudite. The question of how to differentiate the useful from the fraudulent became of
greater importance, particularly to the consumers, governments and capitalists who were
considering investing their resources in the development and use of new technology. In
the industrializing nations, increasing levels of disposable income meant consumers
could afford to purchase and thus sustain markets for new services and products.
Governments in their rush to compete in the great game of colonization needed
increasingly diverse and advanced levels of technology. Capitalists desired a means of
evaluating the practicality and potential proﬁtability of investments in the new
technologies. Yet who were the experts one could consult? The old professions of
medicine, law and clergy based their claims to professional status on a classical
education, which bore little suitability as a means of evaluating the new outgrowths of
research and development. Experts perforce remained constrained in their evaluative
aptitudes by the disparate nature of their paths to knowledge. Each gifted amateur had
chosen and followed individual interests with little in the way of established canon or
curricula as a guide. An expert in any one particular ﬁeld might well have no insight into
a seemingly associated area of knowledge. The need for a new means of establishing
evaluative criteria for consumers, governments and capitalist investors drove forward an

I-

impetus towards the elaboration of new professions. On the other hand, the desire by

34

practitioners of these new arts to differentiate themselves and their expertise from the
sundry shams and artiﬁces of unscrupulous impostors drove them to seek out a means of
establishing their credentials also.

For the ﬁeld of eugenics, members of a revitalized medical profession founding
their claims to legitimacy on a new scientiﬁc medicine, or biomedical paradigm, served
to sanction eugenics as a duly recognized professional sphere. American medical
professionals contributed signiﬁcantly to the scientiﬁc legitimacy attached to eugenics.
To understand how these physicians could sanction the elitist claims of eugenics, it is
instructive to understand how American doctors lost their professional standing, by what
means they found their path back to elite status, and the philosophical continuities with
past practice that remained. The professionalization or rather the reprofessionalization of
American medicine provides a telling illustration of the problems leading to and the
process wherein the new elites sought and conﬁrmed their status as professions.

As Larsen notes, "Most European governments felt the need, at least by the
sixteenth century, for some regulation of medical practice. The College of Physicians in
London, the collegium-medicum of German cities, the tribunal de protomedicato in
Spain, were all granted some control over licensing practitioners, the inspection of drugs,

and the like."1 The broadening monetization of American markets in conjunction with the

increased afﬂuence of the average American led to a larger market for medical services.
In 19th century America, the lack of such restrictive corporate monopolies and their
concomitant regulatory standards allowed an unprecedented growth in the supply of

physicians attempting to tap into the increased market for medical treatments. The

 

l Larsen, Magali. The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1977) pg. 23

35

American practice of apprenticeship under an established practitioner in combination
with a lack of coordinated standards led to the proliferation of proprietary medical
schools as physicians of every stripe sought to augment their incomes through teaching.
As the number of proprietary schools multiplied, the quality of care decreased.
Proprietary schools jettisoned the classical indoctrination that had been a part of the
professional cache of European physicians and focused on direct training of those able to
pay. With curricula as lax as the requirements for entry to and graduation from these
schools, potential doctors swapped tuition and a brief period of study for the diplomas
which replaced the licenses state medical societies had previously granted. While the
schools did achieve a level of standardization unapproachable through the old apprentice
system it had the concomitant effect of rapidly increasing the numbers of doctors.
Competition for patients led to decreasing incomes and status, which paradoxically '
allowed more diverse segments of the population to aspire to the practice. As the lower
orders of society could now join the profession albeit without the previous erudition
required, there followed a general decline in standards and requirements. The extended
political franchise of the J acksonian Era as imitated by the broadened social backgrounds
of the medical profession ironically led many state legislatures to forego their prior
credentialing of physicians proclaiming every American’s “inalienable right to life,
liberty and quackery.” In the wake of the broadened franchise, politicians scrambled to
epitomize the popular sentiments of their constituents. As the status ties of the old elites
broke down, popular sentiment regarding doctors revealed itself in the refusal of states to

sanction medical practice.2

 

2 Ibid. pg. 19-25

36

This decline in physicians’ status and income was compounded by the general
inefﬁcacy of humoral treatments and unfounded pathological theories. The plethora of
practitioners in this highly competitive market led to attempts to differentiate their
practices. New medical sects endeavored to ﬁnd more effectual treatments, many of
which bordered on the inane. “Regular” physicians strove to increase their treatment
success and thus their status and market share through the use of more radical therapies
still considered within the old humoral paradigm. .

The lack of efﬁcacy in the humoral/Galenic treatments that “regular” physicians
employed upon their patients were exacerbated by the tendency towards “heroic”
treatments. Heroic medicine often involved the use of monstrous amounts of toxic heavy
metal compounds, usually salts of mercury. While the use of mercury compounds showed
some efﬁcacy with particular disease states as demonstrated by Paracelsus and others, in
19’h century America, many “regular” physicians relied on ever increasing doses of these
poisonous substances. Obvious indications of what today would be called fatal toxicity,
bleeding gums and foaming at the mouth, revealed to the “heroic” physician that an
appropriate dosage had been achieved. The ineffectiveness of treatments was most
apparent in the outbreaks of highly infectious, morbid diseases such as cholera.

As the pace of industrialization, immigration and urbanization quickened the
epidemic diseases associated with these phenomena grew concurrently. The expansion of
global trading networks allowed epidemics to spread more quickly and effectively across
the globe. The Galenic paradigm held that disease was caused by humoral imbalances in
the individual constitutions of sufferers, imbalances brought on by shifts in

environmental conditions or local irritations such as rniasmas and efﬂuvias.

37

Communicability, or contagion as it was known, was anathema to most regular
physicians, though it seemed evident to most laymen.

In the 1832 American cholera outbreak, as during plagues past, those laymen
with the means to do so ﬂed the cities for the sanctuary of more rural climes. Regular
physicians unable to explain the epidemic nature of the disease, reverted to their tired
maxims of constitutional ﬁtness. Physicians characterized the victims as the ﬁlthy,
depraved and intemperate, those whose lifestyles led to imbalances in their constitutional
makeup. During the early phase of New York City’s epidemic when forty-ﬁve deaths a
day were recorded, the Special Medical Council declared, that “the disease in the city is
conﬁned to the imprudent, the intemperate, and to those who injure themselves by taking
improper medicines.”3 As the epidemic progressed throughout the city, the toll of victims
began to include the “better” sections of society and even the physicians themselves.
Their clearly ineffectual treatment methods led to a focus on preventing the humoral
imbalances thought to be responsible for the disease. Thus, the Special Medical Council

published these recommendations distributed in newspapers and handbills.

Notice
Be temperate in eating and drinking
avoid crude vegetables and fruits;
abstain from cold water, when heated;
and above all from ardent spirits and
if habit have rendered it indispensable,
take much less than usual.
Sleep and clothe warm
Avoid labor in the heat of day.
Do not sleep or sit in a draught of air when heated.
Avoid getting wet
Take no medicines without advice.4

 

3 Rosenberg, Charles. The Chiera Years. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) pg. 30

38

The clergy seconded the regulars opinions regarding the outbreak of cholera. Intemperate
and depraved lifestyles were the foundation of cholera and they proclaimed it widely
from their pulpits. Even as members of the upper echelons of society fell prey to the
disease, the clergy and physicians suggested that these victims had led double lives, their
hidden depravity revealed by the scourge of cholera. The old conjunction of theology and
medical philosophy described illness as the retribution for individual sin.

As the epidemic reached its height with more than 100 people a day dying within
the city’s boroughs, doctors tried ever more radical treatments. As broader sections of the
populace became infected, the old saws of intemperance, depravity and double lives
seemed less able to explain the progress of the epidemic even to the professional choir of
clergy and physicians. The average American, turned off by the pretensions and expense
of regular doctors, often turned to other medical sects for treatment as less expensive and
if not more efﬁcacious, at least less deadly in result.

Among the new medical sects was one with great appeal to the masses of rural
and lower-class Americans, Thomsonian medicine eschewed mineral based drugs and
espoused the use of botanical formulations based on the healing properties of natural
herbs. Kits were inexpensive and readily available. The similarity of these standardized
preparations to the old folk remedies no doubt enhanced their appeal amongst laymen.
Yet, there existed a deeper mistrust of the professional castes, versiﬁed by the founder of
Thomsonianism, Samuel Thomson.

The nest of college-birds are three,
Law, Physic and Divinity;

And while these three remain combined,
They keep the world oppressed and blind.

 

‘ Ibid. pg. 30

39

On Lab'rers money lawyers feast,
Also the Doctor and the Priest;

The Priest pretends to save the soul,
Doctors to make the body whole;
For money, lawyers make their plea;
We'll save it and dismiss the three.
Come freemen all, unveil your eyes,
If you this slavish yoke despise;
Now is the time to be set free,

From Priests' and Doctors' slavery?5

By the second outbreak of cholera in 1849, many doctors had convinced
themselves not of the theory of contagion, but that the roots of the epidemic lay within
the squalor of the city. New efforts were made to clean up the ﬁlth and cesspools from
which miasmatic and efﬂuvial discharges were thought to emanate. In this slightly
modiﬁed version of the paradigm, these discharges caused the local irritations responsible
for humoral imbalance and thus the spread of the disease. The focus on causation shifted
from individual sinfulness to the inadequacy of society’s institutions.

While the regulars’ treatments remained ineffective, some physicians began to
experiment with new variations on old themes (e.g. tobacco smoke enemas, yet higher
doses of mercury) and some with new technologies and explanations of pathology (e. g.
electricity, carbolic acid and ozone as the causes). In England and Germany where
medical standards remained exalted, even if treatment success was not, some physicians
were trying to apply empirical methods to understanding the epidemiology of diseases.

John Snow, an eminent anesthetist, made a breakthrough by following cholera

path in London’s 1849 outbreak and established that contaminated water was the mode of

 

5 Ibid. pg. 71

40

transmission. In Germany, Max von Pettenkoffer independently came to the same
conclusion regarding both typhoid and cholera though he differed from Snow on the
particulars on the disease agent. What both men had shown was that the diseases were
contagious, the agency of transfer, not the actual agent. But more important than either
was that the empirical method could be used to demonstrate effective means of
prevention (i.e. improved sanitation). For most of the remainder of the century,
prevention remained the most that medicine could render in the realm of contagious
diseases.

Their were noted exceptions though in the efﬁcacy of “regular” medical practice.
With the advent of aseptic surgical techniques, thoracic and cranial surgeries were
possible without the near certainty of morbid infection. As new surgical techniques
evolved along with pathological analysis (post mortems) of disease processes, surgeons
became the stars of medical practice. Their abilities to intervene in chronic processes
provided some of the very few remedies extant during the latter half of the century. They
also enhanced the heroic nature of the profession, though one could still convincingly
argue that the patient’s submission to treatment showed more heroism than that of his
physician.

Not until the 18803 when Pasteur, Koch and others were able to demonstrate that
bacteria were the causative agents of disease did the paradigm really begin to shift.
Surgery for all its new found fame relied on techniques sometimes dating back to Galen.
The empirical research method provided more effective means of diagnosis and
prevention, if not cures. Attempts to develop new vaccines and “antisera” against

infectious illnesses were generally unsuccessful. Some causative agents, those of a viral

41

nature, remained complete mysteries. Their mode of transmission might be elucidated but
the agent and treatment for it continued to evade detection. The greatest mystery seemed
to be the variable susceptibility of people to a disease agent. Why were some individuals
able to drink from the same cholera contaminated water supplies as others and not get the
disease. Why did people react differently to the same treatment. Why was the severity of
disease variable among individuals. These were not new questions. The ability of the
constitutional theory of the humoral paradigm to explicate these variations lent it much of
its enduring power.

Though the empiricism of the scientiﬁc method provided little on the way of
treatment of contagious disease throughout the century, its accomplishments in the realm
of diagnosis and prevention raised the status of those physicians who espoused the
methodology. While homeopathic, hydropathic and eclectic sects ﬂourished throughout
the latter decades of the century, the efﬁcacy of their treatments remained problematic
also (though certainly less deadly than the heroics of the regulars). The competition
between these sects and the regulars led to efforts to distinguish the superiority of their
respective methods and philosophies. The scientiﬁc method provided regulars with a
means of characterizing their practices as superior. The problem remained that most of
the regulars had little in the way of scientiﬁc training.

English, French and German medical schools did have reputations for scientiﬁc
training though and many American regulars ventured forth to seek their enlightenment
Those interested in surgery sought out the expertise available in England; those absorbed
in the nature of infectious diseases went to Germany. The reasons for Germany’s lead in

the medical sciences were diverse. The establishment of the Hartrnann Bund in Germany,

42

Bismarck’s sop to the working masses, established national health insurance and
provided a ﬁxed competitive market for the various sects to compete in. Governmental
control of the program meant that the state would decide the criteria for remunerable
medical assistance. Since a science based medicine seemed most effective those schools
and sects which embraced the new paradigm found most favor with the state. The
connection of scientiﬁc medicine with the German regulars was more easily facilitated by
their association with luminaries such as Koch, Ehrlich and Pettenkoffer, all “regulars.”

American regulars seeking to differentiate their practices from the other sects
attended lectures and demonstrations in Europe and advertised their newfound
connections to scientiﬁc medicine. Two errrinent Michigan physicians, Victor Clarence
Vaughan and John Harvey Kellogg followed this typical trajectory.

Vaughan, a Missourian who had considered a career teaching the classics,
proceeded to build upon a largely self-taught background in chemistry. Upon his
graduation from Mount Pleasant College in 1872 he was prevailed upon to teach
chemistry and Latin, which he did for two years before feeling that he needed more
instruction. With what little post-bellum Southern colleges could offer in the way of
instruction he set out for Michigan University to pursue a degree in chemistry and

geology at the newly opened colleges.6 His interest in chemistry led to associations with

 

6 Vaughan, Victor. A Doctor’s Memories. pg. 86-89. Vaughan noted a number of reasons for
his decision to attend MU. The university’s lack of religious sectarianism was complemented by
Michigan’s heightened national reputation. Vaughan states, “At that time, Michigan was the great
state university. Simple people as we were, we knew of Watson and of the asteroids he had found
in the sky. Winchell had shocked the elders in our church by his conservative interpretation of
creation. Cooley was emerging as the great authority on constitutional law. Frieze had issued a
most excellent edition of Virgil, which had a special fascination for me. Fasquelle's French
Grammar had found its way into our colleges. Olney had ﬂooded the schools with his mathe-
matical texts replacing older authors. The St. Louis Republican, which came to our house daily,
announced that President Angel] had suspended the greater number of a class for insubordination,
showing that discipline would be maintained at Michigan. Hillgard, one of the greatest scientists

43

Albert Prescott and Silas Douglas, whom he credited as responsible for “introducing
required laboratory instruction in chemistry into the curricula of medical schools.”7
Upon completion of his Masters, he entered the medical school in 1875 and

attempted to ﬁnish three various theses on as many topics. His abilities as a chemist led
to his replacing his former instructors in physiological chemistry upon their demise in the
infamous Douglas-Rose affair.8 Though Vaughan had not matriculated or graduated from
the medical school he now found himself teaching in it. He put his lectures in book form
in 1878, which went through three editions in as many years, establishing his reputation
as an able instructor and chemist in his own right.

It was at this early stage of his career Vaughan found himself caught up in the
sectarian battles for the future of medical education. For several years the Michigan
legislature attempted to “engraft homeopathy” onto the medical school’s curriculum.
First, the legislature demanded that chairs be established in materia medica and its
practice. Failing this, the legislature made all university appropriations contingent on the
establishment of a full Homeopathic School. The regulars reacted immediately, if without
much success. While the university’s professors “hurled anathemas at the accursed
heresy,” the AMA and the State Medical Society “threatened non-recognition of all

medical graduates of the University provided this unholy alliance was consummated.”9

As the legislature held the purse strings the school opened its doors in 1875.

 

of the South, had been called from the University of Mississippi to a chair in Michigan. However
my, ﬁnal decision was made when I learned that there was a large and well equipped chemistry
laboratory there.”

7 Ibid. pg. 92

8 Ibid. Pg. 102-103; The Douglas-Rose affair refers to a unfortunate incident wherein the head of the
chemistry laboratory and the instructor of physiological chemistry were dismissed for ﬁnancial
improprieties, opening the position of instructor to Vaughan.

9 Ibid. Pg. 104-105

Though the medical schools were supposed to be independent there existed some
degree of overlap in that the students from both schools “did their fundamental scientiﬁc
studies, especially their laboratory courses with their enemies.”10 As the allopathic
school kept increasing its requirements, the Homeopathic School failed to keep pace, thus
many students who were unqualiﬁed to enter the former school entered the latter,
attended classes with the regulars and felt the consequent opprobrium. Eventually the
entry requirements were made identical, but graduation requirements remained a sticking
point. Allopathic graduates had to have passed every subject, while some homeopaths
were allowed to graduate even with failing grades in the scientiﬁc subjects. Vaughan
states that he passed homeopathic students with lower grades and required less of them
than his allopathic students assuming that the state boards of licensure would not credit
their failure to his school. Eventually, the situation would be remedied when the
homeopathic school was integrated in to the allopathic by inclusion of two chairs on the
faculty, the same plan the legislature had proposed forty years before its acceptance.

Though Vaughan claimed a lack of bitterness towards the competing sects, his
veneration of the scientiﬁc method left little room for equivocation.

Medicine is not based on theory nor does it constitute a
system of philosophy. It can grow only as the sciences,
which supply its pabulum develop. There can be but one
medicine. Medical sects are all parasitic growths and must
fail in the end.

His feeling for the osteopaths showed even less respect. Vaughan remained an

unreconstructed empiricist throughout his career. Describing his incredulity with various

 

'0 Ibid. pg. 104

45

sectarian beliefs he stated, “I regret their acceptance by the people as evidence of
unbalanced mentality.”11 With regard to Freud in particular he said,

Accept the teachings of Freud and his apostles that dreams

are always of import, that they are founded on some sex

experience or repression that even the nursing infant has

sexual orgasm, ant that most horrid of all human concepts,

the Oedipus [complex] becomes a possibility.12
The scientiﬁc allopaths as epitomized by Vaughan spurned almost anything not subject to
empirical proof. As matters stood at the end of the 18703, this left rather small discrete
ﬁelds of specialization. Histology was still in its infancy when Vaughan was nominated
and elected to teach the subject in 1878.13 To his colleagues his knowledge of the subject
must have seemed a natural elaboration of his microscopic work in physiological
chemistry. Microscopy itself was an infant science in that an elite university medical
school such as Michigan possessed a grand total of fourteen, twelve of which Vaughan
had purchased in his initial tenure as instructor of physiological chemistry and histology.

By the 18703, many states began to reestablish medical licensing examination

boards. Texas passed the ﬁrst modern medical practice act in 1873. In 1880, the Illinois
Board of Health, the licensing agency for the state became a model for the nation when it
began to list Canadian and American medical schools according to qualitative standards
established by the American Association of Medical Colleges, an organization of elite,
scientiﬁcally oriented institutions.14

As more states followed Illinois’ course, scientiﬁc medicine became the criteria

for acceptance within the other sects also. Most homeopaths and eclectics of the middle

 

“ Ibid. pg. 106
‘2 Ibid. pg. 107
‘3 Ibid. pg. 109-112

46

part of the century had been trained as allopaths, but had recycled their practices in an
effort to avoid the consequences of heroic methods. Their path back into the allopathic
fold was eased by the regulars’ acquiescence to their participation on the state licensing
boards. The adoption of a science education as the basis for all allopathic medical
education promoted not only solidarity among the formerly divided, but allowed the
regulars to characterize their remaining and now excluded competitors as quacks.

The scientiﬁc practitioners were originators and combatants in the sectarian
conﬂicts over the practice of medicine through the turn of the century, but their battles
were not with the competing sects alone. Within the allopathic community disputes arose
between specialists and general practitioners. While most of the specialists were recent
graduates of the elite scientiﬁcally oriented medical schools who had often furthered their
educations with training in Europe, most GPs had graduated from less prestigious
schools, foregone the European experience for lack of funds and often graduated well
before the new science based curricula had been established. Specialists’ proclaimed
advanced erudition and expertise garnered them the lion’s share of elite patients in the
larger cities. As these upper echelon patients’ status and fortunes were often founded
upon similar advancements in the arts and sciences, they demanded medical care
grounded with comparable merit. With this roster of privileged patients went the elite
status and income to which the specialists aspired.

The GP dominated AMA reacted from mid-century onwards with bans on
explicitly advertising specialties. Specialists responded by forming their own professional

societies, promoting their expertise through the societies’ literature. For most regular

 

" Brown, E. Richard. Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980.) pg. 88-90

47

physicians practicing outside the major urban centers, specialization held little attraction
as their markets provided neither the number of patients requiring such a practice nor the
ﬁnancial recompense necessary to justify the expense of its acquisition. These differences
upon the merits of modes of practice between the GPs and specialists continue to this
day, as do the levels of status and income associated with them.

While the AMA continued to consolidate and extend its control of state licensure
boards, the specialist societies proceeded to establish their science-based criteria in the
medical schools and in post-graduate specialist certiﬁcation. Events and contestants in the
battle between the scientiﬁc and generalist camps were watched closely on both sides of
the Atlantic.

When Vaughan and Dr. Novy his former student, with the prospect of opening a
laboratory of hygiene in the fall of 1888, hastened to Berlin to take a course in
bacteriology at Koch’s laboratory, Vaughan found himself in a confrontation with the
master himself.

While I was at work in the laboratory, Professor Koch
summoned me to a conference in his private room. I felt
highly honored to be thus distinguished, but the burden of
his talk was the condemnation of the University of
Michigan for retaining as its professor of pathology a
man who did not accept the well established fact that
bacteria cause disease, referring to Professor Gibbes,
whose name Koch pronounced with bitterness, biting it
into two syllables. I tried to explain that I was an antagonist
of Professor Gibbes' teaching and that my purpose in
seeking instruction in Koch's laboratory was to ﬁt me
better to combat my colleagues' erroneous teachings, but
I did not succeed in mollifying his anger. Robert Koch
was a great man, but in many respects a typical German,
ready to stamp upon those who did not acknowledge his
authority. While I admired his work I could not be
altogether pleased with his personality."

 

'5 Vaughan, Victor. A Doctor’s Memories. pg. 146-147

48

As American medical schools began to approach their European counterparts’ standards
of teaching, both European and American interest in the debates between the scientiﬁc
and generalist practitioners was magniﬁed by the inferred implications to similar debates
occurring on one or the other side of the Atlantic.

While the medical schools’ teachers founded their claims upon their laboratory
empiricism, particularly in regards to the nature of infectious diseases and the chemical
processes of the body, the post-graduate specialists based their legitimacy upon a basic
scientiﬁc training and advanced expertise, generally in the ﬁeld of surgery. John Harvey
Kellogg epitomized not only this latter position, but conjoined it with an interest in
empirical research.

Kellogg also began his career as a largely self-taught teacher. Hired by the
Hastings school board as an instructor of ﬁrst-graders through high-schoolers at the age
of sixteen, his health suffered from the extremely taxing load. During his recovery he was
able to complete his own high school and college education at Michigan State Normal
College while working part-time for the Adventist publication, the Review and Herald.

Kellogg’s connection to the Adventist faith went back to his parent’s acceptance
of the teachings of the Water Cure Journal. The elder Kelloggs, followers of the Millerite
Movement, turned away from the regulars’ heroic medicine upon the death of their eldest
daughter Emma. She had contracted a lung ailment, and though the obvious course
seemed treatment of that symptomology, their allopathic physician determined the cause
was worms and treated it in appropriate heroic style. Kellogg’s mother insisted upon an

autopsy in her presence, and the results indicated no parasites but an inﬂammation of the

49

lungs. Success with subsequent family ills using the hydropathic treatments prescribed in
the Water Cure Journal and their rnillenarian religious views led the Kelloggs to embrace
the teachings of the Adventist health reformer Ellen White.

Ellen White, the wife of the denominational leader, began to have inspired
revelations regarding healthful living practices in the 1860s. These revelations were held
in high regard by the Adventist laity and became a cornerstone of the faith. In 1865,
White in association with ﬁve reformist physicians published a series of pamphlets and
began the regular publication of the Health Reformer. John Harvey Kellogg’s attachment
to White began with his apprenticeship as a typesetter for these Adventist medical
editions.

In the fall of 1872, Kellogg was persuaded by his family to attend Dr. Russell
Trall’s Hygeio-Therapeutic College with his elder half-brother Merritt who had graduated
from the six-month course a few years before. The college emphasized the curative
powers of internal and external uses of water along with a simple diet, exercise and fresh
air. Kellogg’s interest in medical practice was strengthened by the experience and at the
suggestion of Ellen White’s husband James; he enrolled in Michigan University’s
medical school. James White recognized that in the changing medical climate for
Adventist health principles to gain a fair hearing they would have to be based on a sound
knowledge of anatomy, physiology and chemistry. The faith needed scientiﬁcally trained
physicians to promote its beliefs. John Harvey Kellogg was to become one of their ﬁrst.

At the time, MU ’s medical curriculum was fairly typical of the genre, two twenty-
four week courses of science-based instruction with little to differentiate the two courses

and virtually no clinical experience. Kellogg was attracted to the teachings of a former

50

Civil War surgeon and founder of the Michigan State Medical Society, Professor Alonzo
Palmer who espoused clean-living health practices similar to those of Dr. Trall and Ellen
White.

Kellogg perhaps on the advice of Palmer and surgery professor Donald Maclean
left MU at the end of his ﬁrst year in order to seek further clinical experience at the
Bellevue Hospital Medical School in New York. Bellevue had an eminent faculty, and
Kellogg studied under such luminaries as Austin Flint, Sr., Edward Janeway , Edmund
Peaslee, Stephen Smith and Lewis Sayre.16 After passing his examinations in the practice
of medicine and surgery, obstetrics, materia medica, physiology anatomy and chemistry,
Kellogg graduated after only a year at Bellevue, his prior medical experience counting
towards the school’s other requirements.

His required thesis entitled “What is Disease?” explored the historical
explanations of illness based on the Galenic humoral paradigm. His suggestion that
illness was an attempt by the body to correct a “deranged” natural function parted from
the Galenic tradition in its focus on the empirically adjudged functions of the body’s
organ systems rather than on the outdated concept of humoral imbalances. He proceeded
to stress a “physician’s duty was to seek out the cause of disease and to correct it rather

than administering palliatives.”l7

 

'6 Schwarz, Richard. John Ha_rvey KelloggM.D.. (Nashville: Southern Publishing Association, 1970) pg.
29-33. Flint who studied in Germany was the author of several textbooks and past president of the New
York Academy of Medicine as well as a future president of the AMA. J aneway established the hospital
record system at Bellevue, which systematically checked clinical observation against autopsy ﬁndings to
establish better means of diagnosis. Peaslee lectured in gynecology and obstetrics and was in such demand
that he served on the faculties of ﬁve medical schools simultaneously. Smith introduced Lister’s methods
of aseptic surgery and was the founder of the American Public Health Association. Sayre an early advocate
of compulsory vaccination had extensive experience from his tenure as New York City’s chief public
health ofﬁcer.

'7 Ibid. pg. 32. Though Kellogg’s theory of natural imbalances resembles a variation on humoral theory, his
focus on an empirically derived understanding of organ systems set him apart from his predecessors
reliance on humoral comprehension of bodily functions.

 

51

Kellogg’s medical education continued after graduation with a course in
electrotherapeutics under Dr. George M. Beard, a pioneer in the medical uses of
electricity. He spent several weeks scouring the Astor, Cooper and Free Medical
Libraries seeking evidence to support his theories before returning to begin his practice at
the Adventist Battle Creek Sanitarium.

In the ﬁrst twelve years of his practice Kellogg estimated that he had spent $3000
to improve his treatment of ear, nose and throat diseases alone. He subscribed to the most
important American and British medical journals, as well as the major French and
German publications. By 1908, he estimated he had spent over $50,000 for instruction
and observation of specialists both at home and in Europe, while his personal medical
library was estimated to have cost $15,000.18

In 1883, Kellogg would make the ﬁrst of over seven trips to Europe in pursuit of
improving his medical expertise. His ﬁrst trip, to Vienna, demanded an arduous schedule
of study and practice. In a typical day, instruction in throat disorders at the Vienna
Polyclinic preceded treatment of patients, followed by attendance at a clinic on skin
disorders and then observation of the surgical techniques of the celebrated surgeon and
cancer specialist, Anton Billroth. This was followed by laboratory study of tubercular
bacilli and then instruction in ear injuries and ailments. After a brief lunch, he would
assist Billroth’s understudy in surgery, spend more time in the laboratory, examine
postmortem reports, practice the treatment of eye disorders and write up his daily clinical

observations.19

 

'8 Ibid. pg. 33
‘9 Ibid. pg. 34

52

Subsequent trips to England, France, Germany, Russia and Sweden demanded
equal measures of his time and diligence. His medical interest and practice broadened and
deepened under the guidance he received in his medical trekking. During his 1889 trip to
England, he spent a month studying Joseph Lister’s techniques of aseptic thoracic surgery
under the renowned surgeons at Good Samaritan Hospital in London.20 In 1907, he
ventured as far as St Petersburg to observe the behavioral experiments of Ivan Pavlov.

While Kellogg’s professional reputation was founded on his eminence as a
thoracic surgeon, his popularization of his healthy modes of living embodied in practices
he referred to as Euthenics earned him his widespread public acclaim.21 Though he and
the Adventist clinic he supervised beneﬁted from both his professional and public
reputation as a specialist, Kellogg abjured the adversarial tactics of earlier health
reformers. He believed his goal of converting the regulars to his methods depended upon
their acceptance of him as one of their own. With this consideration, he joined both the
Michigan and American Medical Associations shortly after his graduation from Bellevue.

His other mainstream afﬁliations included the American Public Health Association, the

 

2° Ibid. pg. 1 11

2’ Garrison, Fielding. History of Medicine. (New York: W.B.Saunders, 1966). pg. 676 Euthenics was
deﬁned as the process of “early training” and its relationship to the malleability of hereditary characters.
Early in his career Kellogg developed his theory on the beneﬁts of euthenics in such works as How to Have
Good H_eglth Through Biologic Living. (Battle Creek: Modern Medicine Publishing, 1891); Plain Facts for
Old and Young. (Burlington: I.F.Segner, 1889); The Living Temple. (Battle Creek: Good Health
Publishing, 1903). Kellogg’s euthenics grew out of his neo-Lamarckian beliefs in the power of the
environment to correct deﬁciencies in the individual that could then be inherited as a fully mended
physiological and [or psychological template by their offspring. This was of course a two way process in
that an intemperate or degenerate lifestyle led to inheritable defects. Note the similarity to Hippocrates
example of the Macrocephali and the malleability implied to the semen, the physiological source of
heredity in his medical paradigm. Kellogg’s euthenics relied on a simple vegetarian diet, plenty of exercise
and fresh air, and the avoidance of narcotic or necrotizing substances deemed to include tobacco, alcohol,
opium, tea, coffee and condiments.

53

National Microscopical Congress, and the American Association for the Advancement of
Science.22

Kellogg’s support of increasingly higher standards in the medical schools was
typical of a specialist, as were his experiments typical of a scientist-scholar. Yet, the
broad range of his practice and the efforts made to conform to and enlighten his
colleagues in the generalist medical societies (e.g. AMA and MMA) demonstrated a
remarkable bridging of the divisions separating specialists, medical scientists and general
practitioners.

While Kellogg and Vaughan held similar views on the need to improve medical
standards in the allopathic schools, they often diverged on which methods would best
improve public health. Both Vaughan and Kellogg eventually became converts to the
bacterial theory of disease causation, though at different times and with different
perspectives on the signiﬁcance to public health. While Vaughan progressed to an
increasingly external view of disease causation (i.e. germs are the agents of disease and
suitable doses of the agent will infect even the most robust), Kellogg maintained a focus
on the internal, individualistic nature of disease causation. For the latter, susceptibility to
illness was dependent upon compromising the healthy body’s natural defenses not upon
the level of exposure to a germ agent.

Kellogg’s position seems paradoxical in that his early work on the Board of
Health led him to emphasize the source of illness as germs arising from decomposing
matter. In his ﬁrst stint on the Board, Kellogg was assigned to preside over two standing
committees: Disposal of Excreta and Decomposing Organic Matter and Occupations,

Recreations and Habits in Relation to Health. At this time, Kellogg performed no original

 

22 Ibid. pg. 34-36

54

research but relied on the anecdotal evidence provided by conversations with physicians
and public health ofﬁcials. His results were published in the Board’s Annual Reports and
in the Battle Creek Sanitarium’s Good Health. After his initial investigations into the
outbreaks of diphtheria, he summarized his belief in the ﬁlth theory of disease in an 1880
Good Health article, “Diphtheria and Filth.”

The facts presented in the history of the numerous

outbreaks of the disease seem to show quite conclusively

that it may and often does originate spontaneously from

ﬁlth, although when once established it is undoubtedly

propagated by contagion.23

While Vaughan became an immediate convert to Pasteur’s and Koch’s research

results on the necessity of continuous germ reproduction versus spontaneous propagation,
Kellogg remained an adherent to the ﬁlth theory for some time.24 Yet even though
Kellogg believed that germs were the etiological source of illness, no matter their origin,
he sustained the view that an individual’s constitution was the most important factor in

preserving health.25

Germs are utterly powerless to injure a thoroughly healthy
man. It is only when the body has been reduced, brought

 

23 Kellogg, John. “Diphtheria and Filth” Good Health #15. (Battle Creek: Good Health Publishing, 1880)
g. 153
a Kellogg, John. “Decomposing Organic Matter” Good Health #18. (Battle Creek: Good Health
Publishing, 1883). pg. 97 Three years later, in Good Health, Kellogg revealed a continuing belief in the
ﬁlth theory of spontaneous generation, maintaining that “whenever decomposition is taking place, these
organisms (germs) are present in countless numbers.”
7'5 Baker, Henry. “Failure to Prevent Deaths Believed to have been Preventable. The Reproduction of
Disease Germs” Third Annual Report of the Secretgry of the StiltLBoard of Health of the SM
Michigan. (Lansing: W.S. George, 1875) pg. 83. Baker concisely describes contemporary view on the
differences between the chemical (non-living) and germ (living) theory of disease and their relative
importance to public health measures. “Undoubtedly there are substances which cause disease, each of
which appears to have a different deﬁnite constitution and is capable of reproducing its kind. . ..the question
of whether they are living or non-living. . .is interesting, but if the foregoing is true is unimportant.” For
was sometimes preventable; 3. They could be destroyed outside the body by various means, such as, heat,
disinfection, dilution with water or exposure to the free action of air.

55

down from its high plane of vigor and vitality, that it
succumbs to the attacks of germs.26

This focus on the individual’s physical constitution endured as a vital part in Kellogg’s
program of euthenics.27 This was in marked contrast to Vaughan’s take on the
individual’s resistance to infectious disease.

Vaughan’s experience on the Typhoid Commission during the Spanish American
War showed him that rather than the weak being most likely to succumb to typhoid, it “is
more prevalent among the well-nourished, apparently healthy and robust than it is among
the more delicate.”28 In his memoirs composed a quarter century later, even more
adamantly Vaughan asserted that typhoid, “was wholly conﬁned to the robust and
vigorous.”29

Kellogg’s focus on the importance of individual lifestyles, tended to provide a

dichotomous perspective on the beneﬁts of various types of public health measures. On

 

26 Kellogg, John. “How the Body Defends Itself Against Disease” Good H_ealth #39 (Battle Creek: Good
Health Publishing, 1904) Pg. 619

27 Kellogg, John. “How the Body Defends Itself Against Disease.” Good Health # 39. (Battle Creek: Good
Health Publishing, 1904) pg. 619. By 1904, Kellogg endeavored to update his theory of euthenic health
with an explanation more closely tied to contemporary biomedical perspectives. He postulated the
existence of germ destroying substances produced by the thyroid gland and suprarenal capsules, which he
called “alexins.” Toxins (opium, coffee, alcohol, tobacco, etal.) and ﬂesh diets inactivated the alexins
allowing germs to swarm throughout the body. As Vaughan and his contemporaries in the ﬁelds of
physiological chemistry and histology continued to elucidate the biochemical processes of disease, Kellogg
attempted new explanations to update his euthenics theories; Kellogg, John. “How You Can Prevent
Bright’s Disease.” Good H_ealth # 50. (Battle Creek: Good Health Publishing, 1915) pg. 477-476 Kellogg’s
1915 theory regarding Bright’s disease provides a valuable illustration. With the explication of
morphological changes in the glomeruli of the kidney, though their origin remained unknown, Kellogg
postulated that the degenerative changes associated with the disease resulted from the accumulation of
poisons (ptomaines and other “toxins”) in the kidney. These poisons derived from faulty digestion in the
stomach, which led to an overwhelming of the liver’s capacity to clear the poisons. Notice that Kellogg
incorporates new evidence on the detoxiﬁcation functions of the liver with glomerular ﬁltration of the
kidneys to substantiate his original thesis on the importance of a healthy lifestyle. Typically, he avers, “the
use of tobacco and alcohol, and excesses of all sorts, by impairing digestion and breaking down the general
resistance of the body, prepare the way for Bright's disease as well as for other chronic maladies. Bright's
disease may be fairly considered simply as nature's penalty for Thanksgiving dinners, Christmas and New
Year's feasts, and other forms of gormandizing.

28 Reed, Walter, Vaughan, Victor & Shakespeare Edward. Abstract of Report on the Origin and Sprezgpf

Typhoid Fever in US. Military Camps During the Spanish War of 1898. (Washington: Government
Printing Ofﬁce, 1900) pg. 235—236.

56

the one hand, public measures were beneﬁcial which served to enhance the individual’s
health status in public situations (e. g. improved ventilation of public buildings) in that
they complimented the euthenics formula of personal hygiene. But to the degree that
public health achievements helped preserve those, whose intemperate/degenerate
lifestyles might otherwise lead to their succumbing to illness before propagating, these
measures only added to the ongoing race degeneracy problem.

The effect of improved public hygiene has been to preserve

the weak and feeble who were formerly the ﬁrst victims of

the terrible scourges which frequently visited every part of

the habitable globe, thus reversing the process which

according to Mr. Darwin results in the improvement of

species and races through the "survival of the ﬁttest," by

keeping alive the un-ﬁttest.30

For these reasons, Kellogg remained a limited sanitationist. Personal hygiene
(euthenics) constituted the real site for the improvement of the organism’s environment
and thus in his speciﬁc neo-Lamarckian understanding, for the betterment of mankind’s
heredity potential. Yet, Kellogg’s Adventist religious roots made him sufﬁciently caring
of the less fortunate that he supported most public health measures proposed by Vaughan
and his other colleagues on the Board. His emphasis on the personal nature of disease
susceptibility and heredity improvement derived from his strong commitment to
popularizing his euthenics philosophy.
Unlike Vaughan, Kellogg maintained that the proper method for studying

infectious diseases was not the chemistry laboratory, but through in vivo experimentation.

As late as 1912 Kellogg would declare,

 

29 Vaughan, Victor. A Doctor’s Memories. pg. 394
3° Kellogg, John. “Domestic Sanitation” Ninth Annual Report of the Secretary of the Michigan Board of
Health of the State of Michiga_n. (Lansing, W. S. George, 1881) pg. 16-17

57

The place to study dietetics is not in the chemical

laboratory, but the great workshop of nature. Thousands of

lives have been sacriﬁced by the unwise attempt to follow

some theory of nutrition based upon experiments in the

chemical laboratory... The chemistry of the body is

altogether different from that of the laboratory. Laboratory

chemistry deals with dead things.31
For Kellogg the difference between in vitro versus in viva experimentation epitomized
the dichotomy between the fallacious generalities of organic chemistry and the speciﬁc
essentiality (life force) inherent in living organisms.

With Vaughan’s conversion to the germ theory of disease, he proceeded to use the
physiological chemistry laboratory as his means to clarify the physical agents of disease
causation. In his ﬁrst three years on the Board, he delivered the results of his laboratory’s
research into the problem of ptomaine poisoning in Michigan dairy products. In 1885 and
1886 he produced evidence that the cause of the poisoning arose from a novel
micrococcus he called tyrotoxicon.32 As a member of the Board, Vaughan tried to

convince general practitioners that physiological chemistry methods were within their

grasp. In an Introduction to the 1913 edition of Williams’ Laboratory Methods with

 

Specigl Reference to the General Prﬂitioner, he stated that in many rural communities
GPs had “equipped themselves with most effective laboratories,” and that to note only

those contributions to medicine made in the great metropolises was to “rob it of half its

glory.’,33

 

3’ Kellogg, John. ‘Flesh-Eating Biologically Wrong” Good H_ealth #47. (Battle Creek: Good health
Publishing, 1912) pg. 3

32 Vaughan, Victor. “Poisonous Cheese” _T_h_ir;eenth Anan Report. (Lansing: W.S. George, 1885) pg. 225-
226; “Tyrotoxicon-Its Presence in Poisonous Ice Cream, Etc.” Fourteenth Annu_al Report. (1886) pg. 154-
164.

33 Williams, E.G.C. & Williams, B.G.R. Laboratory M_ethod_s with Special Reference to the General
Practitioner. (St. Louis: CV. Mosby, 1913) pg. 11 There were many examples that Vaughan could point to
in this vein: Koch’s development of solid culture media, Henry Beaumont’s gastric experiments on Alexis

58

Vaughan, with his prote’gé Frederick Novy, contributed a rich body of knowledge
through the publication of their four editions of textbooks on ptomaine poisoning.
Convinced by their study with Koch that bacteria constituted the root cause of infectious
disease, they speculated that microorganisms produced illness by the action of chemical
poisons elicited through the putrefactive processes of their growth. In so doing, they
created a synthesis of bacteriology and chemistry, which emphasized the chemical nature
of disease.

In the third edition of their textbook, they elaborated upon the chemical processes
responsible for illness by developing an explanation of autogenous disease, those
maladies caused not by microorganisms but by the malfunctioning of the body’s own
cellular chemistry.34 That some autogenous syndromes possessed a hereditary
component was well known. Thus inherited defects in body chemistry could be expressed
as illness in seemingly healthy individuals living in hygienic conditions.35 For Kellogg,
these hereditary predispositions to malfunctioning body chemistry could only be
explained by a prior generation’s problematic lifestyle.

The differences between Kellogg and Vaughan’s perspectives on disease arose
from the differences in their medical educations and practices. Kellogg as a specialist and
the head of the Battle Creek Sanitarium with a long list of patients actively practiced
medicine. His postgraduate education was devoted to the accumulation of practical
methods for treating these patients. Thus his treatments focused more on the individual

and concomitantly on issues related to the variegated nature of disease susceptibility.

 

St. Martin, Ehrlich’s chemical staining techniques and Pasteur’s early work on molecular dyssymmetry and
fermentation.

3’ Vaughan, Victor & Novy Frederick. Ptomains, Leucomains Toxins and Antitoxins: or The Chemical
F_actors of Disease. 3rd Ed. (New York: Lea Brothers, 1896) pg. 549

 

59

Vaughan was essentially a researcher with a limited medical practice. His own
postgraduate education was directed towards extending his research methodologies. For
Vaughan the commonalties of disease processes were explicable through the reductionist
methods of physiological chemistry.

Vaughan and Kellogg brought these differences not only to the Board of Health’s
discussion of various types of public health measures but to the public and professional
debates on the future of medical education. Both stressed the importance of higher
standards for medical schools, but differed on where the emphasis should be placed.
Kellogg felt that the importance of clinical practice should be stressed; whereas, Vaughan
put the accent on stronger bases in laboratory methods.

Vaughan position as a member of the ﬁrst Council on Medical Education in 1905
allowed him to effectively inﬂuence the professional medical community to an extent not
possible for Kellogg through his periodicals (e. g. Good Health) geared towards the lay
public. Yet while Vaughan was devoted to laboratory research, he remained a moderate
in the battles developing over what became known as the fulltime plan.

In America, the fulltime plan began with the opening of the Johns Hopkins
Medical School in 1893. The plan called for the medical faculty to give up its lucrative
consulting fees in return for a guaranteed income and release from the obligations of a
holding a private practice. While some of the elite clinical practitioners teaching at
Hopkins received generous fees from their consultations and the loss of this source of
income meant a substantial forfeiture, many of the laboratory oriented physicians
welcomed the freedom to pursue their teaching and research interests unencumbered by

the burdens of an outside practice. The Hopkins’ fulltime plan caused some friction

 

3’ Ibid. pg. 550.

60

within the medical school’s faculty, but provided an example of how an elite school
could successfully focus its resources on the advancement and teaching of the biomedical
p aradi gmsts

In the ﬁrst decades of the 19th century, the General Education Board brought the
fulltime plan and the attendant frictions between practitioners and researchers to national
status by proposing it as the model for allopathic medical schools throughout the country.
The GEB possessed enormous inﬂuence, as it represented the combined philanthropic
resources of several of America’s most wealthy capitalists. The GEB offered substantial
grants to elite schools if they would adopt the fulltime plan and continue to raise the
academic standards in these schools.

Vaughan, who had become dean of the U of M medical school in 1891, remained
a researcher and sometimes practitioner through his tenure of three decades. His position
as dean of the respected school, author of several series of medical textbooks, and only
surviving member of Walter Reed’s Typhoid Commission conferred national prestige.
His strong belief in the value of scientiﬁc medicine was tempered by his realistic desire
to keep the allopathic physicians allied in an effort to improve their professional standing.

For him this meant constraining the production of less qualiﬁed physicians. The beneﬁts

 

3'6 Brown. E. Richard. Rockefeller Medicine Men. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) pg. 156-
163. The divisions between the science medical faculty and the clinical faculty are neatly summarized by
Brown in his discussion of the disputes between Franklin Mall, Hopkins’ chief of anatomy and William
Osler a renowned teacher of “medicine as art.” Mall, an 1883 graduate of the University of Michigan’s
medical school, studied in Germany upon his graduation and became a dedicated medical scientist. 1911,
when Simon Flexner proposed a one million dollar GEB grant to the Hopkins’ medical school and asked
how best it could be spent to develop scientiﬁc instruction, Mall suggested the outline of the fulltime plan.
Flexner, recently returned from a research trip to study the teaching of scientiﬁc medicine in the German
medical schools fully agreed and arranged for the expanded grant of $1.5 million to be spent as Mall
suggested. This was the beginning of the GEB’s efforts to impose the fulltime plan and the teaching of
standardized scientiﬁc medicine in medical schools throughout the US. Osler, like many other clinicians,
objected to the strict focus on scientiﬁc medicine arguing that medicine was an art as well as a science.
Osler was seconded in his opposition by such eminent surgeons as Charles Mayo and George Crile through

61

would be twofold. In a society which revered the practical beneﬁts that science and
technology were providing, scientiﬁc clinicians bestowed increased prestige upon the
profession; the higher standards necessitated by a science education meant fewer doctors,
which equaled less competition and concomitantly higher rewards and status. As early as
1905, Vaughan, a member of the ﬁrst Council on Medical Education, referring to the
continued overproduction of M.D.s, stated, “the supply quite equals the demand, and for
this reason the time is propitious for raising the barrier to admission one notch higher.”37

But Vaughan was a realist and moderate. As news of the GEB’s grant to Hopkins
spread, the perceived denigration of private practice by the science faculties provoked
scorn for the program among many private practitioners. The AMA set up a special
committee to oversee the reorganization of clinical teaching with Vaughan as its
chairman. He strove to strike a middle path between allowing clinical faculties’ excessive
participation in private practice while expressing the committee’s strong reservations
regarding the practical implementation of the fulltime plan. He noted that though the plan
might be ideal, it would only be feasible for the most well endowed schools.38

The GEB’s ﬁnancial clout and Abraham Flexner’s 1910 report on America’s
medical schools led to the consolidation or closing of 92 of the 155 schools visited in
researching his report. In formulating his report, Flexner solicited opinions from and
worked with George Simmons secretary of the AMA and editor of its journal, the

Council on Medical Education and the eminent faculty of the Johns Hopkins school.

Flexner’s report and the largesse the GEB dangled as incentive to the schools contributed

 

the highly regarded Society of Clinical Surgeons. Other general and specialty medical societies
representing the interests of practitioners supported their position.
37 -
Ibid. pg. 150.
3“ Ibid. pg. 161.

62

to raising standards throughout the profession and to the implementation the fulltime
plan. Vaughan’s moderation convinced many of those that initially opposed the rapid
process of changing the nature of medical education and practice to support the medical
reforms proposed by the GEB.

Vaughan’s middle course was rewarded in 1914 with his election as president of
the AMA. His presidential address left little doubt though as to his ﬁrm belief in the
value of science based medicine.39 After recounting the history of epidemics from ancient
Greece and Rome through the middle ages and into the 19th century, he stated that
modern medicine would soon be able to “save the very ﬂower of the human race.”
Hinting at his own eugenic philosophy, he continued, “It is not extravagant to prophesy
that with ten generations of freedom from disease, both inherited and acquired, the world
would be regenerated and the superman be born.”40

Kellogg and Vaughan represented different perspectives on the advance of
scientiﬁc medicine and education. Kellogg, primarily a scientiﬁc practitioner, sought to
convert GPs and laymen to his views on healthy living. He supported these views with
scientiﬁc research and promoted them through his popular publications and connections
with mainstream medical organizations. Vaughan, essentially an academic researcher,
used his afﬁliations and reputation as an eminent educator and scientist to persuade
physicians of the practical beneﬁts of a science based education and practice. Both men

though differing in their respective opinions on the best way to foster good health

 

3” Vaughan, Victor. “The Service of Medicine to Civilization.” Journal of the American Medical
Association #42. June, 1914. Reprint from the Michigan Historical Collection. pg. 20; “I know of no
scientiﬁc discovery, from the ignition of wood by friction to the demonstration of the causes of infection
and the restriction of disease, which has not sooner or later assisted in the betterment of the race.”

‘0 Ibid. pg. 12, 14

63

furnished the medical profession with examples of the beneﬁts of science based medicine
to their patients and themselves.

Just as a science based medical education and practice reestablished the allopaths’
professional predominance among lay society, the pronouncements of medical
professionals helped legitimize eugenics. Kellogg and Vaughan, again with different
philosophical rationales, played prominent roles in fostering and implementing eugenic
policies nationally, but even more so in Michigan. The next chapter will discuss the rise
of professional eugenics and particularly the contributions Michigan’s physicians made to

the movement in this state.

Chapter Three: Professing American Eugenics

Eugenics in the United States differed from that around the rest of the world in
several ways. One way in which it differed was in regards to the professing of eugenics.
Like many other countries with active eugenics movements, American eugenics had a
broad and diverse group of supporters spanning the political and intellectual landscape.
But unlike other nations, Americans began enacting sweeping eugenic legislation in the
ﬁrst decade of the century, nearly two decades before other nations would follow their
example.

The severity of this type of legislation was epitomized by compulsory sterilization
laws. Americans began the forced sterilization of their fellow countryman nearly three
decades prior to Germany and two decades prior to Scandinavian countries with similar
legislation. Eugenics did not begin in the United States, but Americans became its most
serious and ardent advocates if governmental policy can be taken as a measure of
commitment. Because of America’s then unique system of governance, eugenicists
successfully gained passage of such statutes by persuading citizens of the validity and
merit of their program. This chapter focuses on the American eugenics agenda and its
popularization.

One reason for the early adoption of eugenic legislation in the United States was
America’s popular form of government. Unlike most other industrializing nations of the
period, America’s elected ofﬁcials had little in the way of a conservative aristocracy or
uniﬁed church hierarchy to oppose or mediate against the adoption of eugenic legislation

if popular sentiment desired its implementation. Furthermore, the unique organization

65

and powers vested in the individual state governments allowed for a local/state consensus
to prevail where a national accord would have been impossible. Conversely, even though
a majority of states would eventually enact the most severe form of eugenic legislation,
compulsory sterilization, these laws never became national in their extent.

Most state legislators served terms of from two to four years. Frequent election
contests motivated them to enact legislation quickly when and if public sentiment seemed
to merit such action. Contrarily, legislators could expect swift political consequences for
the passage of unpopular legislation. That more than twenty states would pass such laws
within two decades and fail to repeal them in most cases for more than another four
would seem to indicate broad public support.1

Another facet of the American system of state governance that indicates the
breadth of public support is the bicameral organization of most state legislatures.
Members of the upper house in most states represented districts apportioned across
broader and more demographically diverse geographical areas than those of the lower
house. In states with few or small metropolitan areas, upper house members principally
represented farmers and the middle class professionals, mechanics and entrepeneurs who
serviced these communities. This was particularly true in Michigan before the advent of
widespread automobile production throughout the state.

The popularization of eugenic theories in the US. took many forms but also
played on the received wisdom of past generations of northern European yeomen. The
paradigm of heredity did not shift so much as reinforce itself with the mantle of science.
Proponents’ declarations into the 19408 bore a striking resemblance to those of humoral

thinkers of twenty centuries earlier. Writing in 1939, the social historian Charles Beard

66

noted the old maxim that “each kind tends to breed after its kind. . . [yet]. . .healthful

conditions make for health.”2

This constituted a positivist statement conditioned by the
realization that some syndromes remained refractory to contemporary medical treatment.
What most eugenicists argued for was not a simple eugenic culling of the population, but
the use of eugenic knowledge as a necessary adjunct to the continued progress of their
civilization’s development. What did Americans in the ﬁrst decades of this century see
imperiling their continued social and economic progress?

Americans became increasingly conscious of a variety of social ills and their
consequent costs as new means of measuring these problems evolved. The elaboration of
more sophisticated government institutions such as public health services began to
provide a plethora of data on the incidence of disease, poverty and social dysfunction that
had been previously unavailable. Charitable organizations, such as the settlement houses,
compounded the revelations of the government’s dry statistics with more personal
accounts of the apparently increasing misery in metropolitan neighborhoods and the
incapacity of public institutions to care for wards of the state.

While some of this apprehension of a “social dilemma” reﬂected a real increase in
the number of victims, much of the furor emanated from a new perception of what social
responsibilities pertained to the state and the society at large. In an age of increasing
afﬂuence, the horriﬁc conditions under which some people suffered seemed
unconscionable. That a depraved social environment corrupted even the best genetic

stock seemed self-evident but actionable. Most Americans believed that their social-

economic-political system would elaborate new methods for improving the social

 

' Birthright, Inc. Sterilization for Human Betterment. (Princeton: Birthright Inc., 1949) Pub. #5, Pg.3

67

circumstances of the deserving disadvantaged. The question for most seemed to be who
were the “deserving” and deserving of what.

America had assimilated large numbers of immigrants throughout its history. But
while many of these earlier immigrants had been perceived as too disparate in religion or
politics by contemporary standards, the inﬂux of large numbers of Asians, Eastern and
Southern Europeans at the turn of the century brought about the perception of a new
crisis in the nation’s ability to absorb people so dissimilar in background. Alien political,
economic and religious ideologies constituted a dread, which could be assuaged by faith
in the evident superiority of American institutions and the newcomers’ aptitude for
discerning their beneﬁts. Yet doubts about the new immigrants’ capacity to adopt to
American values paled beside the perceived threat of foreign diseases and poor genetic
endowments.

Even with the advent of scientiﬁc medical practices, little could be done for most
sufferers beyond the treatment of symptoms. In this era before the advent of antibiotic
therapies, physicians strove for remission rather than cures for morbid infectious diseases
such as tuberculosis. Quarantine of the infected and thus infectious sufferers remained the
mainstay of preventing further spread of these communicable diseases. Could and should
the nation accept the burden of treating newcomers whose prospects of becoming
productive citizens seemed so unrealizable? For many old-stock Americans the answer
was a deﬁnitive no.

Vigorous disease screening procedures were established at new immigration

centers such as Ellis Island. Thousands of emigrant Europeans found not a hospitable

 

2 Burtheau, Rudolf. People-What Else Matters. (New York: The American Eugenics Society, 1939). John
Harvey Kellogg Papers, Box 19, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. Pg. 1

 

68

welcome in America but a return trip to their native lands. Thousands more spent weeks
or months in quarantine centers before discovering whether they would be allowed to
enter their new homeland. America wanted healthy, vigorous laborers not the “human
dross” of Europe.3

As with outbreaks of contagious diseases, science seemed unable to cure
congenital illnesses but only to provide means for preventing or mediating their
occurrence. Not only foreigners were seen as contributing to the burden of genetic
disease and social maladaption. Two of the most publicized reports of socially
dysfunctional families were Dugdale’s The Jukes (1877) and McCullough’s The Tribe of
Ishmael (1888).

Though these studies ﬁrst gained popularity in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, they remained as basic examples of degenerate families through the turn of the
century (see below). Dugdale’s study of ﬁve generations concluded that this one family
had cost the state,

over a million and a quarter dollars of loss in 75 years,
caused by a single family 1,200 strong, without reckoning
the cash paid for whiskey, or taking into account the
entailment of pauperism and crime of the survivors in suc-
ceeding generations, and the incurable disease, idiocy, and
insanity growing out of this debauchery, and reaching
further than we can calculate.4

The J ukes and Ishmaels were old stock Americans. These studies seemed to show that

America possessed a homegrown eugenic predicament of monstrous proportions, which

 

3 Kraut, Alan. Silent Travelers: Germs, Genes and the Immigrant Menace. (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 1995) Pg. 31-49

4Reilly, Philip. The Surgical Solution: A Histogy of Involunm Sterilization in America. (Baltimore: John
Hopkins University Press, 1991) Pg. 15

69

could only be compounded by the inﬂux of what many considered the most dubious
elements of European societies.5

For many Americans, homegrown undesirables and immigrants of dubious merit
comprised an insidious threat to America’s future. For some, the rise of popular
movements espousing collective labor agreements and alien political philosophies (e. g.
socialism, communism, etc.) conﬁrmed their fears of degenerative processes within the
body politic. Rising crime rates, often merely the reﬂection of increased policing,
demonstrated the increasing debasement of moral and social values. Increases in the
number of those institutionalized for mental disorders further conﬁrmed deep-seated
problems that required attention if America were not to be submerged in a tidal wave of

degeneracy.6

 

5 Ibid. Pg. 9-20, Dugdale was typical of upper class reformers of the late nineteenth century. Richard
Dugdale, a transplanted Englishman of independent means, was an avid social reformer in New York City.
He was secretary of the Section on Sociology of the New York Association for the Advancement of
Science and the Arts, and of the New York Sociological Club; treasurer of the New York Liberal Club and
vice-president of the Society for the Prevention of Street Accidents. As a member of the Executive
Committee of the New York Prison Association, he met Dr. Elisha Harris, the group’s corresponding
secretary. Harris persuaded Dugdale to assist him in the inspections of county jails, with Dugdale accepting
responsibility for those in the northern part of the state. Noticing in one institution that six of the inmates
were related, he became engrossed in an comprehensive study of the family’s run-ins with the state’s
justice and social welfare systems. Dugdale traced 709 persons who were related by blood, marriage or
cohabitation to ﬁve sisters married to the sons of one Dutch descendant born around 1730. Though Dugdale
was not a university graduate, he developed a complex Lamarckian type of analysis which while ascribing
great importance to hereditary factors conceded the primacy of environment “where the conduct depends
on the knowledge of moral obligation.” Dugdale’s book was widely popular among hereditarians, going
through three printings in several months, though most readers failed to appreciate his insights on the
importance of environmental factors. The Rev. Oscar McCullough, a zealous social reformer from Indiana,
presented his study before the 15 m National Conference of Charities and Reforms. He concluded that over
ﬁve generations, ﬁve brothers had given rise to 1,750 descendants, many of whom were socially deviant.
The gist of McCullough’s claims was that the feeble-minded were unusually fecund, though no evidence on
the fecundity of the normal population was supplied as a comparison. Though both these men merely
sought to direct Americans attention to the problem of inadequate facilities and funding for the care of the
feebleminded, their works spawned the invidious twin myths regarding feeblemindedness, herediatary
predisposition and exaggerated fecundity. Dugdale’s work in particular would become the model for
Charles Davenport’s Eugenic Record Ofﬁce studies of four decades later.

6 Reilly. Pg. 14-20, In the early 1880s, Dr. Issac Kerwin, the nation’s premier physician in the ﬁeld of
mental retardation and director of Pennsylvania’s institution for the feebleminded at Elwyn, noted that of
the 76,895 “idiotic population” cited in the 1880 census, only 2,429 were in institutions. Kerlin noted that
while the population had as a whole grown by 30%, the “apparent” increase in idiocy was 200%.The

70

Widely read magazines and journals such as the Atlantic Monthly and the
Westminster Review featured stories on the dilemma of “criminal families.” The Reader’s
Guide to Periodical Literature listed only 27 articles on eugenics for the four years after
1905, while in the following ﬁve years that number had grown to 122. The general
reading public was obviously being regularly exposed to eugenic issues in the popular
press. Many articles, such as “Race Suicide and Racial Stamina,” “The Future of the
Human Race.” and “Our Defectives” lent a frightening tone to the issues and contributed
to a climate wherein expedient solutions seemed desirable.

Kellogg concurred on the rise in criminality and attributed much of the problem to
heredity. Seemingly, anticipating the use of Dr. Harry Sharpe’s new sterilization method
(vasectornies) on young inmates of the Jefferson Reformatory, Kellogg suggested in 1890
that, “legislation or by some other means, measures should be speedily adopted for the
prevention of this increase of criminals, if there is any feasible plan which can be
adopted.”7

Professional journals, such as the Survey and Journal of the American Medical
Association kept their readership informed on eugenics through articles and book

reviews. From 1923-1931, the Survey published over twenty articles and numerous book

 

criminologist Henry Boies asserted that while the general population had increased 170% from 1850 to
1890, the criminal population had increased over 445%. In Pennsylvania alone, from 1880 to 1890, inmates
in criminal institutions increased ﬁfty percent more quickly than the state’s population as a whole. By
1900, the eminent New York lawyer, Eugene Smith, presenting a paper entitled “The Cost of Crime”
estimated the annual expense to the nation at around $600,000,000. A decade later a physician noted that
the Massachusetts Prison Association estimated that state’s cost in dealing with crime as second only to the
price of public education.

Kellogg, John Harvey. Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural Hist_orv and Hygiene of
Organic Life. (Burlington: I.F. Senger & Co., 1891), http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/modeng/modeng0.
browse.html, 1995. Pg. 150, Kellogg held that, “the criminal classes, which are responsible for the greater
part of the crime committed, are constantly and greatly on the increase. There is no doubt but that
inheritance is largely responsible for the continued increase of crime and criminals.”

71

reviews dealing with eugenic measures from birth control rights to compulsory
sterilization. JAMA (the ofﬁcial organ of the AMA) and other medical journals,
frequently received articles from leading mid western eugenicists who also happened to
be among its most inﬂuential members.8

That these perceptions of mounting levels of “perverse” or antisocial behaviors
were largely the products of a rapidly evolving industrial society and its means of
assessment may seem evident today, but to contemporaries there was little solace to be

found from the data at hand. The rate of social and economic change in industrializing

 

8 Kellogg, Paul. Ed. The Survey. (New York: Survey Associates, 1923-1931) Vol. 51-65, As a journal
directed to social welfare professionals it maintained a sensitivity to the conditions of social environment
contributing to crime, poverty and “psychopathic” conditions. The Survey’s articles and book reviews
reveal the general acceptance of what was considered the scientiﬁc basis for the eugenic paradigm
generally without the overt racist connotations often associated with a paradigm of racial degeneracy. The
Survey‘s cautious attempts to achieve balance regarding eugenics was evidenced by its commissioning a
rebuttal to H.H. Laughlin’s overtly racist testimony before the House Committee on Immigration and
Naturalization in 1922 (Kevles. Pg. 132), while providing a generally positive review of his Eugenical
Sterilization in the United States (“Is Sterilization a Cure for Social Inadequacy” Survey: Vol.49 1923,
Pg.798—799). Contributors to the Survey’s positive if guarded coverage of eugenics included such
luminaries as author and social critic H.L.Mencken (“The Effect of Science” Vol 52, 1924 Pg. 7-11), and
John Hopkins Emeritus Professor of Medicine, Dr Lewellys Barker (“Psychiatry and Public Health” Vol.
49, March 1923. Pg. 798-799). Barker and V.C. Vaughan were leading advocates for both the reform of
medical education through the full-time plan and the promulgation of eugenic legislation. Barker was also a
contributor of eugenic views to the Journal of the American Medical Association. As physician-in-chief at
John Hopkins, and a leader in scientiﬁc medicine, Barker’s 1910 article in JAMA, “The Importance of the
Eugenie Movement and Its Relation to Social Hygiene,” strongly inﬂuenced doctors of the reformist cast;
A measure of the Survey’s inﬂuence on Michigan’s penal and mental health institutions can be seen in
members of the Board of Corrections and Charities regular attendance at the yearly conferences sponsored
by the journal and the fact that it was the only journal to which the Board regularly subscribed. (Minutes of
the Board of Correcticm and Ch_arities, Archives of the State of Michigan, Box 1 1909-1915). Early
examples of inﬂuential medical journals conﬁnuing connection with inﬂuential mid western eugenicists
include the contributions of Dr. Harry Sharpe, “Vasectomy as a Means of Preventing Procreation of
Defectives” (JAMA: Vol.53 1909), Dr. Harry Belﬁeld, “Race Suicide for Social Parasites” (J AMA: Vol.50
1908), and G. Frank Lydston, “Sex Mutilation and Social Therapeutics” (New York Medical Journal: Vol.
95, 1912). Dr. Sharpe perfected the technique of vasectomy at Indiana’s Jeffersonville Reformatory, where
as chief physician, he had performed 456 sterilizations upon inmates prior to the passage of Indiana’s
sterilization statute. He was the most inﬂuential supporter of Indiana’s legislation and rose to national
prominence through these actions. Dr. Belﬁeld, a surgeon and teacher of national prominence at Rush
Medical College, became the ﬁrst physician of national prominence associated with the AMA to support
compulsory sterilization. Dr. Lydston, though an opponent of organized medicine was the foremost
urologist in the Midwest and a professor of genitourinary surgery at University of Illinois. In 1904, he
published Disea_ses of Society and Degenergy. This was the ﬁrst American work to call for mass
sterilization as a means of curtailing “social disease.” Lydston further recommended castration as a method
of behavioral control among the criminal population. (Philadelphia: J .B. Lippincott, 1904) Pg.562-567.

72

nations was unprecedented in world history. America rushed towards to a future with few
signposts along a path seemingly strewn with pitfalls of unknown and possibly
abominable depths. One of the most evident seemed to be the creation of a population
with genetically endowed moral and mental deﬁciencies. Into this milieu, American
eugenicists brought the promise not only of forestalling a legacy of social degeneracy, but
the assured evolution of a better human being through selective breeding.

In keeping with the cherished American value for the rights of the individual,
their program depended on the voluntary acceptance of their agenda, only those
considered incapable of exercising these rights need be compelled. Educating the masses
as to the beneﬁts and losses of breeding choices formed the mainstay of their program.
Proponents assumed that responsible, educated citizens would surely make worthy
decisions given the appropriate information. The probity of the legislators and courts
would serve to further the interests of all by making such decisions for those incapable of
exercising their rights, the wards of the state.

In the United States, eugenics was tempered by the democratic philosophy which
reformers held dear, if not for everyone, at least for the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant
majority. In “People-What Else Matters,” a pamphlet popularizing mainstream eugenics
in the late 19303, the author maintained that eugenics was a “school of thought which
holds that it is within mankind’s own powers to develop better minds and bodies.” This
“school” held that its teachers, “the natural sciences, the social sciences, the learned
professions and the church must contribute their inﬂuences toward better minds and

better bodies.”9

 

9 Burtheau, Rudolf. People-What Else Matters. (New York: The American Eugenics Society, 1939). John
Harvey Kellogg Papers, Box 19, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan

73

This pamphlet’s contributors display the broad mix of politicians, doctors
lawyers, educators, clergy and laymen who came together in support of eugenics.
Eugenics seldom stood alone in the supporters’ minds, but was usually tied to other goals,
thought concomitant with eugenics. These goals ranged from efforts to save the planet
from overpopulation to the costs of directly inherited defects to the individual and
society. Gifford Pinchot, the Governor of Pennsylvania and an avid conservationist,
called “eugenics the other side of the conservation problem of making the earth a better
place to live on.”10 Dr. Aaron Rosanoff, the director of California’s State Department of
Institutions asserted “the opinion that in the causation of certain mental disorders
hereditary factors play an important part. Hence a program for their prevention must
necessarily include measures of eugenics?“

Because eugenics might provide a useful adjunct to the amelioration of a wide
range of problems, the dearth of scientiﬁc knowledge in the ﬁeld demanded the rapid
development of a science based eugenics. Yet the perceived imminent and diverse
ramiﬁcations of inaction, equally required that what knowledge existed be put to use. As
the eminent Marxist historian Charles Beard put it,

“We know too little about environment and heredity, but
we know enough to know that healthful conditions make
for health and that each kind tends to breed after its kind,
that strength is more likely to come form strength than from
weakness. This knowledge gives eugenics a fundamental

place in the thinking of all persons interested in the
building up and maintaining a civilization.”12

 

'° Ibid. Pg 6.
” Ibid. Pg. 18
'2 Ibid. Pg. 1

74

The introduction of science based medical practice in the United States revolved
around a constellation of evolving economic and intellectual requirements, which were
derived from the elaboration of more complex scientiﬁc industrial social structures. The
interests of physicians and capitalists in improving medical practice demonstrate the self-
interest of these groups, in effect, the improved status and remuneration of physicians and
the enhanced (healthier) workforce available to the scions of industry. Yet the broad
appeal and support for improving medical education was in large part due to the
increasing numbers of middle class families who could afford and understand the beneﬁts
of scientiﬁc medicine.

With the advent of more comprehensive sanitation in the metropolitan areas of
the nation, the bane of infectious childhood disease diminished. Before the last half of the
nineteenth century, the highest mortality rates were among those under six years of age,
with infectious diseases accounting for most of the deaths in this group. The growth of
the middle class concentrated in the burgeoning cities and towns where the need for their
services was greatest. The larger the town or city, the more elaborate and diverse were
the occupations open to middle class exploitation. Most of these occupations required a
level of education unnecessary to the working class or agrarian laborer. As childhood
survival rates increased, middle class families could afford to devote more resources to
the education of a smaller number of siblings.

Smaller family size and increased education among this segment of the populace
led to ample demand for the services of the scientiﬁc medical practitioners. As middle
class family size decreased the focus on promoting the health and education of their

offspring coincided with an emphasis on better parenting, even so far as a scientiﬁc

75

parenting. Procreation as the ﬁrst step in parenting, also came to include a bias towards
the scientiﬁc aspects of selecting mates. Eugenicists, largely middle class reformers of
various stripes, proclaimed themselves the heralds of a new school of scientiﬁc breeding.

The reform of American medicine was largely led by those most directly effected,
doctors and capitalist-philanthropists interested in the more short term beneﬁts to be
directly derived from the promulgation of scientiﬁc medicine. Eugenics, as a movement
with some immediate, but generally more long term goals, brought together a much
broader array of political and philosophical dispositions. By their very nature, eugenic
goals could only be achieved after the passing of several generations; even the strictest
selection entailed the continued culling through generations of progeny to achieve the
goal of a genetically better human being.

Like the development of science based medicine, the development of eugenics
initially depended upon the leadership of philanthropists. In England, Sir Francis Galton,
provided not only the term eugenics, but substantial ﬁnancial support for the
development of a science of eugenics. Galton, Karl Pearson and Walter Weldon, the latter
professors of mathematics and zoology at London University began publishing
Biometrika in 1902, a journal devoted to the mathematization of heredity and evolution.
The journal attracted few Britons, but was popular overseas; half the early subscriptions
went to Americans.13

Montague Crackanthorpe, founder of the Eugenics Education Society, in 1908

persuaded Galton to serve as Honorary President and active participant in determining the

society’s direction. The society’s eminent membership lent credence to its publication,

76

the Eugenics Review, which sought to impart the essentials of eugenics to the educated
public.14

In 1904, Galton allocated 1500 pounds a year to fund a Research Fellowship in
National Eugenics through the University College. Galton expected the ﬁrst Eugenics
Fellow, Edgar Schuster, to pursue Galton’s own vein of research, namely compiling a
register of Britain’s “able families” to determine the hereditary constituents of ability.
Shuster dutifully founded a Eugenics Record Ofﬁce and set about collecting pedigrees,
mainly those of Fellows of the Royal Society. The young Oxford graduate, one of
Weldon’s students, soon found the collection of such sociological data uninspiring for
one whose primary interest was zoology. At Pearson’s urging, Galton terminated the
fellowship after two years and transferred the funding and Record Ofﬁce to Pearson’s
tutelage in the newly created Galton Laboratory for National Eugenics. In his will Galton
committed the bulk of his estate to the maintenance of eugenics studies at University
College.”

Upon his death in 1911, Galton left an endowment of forty-ﬁve thousands pounds
for the Galton Eugenics Professorship at University College. By his express wish, the
chair was awarded to his disciple, Karl Pearson. Differing from most fellow socialists of

his day, Pearson, a pioneering statistician, believed like his patron Galton that salvation

 

'3 Kevles, Daniel. In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Humgn Heredig.(Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1986) Pg. 27-30; Haller, Mark. Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in
American Thought. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963) Pg. 7-8, 9, 12, 17-19.

M Haller. Pg. 18; In 1908 the members also lobbied before Parliament to secure adoption of the recommendations of
the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feebleminded and to bring British poor laws more into line with
eugenic goals. Among those active in the Society were Havelock Ellis, then completing his monumental studies of sex;
the Rev. W. R. Inge, a distinguished professor of divinity; David Heron, an associate of Pearson; Dr. Caleb Williams
Saleeby, the outstanding propagandist for eugenics in England; Dr. F. W. Mort, a psychiatrist and leading student of
heredity in insanity; Dr. A. F. Tredgold, the foremost British expert on feeblernindedness; Edward Nettleship, already
respected for his study of hereditary eye diseases; literary ﬁgures like George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells; socialists
like Sidney Webb; and numerous members of the nobility.

77

from hereditary degeneracy depended not upon the amelioration of corrupting
environments, but encouraging the propagation of society’s ﬁtter elements. Ethel
Elderton, Galton’s personal assistant and later female mainstay of Pearson’s staff,
summarized the philosophy emanating from the Galton Laboratory.
“Improvement in social conditions will not compensate for
a bad hereditary inﬂuence. . ...The only way to keep a

nation strong mentally and physically is to see to it that
each new generation is derived chieﬂy from the ﬁtter

members of the generation before.”l

Pearson also headed the new Department of Applied Statistics, which became the
nexus for the English school of statistics. The department drew researchers from diverse
ﬁelds around the world. According to a 1918 review, his department had trained more
than sixty people from disciplines as varied as mathematics, medicine, economics,
biology, anthropometry, criminology, psychology and agriculture.

The department relied on numerous volunteers to collect data. Mostly physicians
and social workers, they gathered material from hospitals, schools and ordinary homes.
While much of the data collected related to Pearson and Galton’s dubious belief in the
inheritance of scientiﬁc, commercial and legal ability, Pearson’s researchers assembled
valuable information on hermaphroditism, hemophilia, cleft palate, tuberculosis, diabetes,
deaf—mutism, polydaetyly, brachydaetyly, insanity and mental deﬁciency. The
department’s reports, numbering some three hundred works between 1903 and 1918,

typically inquired into the relationship of physique and intelligence, the resemblance of

 

‘5 Kevles. Pg. 37-38; Haller. Pg. 12, 17-19
‘6 Kevles. Pg. 40

78

ﬁrst cousins, parental occupation upon child welfare or birthrate, and the hereditability of
alcoholism, tuberculosis and defective sight.”

Pearson’s department was the only British institution for eugenic research and the
primary source for authoritative eugenic science in Britain. While it would remain the
benchmark for eugenic research in the early years of the twentieth century, its greatest
contribution to the growth of eugenics proceeded from the training and inspiration
transmitted to students and research workers coming from as far aﬁeld as the Continent,
the United States, India and Japan.

The British eugenics societies, research institutions and publications provided a
template for the development of eugenics movements worldwide. In the 18908, while
teaching zoology at Harvard, Charles Davenport read Pearson’s papers on the
mathematical theory of evolution. He began lecturing and publishing on the t0pie, and in
an inﬂuential work on morphology called for the application to biology of the exact
methods of the physical sciences. Recognizing his importance as a pioneer in biometry,
the newly founded University of Chicago hired him as an assistant professor in 1899.
Shortly thereafter, Davenport traveled to England and after meeting with Galton, Weldon
and Pearson returned to the United States ﬁlled with “renewed courage for the ﬁght for
the quantitative study of Evolution.”18

In 1904, after two years of intense lobbying, Davenport persuaded the Carnegie
Institution of Washington to fund the establishment and maintenance of the Station for

Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor. Davenport as director of the station and

of the adjacent summer Biological Laboratory of the Brooklyn Institute of the Arts and

 

‘7 Kevles. Pg, 39-40
’8 Kevles. Pg. 46-48; Haller. Pg. 63-64

79

Sciences recruited a small but able staff from his students at the institute to carry on the
station’s research on variation, hybridization and natural selection.

Davenport’s research staff contributed signiﬁcantly to the growing body of
knowledge in the ﬁelds of biometry and genetics. And while his work on poultry and
canaries helped broaden the demonstration of Mendelian inheritance in animals to the
scientiﬁc community, his research on the inheritance of eye, skin and hair color in
humans earned him a reputation as America’s leading eugenicist among both scientists
and laymen.19

In 1909, he became secretary of the Committee on Eugenics of the American
Breeders’ Association and set about organizing committees to encourage the study of
human heredity at universities and institutions. With Davenport in a position of
leadership, these committees and their eminent members stimulated increased research in
human genetics around the county.20

It also fueled his desire to further his own research into human heredity. Since
direct experimentation with humans was impossible due to long generative cycles not to
mention ethical problems, Davenport would have to rely on methods similar to those of

Pearson and Galton, the compilation of pedigrees. Pearson and Galton collated data on

 

‘9 Kevles. Pg. 44-46; Haller. Pg. 64-66, 71-73

20 Haller. Pg. 64-65: Alexander Graham Bell, a friend of Davenport's, headed a committee on deaf-mutism.
Henry H. Goddard of the Training School at Vineland, whose work with mental testing and heredity of
feeblemindedness gave him a central place in the eugenics movement, and Walter E. Fernald of
Massachusetts, the most distinguished American student of feeblemindedness, joined a committee on
feeblemindedness. A committee on insanity boasted Adolf Meyer, a leading psychiatrist, Elmer E.
Southard, the brilliant young psychiatrist of the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, and Aaron J. Rosanoff of
the Hospital at Kings Park in New York. A committee on inheritance of mental traits included Robert M.
Yerkes, the Harvard psychologist, Edward L. Thorndike, psychologist at Columbia University, and
Frederick Adams Woods, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Among members of a
comrrrittee on criminality were Charles R. Henderson, sociologist at the University of Chicago, and
William Healy, whose investigations revolutionized the study of the criminal mind. A committee on
epilepsy included Everett Flood and David F. Weeks, both institutional superintendents. Finally, Prescott F.
Hall and Robert D. Ward, leaders of the Immigration Restriction League and classmates of Davenport at

80

phenotype, the demonstrable physical traits of individuals, and sought from these to
elucidate the inheritance of these unit characters. Davenport wished to study the
genotype, the underlying genetic characters, which determined phenotype. As genotype
could only be inferred from exarrrining as many related phenotypes as possible, he needed
much more detailed family histories than those collected by the British researchers.

In pursuit of funding this new endeavor, and upon the death of railroad magnate
E.H. Harriman, he used the acquaintance made teaching genetics to Harriman’s daughter
Mary to approach the philanthropieally inclined widow. Explaining the importance of an
institution directed solely to the accumulation of data on human heredity, he was able to
persuade Mrs. Harriman to fund the establishment of the Eugenics Record Ofﬁce on an
80 acre site adjacent to the station at Cold Spring Harbor in 1910. Over the next seven
years, Harriman would contribute over $250,000 to the ERO, 85% of its budget. In 1918,
anxious to make the ERO a permanent institution, she offered to donate the grounds,
buildings and a $300,000 endowment upon the Carnegie Institution’s assumption of
control. Three years after the Institution’s acceptance, the ERO and the Experimental
Station were consolidated into a Department of Genetics with Davenport as resident
director.

Davenport selected Harry H. Laughlin, a Princeton graduate and instructor of
agricultural breeding as its superintendent. They immediately established a summer
school to train young men and women to collect the voluminous amounts of data
necessary. By 1928, they had trained over 250 ﬁeld workers. Their studies were not
limited to Davenport’s classroom lectures on the principles of genetics, but included ﬁeld

trips to prison, asylums and outstanding examples of defective families of the J ukes type.

 

Harvard, assumed control of a committee on immigration; Kevles. Pg. 45—46, 50-5 2, 53-56

81

While some of these researchers remained at the ERO to collate the incoming
data, many went forth to asylums and reformatories to gather histories on the inmates,
which would then be augmented by data collected from their families. The ERO also
devised a generic family history form, which it mailed out to receptive individuals
soliciting eugenic histories from an even broader population. Over its ﬁrst two decades
the ERO compiled histories on hundreds of thousands of Americans; histories, which
formed the basis of numerous popular monographs, and shaped the perception of popular
eugenics in America.21

The 1910s proved to be the heydey for eugenics in many respects. Fourteen states
passed compulsory sterilization laws. Many others updated laws providing funding for
the institutionalization and enforcement of the sexual segregation of the feebleminded
and insane. Universities and colleges across the nation sought to include coursework in

eugenics, usually through courses in related ﬁelds. By 1914, leading institutions such as

 

2’ Reilly. Pg. 9-1 1,18-20, Following Dugdale’s model, the ERO produced four such studies: The Hill Folk
(1912), The Nam Family (1912), The Kallikaks (1912) and Dwellers in the Vale of Siddem (1919). These
works perpetuated the twin arguments of the excessive cost and fecundity of the feeblenrinded. By the time
the ERO published the new studies, Dugdale and McCullough’s arguments, originally used to help induce
state legislatures to increase funding for state institutions, became proof for the need of compulsory
sterilization laws.; Haller. Pg. 55-56, 64-66, 70-75, In 1916, the ERO began the monthly publication of the
Eugenical News, a journal for the popularization of the ERO’s activities and ofﬁcial of the Eugenics
Research Association, the most inﬂuential organization for the study of genetics in the U.S.; Haller. Pg. 65,
Even for laymen without a scientiﬁc background, there was little need to stretch beyond the common
knowledge of animal husbandry to understand and accept the eugenics agenda. According to Davenport,
Mrs. Harriman often said, “the fact that she had been brought up among well-bred race horses helped her
appreciate the importance of a project to study heredity and good breeding in man.”; Reilly. Pg. 43, John D.
Rockefeller, Jr, whose largesse was largely responsible for the reform of American medicine, was also a
major contributor to the ERO; Kevles. Pg. 44-48, 77-84. Dugdale’s model was also adopted by Dr. H.H.
Goddard, the director of New Jersey’s Vineland Training School, in his highly inﬂuential, The Kallikaks: A
Study in the Inheritance of Feeblernindedness. (1912). The importance of the Kallikaks study was
Goddard’s adoption of Alfred Binet’s IQ scales as a means of measuring intelligence. Binet had developed
the scales as a means of ascertaining appropriate training regimens for his feebleminded patients. In the
hands of eugenicists like Goddard, they were used to dramatize the “eugenic threat.” Perhaps the greatest
perversion in their use was Robert Yerkes studies of recruits for the US. Army in W.W. One. Though
Yerkes initially started with the goal of assisting the army in properly placing recruits, the data was used
after the war by eugenicists as proof of the inheritance of intelligence and the national increase in mental
deﬁciency.

82

Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Wisconsin, Northwestern and Clark had courses
devoted in full or large part to eugenics. Increasing numbers of textbooks on the subject,
and popular treatises directed at the lay public were published throughout the decade.22

In Michigan, efforts to educate teachers and lay public, included Victor
Vaughan’s Sex Attraction, a book form version of his popular lectures to ladies of
Eastern Michigan Normal School, at Ypsilanti. Not a full-ﬂedged eugenics text, the goal
of the book was to instruct young teachers on the dangers of venereal disease and
inappropriate choices in choosing a mate. In a folksy manner, Vaughan advocated
teaching the principles of eugenics and euthenics (environmental or behavioral hygiene)
in public schools through courses in sexual hygiene, a rather revolutionary view for its
time. Vaughan’s position as dean of Ann Arbor’s medical school, president of the AMA,
member of the State Board of Health author of several medical textbook and research
articles and sole surviving member of the Reed Commission no doubt made a great
impression on the future teachers.23

His popular lecture on eugenics at the University of Michigan was excerpted in to
a compilation in 1914, Eugenics: Twelve University Lectures. Though Vaughan
espoused the value of euthenics to the young women of Ypsilanti’s teacher’s college in
Sex Attraction, his lectures in Ann Arbor demonstrated his ﬁrm comrrritrnent to the

dominance of heredity over environment. Quoting Galton, he noted, “when nature and

 

22 Haller. Pg. 72-75. Eminent eugenicists such as Roswell Johnson, a former student of Davenport’s at
Harvard, and Adams Woods began teaching courses at prominent universities (e.g. University of Pittsburgh
and Massachusetts Institute of Technology). William Kellicott, professor of biology at Goucher College,
published The Social Direction of Evolution: An Outline of the Science of Eugenics in 1911. Michael
Guyer, a zoologist at the University of Wisconsin, produced the popular Being Well-Bom: An Introduction
to Eugenics in 1916. Paul Popenoe, editor of the Journal of Heredity, collaborated with Roswell Johnson in
1918 to produce the best survey of the period, Applied Eugenics.

23 Vaughan, Victor. Sex Attrggtion: A Lecture given at the Michigan State Normal School, July, 1919. (St.
Louis: C. V. Mosby Co., 1920) Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.

83

”24 As a devoted

nurture compete on equal terms. . .., the former proves the stronger.
“follower of Mendel”, he considered heredity to be the strict “transmission of unit
character or their determiners.” He cited the work of Davenport and Goddard as evidence
for this type of transmission in humans.”

A product of Vaughan’s upbringing on the family’s Missouri farm, his folksy
manner carried through into his talks on eugenics with terms such as “good stock” for the
phenotypic history of a family. As examples, he provided Thomas Carlyle and Abraham
Lincoln, both of poor families. To be rich in genetic inheritance one’s ancestors could be

very ordinary people, but so long as all were sober, sane

and honest, you have a goodly inheritance. This is a family

record of which but few kings can boast, and its possession

should be highly prized by those fortunate enough to

rightfully claim it,26
Vaughan felt that wealth was a poor indicator of genetic ﬁtness. Among the many
detrimental inﬂuences he associated with Americans’ veneration for the rich, was the
confusion of ﬁnancial wealth with human worth. For him, stock manipulating ﬁnanciers
equated to only a very successful variety of the “criminalistic.” Good stock meant a

phenotypic history “relatively free from undesirable unit characters.”27

 

7” Vaughan, Victor C. “Eugenics from the Point of View of the Physician.” Eugenics: Twelve Univers!ity
Lectures. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 1914) Pg. 42; Vaughan’s lecture was also given at the University
of Wisconsin in 1913.

25 Ibid. Pg. 48; Haller. Pg. 64-66, Throughout the 1910s, Davenports and Goddard’s work at the ERO was
generally considered scienn'ﬁcally unimpeachable. Davenport’s earlier work in the ﬁrst decade of the
century had been on traits demonstrably conforming to a Mendelian pattern of inheritance by the standards
of the time (e.g. hair and eye color). Goddard’s work using Binet’s IQ scales also epitomized the newest
quantitative means in measuring human abilities. Statistical analysis, still a new science, was often
inappropriately applied during this period with few experts (e.g. Pearson) able to deﬁnitively judge the
merits of these studies. Vague deﬁnitions of what constituted “unit characters” further compromised efforts
to demonstrate the patterns of inheritance. To Davenport’s credit he generally cautioned against taking
action based upon eugenic theories until more knowledge had been gathered.

26 Eugenics: Twelve University Lectures. Pg. 60

27 Ibid. Pg. 54, Vaughan suggested that to “show that inheritance is more potent than environment in the
development of the criminal” it would be necessary to include the “stock manipulator” who was as “truly a
thief as one who steals a purse.” Pg. 68-70, He further condemns wealth and the classism it breeds as

84

Vaughan listed “alcoholism, feeblenrindedness, epilepsy, insanity, pauperism, and

criminality” among the “undesirable unit characters” considered absent from “good

stock.” According to Vaughan,

All of these classes should be excluded from the list of
those to whom is granted the privilege of exercising the
highest, holiest, most important function of the race--
parenthood. From what I have already said it is evident that
in order to boast of good stock it is necessary to have the
history of at least three generations. Among these there
should be none of the defective unit characters mentioned
above.28

Sounding more like Galton and Pearson, than a strict Mendelian, he asserted in

his promulgation of inherited features that, “Temperament, ﬂuency in speech and

readiness in composition, manual dexterity, memory, imagination and other physical and

. . . . . . ”29 - -
mental characterlstrcs show unusual development in certain famlhes. Yet describing

the inheritance of insanity, his description of the inheritance pattern follows simple

Mendelian ratios. Citing the works of Rosnaoff, Orr, Davenport and Weeks, Vaughan

afﬁrmed,

All agree that certain forms of insanity are transmissible,
and so far as such inheritance has been studied it seems to
follow the Mendelian law. When both parents are insane,
none of the children remain normal; when one parent is
normal but of insane stock and the other insane, half the
children may become insane; when both parents are
normal, but of insane stock, about one-fourth the children
become insane.30

 

engendering dissipate lifestyles and acting as a bar to eugenic marriages between the worthy of different

classes.

28 Ibid. Pg. 60
’9 Ibid. Pg.48
3° Ibid. Pg. 49-50

85

But his concept of genetics eschewed strict adherence to the simple Mendelian unit
character form of inheritance to include such phenomena as sex-linked recessives in
hemophelia. Like Davenport, Vaughan realized that some predisposition to disease or
behavior resulted from the interaction of multiple genetic “determiners.” For eugenicists,
the physiological nature of these determiners remained unknown for decades and the
effects of environmental “poisons,” such as, alcohol and venereal disease further
complicated attempts to elucidate the nature of inherited “defects.”

While Mendelians acknowledged that environmental inﬂuences could directly
affect the phenotypic character and in some rare instances even the “germ plasm” (and
thus the genotype), they differed from Lamarckians belief in the pliability of genetic
material. Through the 19205 the question of genetic malleability remained intensely
contested among eugenicists and geneticists in all ﬁelds. In their pronouncements,
advocates on both sides frequently voiced opinions more often commensurate with their
positions on social issues than on the scientiﬁc evidence at hand.

This question went to the heart of the social value of eugenics. If the germ plasm
was indeed moldable to environmental inﬂuence, then the beneﬁts of programs to
promote the general welfare and uplift the disadvantaged held the promise of providing a
beneﬁcent genetic endowment for future generations. On the other hand, if the
Mendelians were correct, most social welfare programs merely allowed the eugenically
degenerate to survive and propagate their corrupted germ plasm to the detriment of the
nation’s posterity. Yet, for both Larnarckian and Mendelian eugenicists, the socially

deviant constituted a grave threat.

86

For Mendelians, depraved lifestyles generally originated with degenerate
inheritance, while for Lamarckians corrupted social conditions constituted an inheritance
and an exacerbation of the deleterious effects of that inheritance that would be visited
many fold upon future progeny. For the latter, only the young could be saved, and their
salvation was problematic.

The perceived fecundity of the degenerate classes presented eugenicists of both
schools with a dilemma. If as supposed, the socially deﬁcient and dependent classes were
propagating their kind in numbers that outstripped that of the “good stock, ” then all
measures at bettering social conditions were put at risk by their burdening society with
unbearable ﬁscal costs. Vaughan’s position on the eugenic threat to the human race
conformed to mainstream fears of racial degeneration.

The prevalence of feeblemindedness in this country is

becoming alarming and demands the attention of all who
are interested in the future of the race. Without being an

alarmist or a pessimist, I wish to say that the American
people is threatened with the spread of mental and moral
degeneracy through the multiplication of the unﬁt.3 ’

His solution to the problem demonstrates his afﬁrmation of compulsory
sterilization laws and his support for Michigan’s course. By 1929, all of the categories
Vaughan cites would be included in Michigan’s most comprehensive sterilization law.
Fifteen years before its inception, Vaughan proclaimed,

The State will not permit the reproduction of the weak-
minded, the insane, the alcoholic and the criminal, and will
deny parenthood to those suffering from diseases which

cripple offspring. This prohibition will be enforced by
segregation or by sterilization, or by both.32

 

3’ Ibid. Pg. 49
32 Ibid. Pg. 74

87

In 1914, Vaughan, as president of the State Board of Health, Dean of the
University of Michigan’s medical school, and president-elect of the AMA brought the
credibility of Michigan’s most eminent physician and eugenicist to John Harvey
Kellogg’s First Race Betterment Conference in Battle Creek. Perhaps in deference to
Kellogg’s Larnarckian views, Vaughan’s address to the conference dealt with the
environmental harm done to germ plasm through the effects of venereal disease.33

The most eminent eugenicists in the nation attended the conference. The ERO’s
Davenport and Laughlin provided lectures, as did such luminaries as Yale’s Irving Fisher,
and the Tuskegee Institute’s Booker T. Washington. Kellogg’s Race Betterment
Foundation, which sponsored the conference, boasted an impressive roster of political
and intellectual ﬁgures. The state’s governor served as honorary president, three US.
Senators were members of the Central Committee as were three members of the State
Board of Public Health. Presidents of prestigious universities, medical schools, school
boards and government agencies, such as, Charles Elliot of Harvard lent their names to
the RBF’s endeavors. Vaughan’s preeminence as an eugenicist was suggested by his
listing on the roster, second only to Charles Davenport of the ERO.

Newell Dwight Hillis, pastor of Boston’s Plymouth Congregational Church,
suggested the idea for the ﬁrst RBF conference to Kellogg as a means of addressing the
increasing social problems associated with growing urban areas. Though Kellogg
primarily focused his reforrn efforts by way of propounding the beneﬁts to the individual

of a euthenic lifestyle, his social conscience demanded that he also convey them to as

broad a public as possible. The ﬁrst RBF conference managed to reﬂect Kellogg’s

 

33 Robbins, Emily. Ed. Proceedings of the First National Conference on Rayce Betterment. (Battle Creek:
Race Betterment Foundation, 1914) Pg.90-96.

88

healthy living philosophy (vegetarianism, avoidance of environmental poisons, e.g.
alcohol, tobacco, etc.) and bring together America’s most eminent eugenicists
establishing a lasting connection between the sanitarium’s program of biologic living and
American’s interested in promoting eugenics.34
The ﬁrst conference covered a wide range of topics: medical, social and
environmental. The medical presentations included papers on arteriosclerosis, hookworm,
physical ﬁtness, tuberculosis, venereal disease (Vaughan), increases in degenerative
diseases and of course the beneﬁts of biologic living. The more general eugenic
presentations dwelt on the signiﬁcance of declining birth and death rates, differential
fecundity, increase in insanity, sex education, immigration policy, marriage selection and
a plethora of reform measures claimed to bestow a eugenic beneﬁt on the nation.35
The conference ﬁnished with what had become widely popular in county and state
fairs throughout the county as Better Baby and Fitter Family contests. The conference’s
“Physical and Mental Perfection Contests,” though limited to children of Battle Creek,
demonstrated what Robbins Gilman, head worker of the University Settlement House of
New York, claimed should be its real goals. The interest generated in contests to
recognize healthy babies and children presented an opportunity for surveying the

unhealthy and directing educational, medical and social welfare resources to those in

need.36

 

34 Schwarz, Richard. John Harvey Kellogg M.D. (Nashville: Southern Publishing Co. 1970). Pg. 221-223
Though the RBF became a full-ﬂedged organization for the promotion of eugenics, it maintained a bias
towards the euthenic philosophy Kellogg sought to popularize. While the RBF conferences served to
legitimize his claims, the RBF’s continued support for Kellogg’s Good Health journal, remained the
' means of espousing his philosophy to the public.
5 Proceedings of First National Race Betterment Conference. Pg. v-x
3“ lbid. Pg. 272-279

89

The success of the ﬁrst RBF conference followed on the heels of the First
International Eugenics Congress held in London in 1912. This conference was attended
by some 750 people from Europe and the United States, distinguished by such notables as
the former Prime Minister of Britain, Arthur Balfour, Sir Winston Churchill, Alexander
Graham Bell and Charles Elliot, the former president of Harvard University. The
international congress presented an opportunity for Europeans and Americans to establish
closer links among their respective eugenics societies, particularly between the British
and American groups who proceeded to elect members to each other’s respective
societies.37

While Kellogg’s ﬁrst RBF conference could only boast slightly more than four
hundred attendees, nearly twice as many papers were presented, many from America’s
most inﬂuential reformers and eugenicists. The success of the ﬁrst national conference
led the organizers to sponsor another conference the following year in connection with
the Panama-Paciﬁc Exposition in San Francisco. Though the second national conference
was less successful in the numbers of delegates attending and formal papers presented,
the sponsors determined to make such conferences annual events. But by 1916, the First
World War, which had prevented further International Eugenie Congresses, and
Kellogg’s own deteriorating health led to the postponement of further national
conferences.38

During the wartime hiatus, the RBF continued to promote Kellogg’s particular

medical philosophy of euthenics, the improvement of the individual through healthy

 

37 Kevles. Pg. 63
3" Schwarz. Pg. 131-135. In 1918, Kellogg, aged 66, tried to ﬁll in as many of his staff left to join the
American Expeditionary Force. Failing to follow his own advice about proper nutrition, rest and exercise,

90

living habits. During this period, the primary means for Kellogg to disseminate his
eugenic/euthenic message remained the journal Good Health. Though ill health prevented
both Kellogg and Vaughan from participating in the Second International Eugenics
Congress in 1921, the success of the event sponsored by the American Museum of
Natural History induced Kellogg to organize a last national conference in 1928.39

Yet, even in 1921, ﬁssures in the eugenics community appeared as some
geneticists refused to accept positions in eugenics societies. The assertions of mainline
eugenicists, such as the Second International Conference’s organizer and president of the
Museum of Natural History, Henry Fairﬁeld Osborn struck many as at best disparaging
of democracy. Osborn, in his opening address to the congress stated,

In the United States we are slowly waking to the
consciousness that education and environment do not
fundamentally alter racial values. We are engaged in a
serious struggle to maintain our historic republican
institutions through barring the entrance of those who are
unﬁt to share the duties and responsibilities of our well-
founded government. The true spirit of American
democracy that all men are born with equal rights and
duties has been confused with the political sophistry that all
men are born with equal character and ability to govern
themselves and others, and with the educational sophistry
that education and environment will offset the handicap of
heredity. South America is examining into the relative
value of the pure Spanish and Portuguese and of various

 

(eating one meal a day, working 18 hours a day) he suffered a relapse of his childhood tuberculosis
requiring an extended convalescence.

3’9 Schwarz. Pg. 68-69, 71-72, 91-93, 101-103, 170-192, 220-223, 234-240. In 1906, Kellogg created the
AMMB as a means to support activities formerly carried out by the Seventh-day Adventist Medical
Missionary and Benevolent Association. As Kellogg’s medical philosophy became more scientiﬁcally
oriented, be progressively diverged from the health precepts propounded by the Adventist’s spiritual head
Ellen White, eventually bringing about a break with the church and its associations. Because of Kellogg’s
continuing difﬁculties with the Adventist leadership regarding medical philosophy, he found it necessary to
establish a more independent source of support for his medical and teaching activities. Kellogg endowed
the AMMB with 5000 shares of Toasted Corn Flake Company stock and maintained control through his
position as director. The AMMB provided support for the sanitarium, the medical college, Good Health and
nonsectarian foreign medical missions among America’s evangelical denominations. The RBF would
continue publishing the journal Good Health through 1955, some 13 years after the doctor’s death.

91

degrees of racial mixture of Indian and Negroid blood in
relation to the preservation of their republican institutions.40

Such overt racism and classism began to mark the mainstream of American eugenics.

As Daniel Kevles noted, “if Anglo-American eugenicists resented challengers
from the social bottom, they [also] displayed no great admiration for the economic top of
modern society.” In qualifying their “pantheon of eugenically desirable traits,” business
acumen failed the test. Middle and upper class Britons and Americans used eugenics as
means of establishing for themselves a position of power “between the captains of
industry on one side and lower-income groups-both native and foreign- on the other.”
Eugenicists whether “socialist, progressive, liberal or conservative. ....may have
disagreed about the kind of society they wished to achieve, but they were united in a
belief that the biological expertise they commanded should determine the essential .
human issues of the new urban, industrial order.”41

Yet, eugenics appeal extended beyond the upper and middle class reformers of the
cities and towns to the agrarian countryside. County fairs had long been a venue where
farming families came together to display their efforts in a wide range of domestic
occupations. County fair competitions had long included displays of farmers’ efforts to
breed new and improved varieties of domesticated plants and animals. With the advent of
popular eugenics in the late 19th century, the detailed lineages of new plant and livestock
varieties were complemented with the pedigrees of farm families themselves. County and

state fairs often held Better Baby and Fitter Family contests for the most detailed or most

illustrious family records.

 

4° Davenport, Charles. Ch. of Com. on Pub. Eugenics, Genetics and the Family: Scientiﬁc Papers of the
Second International Congess of Eugenics. (Baltimore: Williams & Willdns, 1923) Pg. 2
4’ Kevles. Pg. 76

92

While the dubious scientiﬁc merit of the latter type of competitions no doubt
tended more to serve local desires for recognition of inherited virtues, the process of
collecting detailed pedigrees supplied by average yeoman farmers served as a means of
educating a broader audience to the value of eugenic thought. With most Americans of
this period having some farming background, and thus a basic knowledge of husbandry,
there was a vast audience amenable to the “science of eugenics.” These competitions
served dual purposes with well baby clinics and health screenings as the typical adjuncts.
Most nineteenth century Americans could detail their antecedents for several generations.
Both Kellogg and Vaughan epitomized farm families of their era in this vein; Vaughan in
his memoirs iterating his clan’s background to the earliest Huguenots and less reliably
through to 11th century crusaders.42

A 1924 edition of the _Su_rvey demonstrated the popularity of these competitions
cum health screenings. Mary Watts, who helped organize the ﬁrst “Fitter Family Contest”
at the 1920 Kansas Free Fair, noted that each year interest in the fair’s “Eugenics
Department” had increased with “always more requests for entries than space and
equipment will permit?”3 In 1924, the Tri-State Fair held in Savannah, Georgia began
holding similar contests. Watts noted that in “both Kansas and Georgia the farm
0 population accounted for about half the entries.” The other half included the typical
occupations associated with the urban middle class, “lawyers, merchants, book-keepers,
aviators, salesmen, teachers and clerks.” Watts conﬁrmed the middle class nature of

eugenics popularity at these rural gatherings by noting, that “no one of the parents could

 

’2 Vaughan. A DoctoL’s Memories. Pg. 1-13
‘3 s_urv_ey. Vol.57, 19234924. Pg. 516—517

93

not read or write, and the majority were high school graduates, with a liberal sprinkling
of college people.”44

The American Eugenics Society, under whose imprimatur the contests were
sponsored, soon found itself supplying exhibits and technical aid to seven to ten fairs
yearly. Requests for such aid from the AES jumped to forty per year by the end of the
decade. Local publications gave front page coverage to the competitions and the wining
contestants. In Kansas, governors Allen and Davis presented the winning families with a
Governor’s Fitter Family Trophy, while individuals were awarded a Capper Medal
named for and presented by US. Senator Arthur Capper.45

With the growing popularity of the contests at fairs and expositions, the
effectiveness of propagandizing the eugenics message through AES exhibits grew
commensurately. Charts depicting typical Mendelian inheritance patterns in humans,
were paired with charts showing the inheritance of coat color in black and white guinea
pigs, often with stuffed specimens to lend authenticity to the display. At the 1929 Kansas
Free Fair, such a chart was paired with one asserting, “unﬁt human traits such as
feeblemindedness, epilepsy, criminality, insanity, alcoholism, pauperism and many others
run in families and are inherited in exactly the same way as color in guinea pigs.”46

At the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the AES exhibit included a
board with blinking lights indicating the expenditure one hundred dollars of tax payers’

money to support the care of those with bad heredity every ﬁfteen seconds, the birth of a

 

’4 Ibid. Pg. 518. Miss Watts opinion on the general popularity of such contests was further demonstrated
while attending a Rural Life Conference in St. Louis. After presenting a “hurried” ten-minute presentation,
she was approached by the president of a women’s college in Virginia, a professor from Minnesota, college
students from Wisconsin, a settlement worker from New York and a “missionary to rural church people,”
all seeking more information.

”lbid. Pg. 517; Kevles. Pg. 61-62

’6 Kevles. Pg. 62

94

mentally deﬁcient person every forty-eight seconds, and ﬁnally that only every seven and
half minutes did the US. reap the fruit of a “high grade person. . .who will have the ability
to do creative work and be ﬁt for leadership.”47
Other contemporary media somewhat equivocally supplemented the eugenicist’s
efforts to popularize the eugenics message. Several silent dramas produced in the 19108
supported the idea of hereditary determinism, though these ﬁlms scarcely ever used the
word eugenics in their titles or advertising. Such ﬁlms as Heredity (Biograph 1912),
Heredity (Broadway Star 1915), Inherited Sin (Universal 1915), The Power of Heredity
(Rex 19130 and The Second Generation (Pathe 1914) depicted characters whose
inherited taints failed improvement even with the beneﬁt of love and favorable
environments, or those of good stock whose natural inheritance proved resistant to the
corrupting inﬂuences of unfortunate milieus. D.W. Grifﬁth contributed to the hereditarian
argument with Man’s Genesis (1912) and The Escape (Reliance-Majestic 1914). The
latter ﬁlm, one of the few commercial melodramas explicitly billed as an “eugenic” ﬁlm,
conﬂated into two generations of the ﬁctional “Joyce” family all the defects and
antisocial behavior documented among two centuries of the J ukes and Kallikaks,
including prostitution, venereal disease, alcoholism, birth defects and criminality. Yet,
the ﬁlm’s ending, wherein the doctor cures the lunatic cat-strangler with an operation and
saves the sister from a life of depravity by marrying her, highlights the power of science

and love over the initial stress on bad heredity. Grifﬁth’s take on heredity remained

ambiguous with critics’ interpretations varying. One found the ﬁlm advocating a

 

‘7 Ibid. Pg. 62

95

Larnarckian view of environment changing heredity while another viewed its message as
afﬁrming the primacy of nurture over nature.48

As historian, Martin Pemick notes, most “eugenic ﬁlms” dealt more with good
parenting than good mating. The Eugenie Film Company’s Birth (1917), failed to discuss
heredity at all, while it did provide information on neonatal care. The RBF produced
several ﬁlms popularizing Kellogg’s views on health, but none seem to have dealt with
eugenics. The RBF conferences always included ﬁlm presentations, yet only one that was
shown in the 1914 conference, speciﬁcally mentioned eugenics and that only in the
context of venereal disease."9

What little these ﬁlms engendered in the way of support for eugenics, was
probably countered by even earlier, popular anti-eugenic farces such as Thomas Edison’s
The Strenuous Life, or Anti-Race Suicide (1904), a parody on Theodore Roosevelt’s
belief that middle class, native-bom American were committing race suicide by not
having enough children. In the 19108, the anti-eugenic comedies Eugenics and the Bar
“U” Ranch (Selig 1914), Snakeville’s Eugenie Marriage (Essanay 1915), A Case of
Eugenics (Vitagraph 1915), The Eugenie Boy (Thanhouser 1914) and Eugenics Versus

Love (Beauty 1914) catered to those who considered eugenicists puritanical elitist

reformers. The latter ﬁlm provides an unmistakable caricature of Kellogg, as the story

 

4” Pemick, Martin. The Black Stork:Eug_enics and the Death of “Defective Babies in American Medicine
and Motion Pictures Since 1915. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) Pg. 133-135; Pemick’s
research on the history of eugenic ﬁlms is an outstanding resource, which space unfortunately precludes
more extensive use of in this work. The book’s title, The Black Stork refers to a 1917 ﬁlm of the same
name justifying the euthanasia of defective children by a Dr. Haiselden of Chicago. Haiselden was not
alone in his contention that defective children were often “better off dead.” As early as 1903, Lincoln
Rodgers, Muskegon’s representative to Michigan’s state legislature proposed an amendment to the funding
bill for the state home for the feebleminded allowing for the electrocution of mentally defective infants.
Similar legislative debates on euthanasia bills in Ohio and Iowa occurred in 1906. Pg. 24.

‘9 Ibid. Pg. 136

96

revolves around a eugenic contest sponsored by a breakfast food company located in
“Battle River.”50
Yet, such eugenic and anti-eugenic ﬁlms seemed only to preach to their respective
choirs. The eugenics campaigns of people like Drs. Kellogg and Vaughan beginning in
the 19108 bore a large crop by the end of the next decade. Supporting the most severe of
acceptable negative eugenics policies (compulsory sterilization), upper class urban
reformers were joined by their middle class counterparts in the cities and countryside. In
the ﬁfteen years since Michigan passed its ﬁrst eugenic sterilization statute with the help
of its premier eugenicists, Kellogg and Vaughan, nineteen states would pass similar
legislation. Michigan updated its legislation three times in this period, each time making
the laws more comprehensive in their reach. Vaughan and Kellogg’s personal and
professional histories demonstrate the different intellectual journeys many eugenicists

and laymen took to arrive at policies supporting compulsory sterilization of their fellow

citizens. Their journeys form the basis of the following chapter.

 

5° Ibid. Pg. 130-132.

97

Chapter 4: Kellogg’s and Vaughan’s Personal and Professional Paths to

Eugenics

Though Michigan was the ﬁrst state to promulgate a statute mandating
compulsory sterilization in 1897, it would not be until 1913 that Michigan would enact
such a law. This would make Michigan the seventh state to enact such legislation in the
United States. Passage of the 1913 law may have been largely due to the combined
inﬂuence of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and Dr. Victor Clarence Vaughan. The two men
had been reunited on the Michigan Board of Health in 1912. Both men’s professional
reputations and political connections would lend themselves to the passage of this
legislation.

Though both had served together on the Board of Health in the latter decades of
the 19th-century, their medical philosophies had differentiated over the years. When
Kellogg and Vaughan had ﬁrst served together in 1882, their focus had been on
advancing measures designed to improve public sanitation. This focus had been derived
from the dominant medical paradigm of the period, the ﬁlth theory of disease
transmission. Their collaboration had been particularly fruitful though their perspectives
even then had been somewhat disparate. The differences in medical philosophy the two
men represented eventually resulted in a powerful combination of scientiﬁc rationales for
a state sanctioned program of compulsory sterilization.

By 1900, when Vaughan had rejoined the Board of Health, his beliefs in the
etiology of disease transmission and the importance of heredity predisposition had

solidiﬁed. Research in the laboratory of the famous German bacteriologist, Robert Koch,

98

and subsequent ﬁeld work with the Walter Reed Commission in the Spanish American
War, had convinced Vaughan in the validity of the contact theory of infection. His
perspective on the importance of heredity had also concretized.

The turn of the century rediscovery by DeVries, Correns and Tschermak of
Gregor Mendel and his “laws” of inheritance seemed to provide a scientiﬁc validation for
early twentieth century hereditarian perspectives. Science, as provider of empirical
proofs, represented the ultimate methodology in the pursuit of objective truth.l

Vaughan epitomized this faith in science as the ultimate provider of solutions to
all of mankind’s problems. Before the American Academy of Medicine on June 7’”, 1902,
he presented his Presidential address entitled, “The Religion of Science.” In it he stated
that, “all discoveries that have been made in science have brought with them at least the
potentiality of the betterment of the race.” Further, he did not know of any “scientiﬁc
advance in knowledge, which has not sooner or later added to human happiness, and
improved man’s material and Spiritual condition.” (Bulletin of AAM, #6 1902)

Vaughan also had an abiding belief in the importance of both nature and nurture
from an early stage in his medical career. Thus, he like many others accepted Mendel’s
experiments as evidence that justiﬁed their long held beliefs in the value of “good stock.”
In his autobiography, A Doctor’s Memories, Vaughan began the ﬁrst chapter with the
words, “My life has been determined by heredity and environment.” He continued,

Some years ago Galton coined the word eugenics, which he
deﬁned as being well born. Many centuries ago a wise man
wrote: "The felicity of being well born is the richest gift the
gods may bestow upon mortals." My maternal grandmother
was wont to say to me, long before Galton put the word

eugenics into the dictionary, "Victor, never forget that you
come of a good family." I once asked her what she meant

 

’ Garrison, Fielding. History of Medicine. (Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1966) pg. 670-671

99

by " good family." She replied that there had been in her

family, as far back as tradition and history reached, no

criminal, no insane person, no drunkard and no pauper.2
Vaughan was not a strict determinist, but some of his writings reveal the insidious class
and ethnic biases peculiar to some middle class eugenicists.3 He claimed, “no birth of
distinction,” and described his antecedents as “families which at no time, covered by
tradition or history, have been other than plain people.” This was no small measure of
time as Vaughan’s family history was known to him in great detail. He could trace his
mother’s line back to one Raphael Du Puy, a lieutenant of Conrad 11, King of Burgundy
in the year 1033.4

Vaughan believed that environment conspired with heredity to produce for better

or worse the individuals we become. “Heredity supplies the seed and this contains the
potentialities of life. Environment conditions the growth, supplying. . .all else concerned
in the conversion of the potential into the actual.” The beneﬁts of good family values,

“can pass through several generations of adverse environment, of poverty and even

illiteracy and still transmit the seeds of good honorable citizenship.”5

 

2 Vaughan, Victor. A Doctor’s Memories. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1926) pg. 1-3

3 Wilson, Lucy. Ed. Eugenics: Twelve University Lectures. (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1914) Pg.
64. Vaughan’s lecture on eugenics contains disparaging remarks on interracial marriage, comparing them to
in-breeding, wherein the “bad of each side becomes dominant, and the mongrel whether man or beast, is no
credit to the pure blood on either side of the house.” Vaughan claims “unanswerable arguments against race
mixtures” are provided by “mulattos of our own country, and the mixed races of South America and
neighbouring islands.” These were common beliefs among eugenicists of various political persuasions. See
Henry Fairﬁeld Osborn’s welcoming address to the Second International Eugenics Congress for similar
remarks, these from a man who would later condemn the ERO’s H.H.Laughlin and Madison Grant for their
racism. These forms of racism directed particularly against cross-breeding or mongrelization as it was often
referred to, were common throughout the Western world harkening back to back to humoral prescriptions
of mixing breeds of vastly different temperaments. As each race had distinctively different constitutional
make-ups conditioned by their original environments, such crossings were believed to produce radically
disparate temperaments in the offspring; Pg. 54. Vaughan’s opinion on the wealthy ﬁnancial class was
equally critical claiming they were often no different than “the thief who steals a purse.”

4 Ibid. pg. 4~7

5 Ibid. pg. 3

100

Vaughan believed predispositions to disease were inheritable though as evidenced
by his own family. His study of the three principle causes of death within his line
revealed a susceptibility to “bloody ﬂux” in the children, a bacterial dysentery, which he
would devote some time and research to studying in his later life. Young adults seemed to
have a predilection for acquiring consumption the general wasting associated with
tuberculosis, with which he himself was afﬂicted. Cancer comprised the third part of the
deadly triad of disease for those who reached later life.

Vaughan’s consumption embodied the typical expectations as to how the disease
was acquired and its prognosis in the pre-antibiotic era. In antebellum America,
consumption was thought to be hereditary, though it was acknowledged that some with
no family history contracted the disease. Its onset generally associated with studying for
the professions of law, medicine and the ministry. The rigors of studying in cramped,
cold unventilated libraries and dormitories probably caused the relapse of many with
latent disease that then spread it to their colleagues. In the 19th century cures ranged from
physically challenging “voyages for health” to the water baths of the hydrotherapists.
Vaughan’s decision to study with Koch, the discoverer of the tubercle bacterium

’96

stemmed from his bout with this “captain of death. His description of the cause and

 

6 Vaughan, Victor. A Doctgr’s M_gnoﬁes. pg. 141, 146-148; (Rothman, Sheila. Living in the Shadow of
_D_eath: Tuberculosis and the Social Experience of Illness in American History. (Baltimore: John Hopkins
University Press, 194) pg. 14-44. Consumption epitomized the classic humoral disease paradigm of a fever
caused by irritants, to be successfully treated with counterirritants necessary to reset the humoral imbalance
responsible for the onset of the disease. Even after Koch’s discovery of the tubercle bacterium, treatments
revolved around humoral methodologies until the advent of antibiotics, though heroic surgical procedures
supplanted these for a period in the third and fourth decades of the 20th century. Sanatoriums with their
programs of fresh air and healthy diet, associated with prior humoral therapies continued to be the primary
mode of treatment until antibiotic treatment provided a more efﬁcacious cure. Dr. Vaughan’s description of
his families travails with TB are quite instructive of the understanding and practice of regular physicians
when dealing with the disease and are thus quoted at some length. His grandfather’s afﬂiction, noted as the
ﬁrst in the family, was assumed to have been passed on to his sons. “Of his seven children who reached
maturity three developed consumption; two succumbed and one overcame it after two overland trips from
Missouri to New Orleans and a subsequent journey across tile plains to California. In my twenty-ﬁrst year,

101

cure typiﬁes the persisting inﬂuence of humoral beliefs about TB in the pre-sanatorium
era, even those of such an eminent physician/scientist as Dr. Vaughan.

I believe that had I remained on the old farm and continued

my active exercise, the tubercle bacilli would not have

troubled the body cells in the apex of my lung; but when I

went to college, studied in. a small unventilated room, and

neglected exercise in the open, the sleeping bacilli awoke

and, began the contest, which was ﬁnally terminated in my

favor by the improved appetite stimulated by riding and the

cold baths.
“Hereditary TB” was often one of the conditions listed in sterilization statutes as an
indication for treatment. The fears associated with this disease were well founded in the
era before antibiotic treatment. The 17th century nonconformist preacher and author, John
Bunyan’s appellation of “Captain of all these men of death” was richly deserved. It has
been estimated that TB in its various forms accounted for 20-25% of all deaths in Europe
through the 19th century. In the United States, the magnitude of TB’s inﬂuence on society
has been associated with the exploration and settlement of the West, and the rise of the
sanatorium industry and hospital based surgery.7

Though Vaughan’s crediting as late as 1926 of his recovery to a humoral style

regimen might seem unusual in a physician so dedicated to the science of bacteriology, it

 

my great uncle, Doctor Warren Dameron, recognized the fact that I had pulmonary tuberculosis. At that
time I was losing ﬂesh rapidly, my minimum weight being 108, coughing badly and suffering from
exhaustive night sweats. This was long before Koch identiﬁed and isolated the tubercle bacillus. My good
uncle went over tile family history, with me and gave advice to live an outdoor life. Then with a smile on
his lips and a tear in his eyes he said: "Victor, postpone dying as long as possible. " I am consistently
following this advice now in my seventy-ﬁfth year. The treatment which I adopted with my uncle's
approval was more heroic than I have ever dared prescribe for any patient. About two miles from my
father's house was a sulphur spring, which had some local reputation for its medicinal virtues in which
neither my uncle nor I believed. The water welled up into a box which reached to my chin when I stood in
it. Every morning during an entire summer and late into the fall before breakfast I rode to the spring,
stripped in the open and stood for a few moments in the ice cold water. As cold weather approached I
frequently found thin ice in the cow tracks about the box. Soon I began to gain ﬂesh and other unfavorable
symptoms gradually faded away. Now the only evidence of the presence of the tubercle bacillus in my
body is a lesion in one apex.”

102

must be remembered that before antibiotic therapies were developed in the 19408, the
science provided more information regarding prevention and diagnosis rather than cure.
Bacteriology substantiated the arguments of the sanitationists, most of which had been
derived from humoral theory in the mid-19Lh century.8 Cures were few and far between.
Most new turn of the century treatments relied on practices not unfamiliar to humoral
physicians of generations past. Paul Ehrlich’s mercury-based Salversan, a treatment for
the treponemal diseases of syphilis and yaws, differed little from prior mercury-based
drugs of humoral physicians except in the method of its development. In the 17’”, 18th and
19th centuries, humoral physicians’ practices led to the use of ever-increasing doses of
these poisonous compounds. The lack of efﬁcacy in their “heroic” treatments was clearly
reﬂected in an 1832 Cholera Bulletin,

Alas! then for the public, for whom doctors and cholera are

contending; they watch the ﬁerce onslaught, and ever and

anon are struck by the random blows that proceed from the

combatants. Yes! for "Cholera kills, and Doctors slay, and

every foe will have its way!9

Ehrlich and his contemporaries differed from their predecessors in their empirical

methods of researching the effects of the drugs. Even the serum-based anti-toxin

 

7Ibid. Pg. 13-76, 131-178, 211-252; Scale, Clive & Pattison, Stephen. Medical Doubt ﬂl Certainty.
(London: Open University Press, 1994) pg. 36-58.

8 Rosenberg, Charles. The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849 and 1866. (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1987) pg. 1-12, 193-198, 213-226. John Snow and Max von Pettenkofer independently
arrived at their theories on the transmission of cholera through contaminated water supplies and fecal
transfer proving the contagious nature of the disease. Snow averred that he remained a “regular” physician,
in effect, humoral physician though he was castigated as an empiricist by many of his colleagues in the
18508. Snow’s and Pettenkofer’s theories were often faulted for their inability to explain isolated cases of
cholera. Their assertions on the portability of the disease did not specify an agent, but merely a mode of
transmission. It was not until 1883, when Koch led a German team to Egypt that Vibrio comma was
established as the bacterial cause of cholera. Sanitationists’ beliefs in the contagious nature of disease
transmission reﬂected a more developed theory of the miasmatic/efﬂuvial pattern of disease transmission
rather than a complete break with past humoral thinking. Their claims to the status of “regular physicians”
demonstrates the need of practitioners to remain in the fold of their profession to assure public acceptance
of their assertions regarding disease transmission, not to mention their status as doctors.

103

treatments harkened back to the earlier humoral practices of vaccination and inoculation,
differing mainly in the application of the empirical method used in their development.10

Vaughan epitomized the mainstream movement of tum-of—the-century physicians
towards an empirical science based practice. As he modestly referred to himself as a
“teacher of a limited branch of chemistry and hygiene,”11 he placed himself in the
forefront of modern medical practice, yet like most doctors remained selectively
connected to the humoral precedents of old.12 Among the sanitationists cum hygienists,
belief in the hereditary predisposition to speciﬁc diseases endured and not without some
foundation. Though more of the etiological agents of disease were being elucidated, the
mystery remained as to why some people when exposed to like doses of an infectious
agent causing illness remained unaffected. The best explanation of variable resistance to
bacterial agents was posited in the difference in patients’ individual constitutions, and
their constitutional backgrounds were still largely perceived within humoral frameworks
of heredity and environment.

This was especially true in the treatment and prognoses of psychiatric disorders.
Until the 1950s few drugs existed to treat these patients. Prior to this, institutionalization
and physical management (prevention of harm to the patient and others, usually by

physical restraint, seclusion, etc.) remained the focus. Through the ﬁrst third of the 20th

 

9 Ibid. pg. 68

’0 Vaughan, Victor. A Doctor’s Memories. pg. 153-154. Vaughan attended the 1894 International Congress
on Hygiene in Budapest where Roux presented his paper on the diptheria anti-toxin and supplied each of
the delegates a vial of the substance. This event led to the worldwide production of the antitoxin and
substantial decrease in the incidence of the disease. In effect, this treatment was an inoculation and thus
could be considered merely a more advanced form of the humoral practice of smallpox vaccination.

“Ibid. pg. 160

’2 Ibid. pg.l61-162. Vaughan celebrated Paracelsus’ theories and reputation as a healer and innovator in the
chemical treatment of disease. Not unusual for a chemi st-bacteriologist, but perhaps a bit ironic as
Paracelsus’ was during his life castigated roundly by his profession though later his theories were
incorporated in the humoral corpus.

104

century, psychiatric disorders were generally not amenable to treatment. Though Freud
and other psychoanalysts had some success with some neurotic disorders (e.g. hysteria)
the psychotic disorders characterized as dementias (e. g. dementia praecox /8chizophrenia,
senile dementia/Alzheimers) remained untreatable. Mental illnesses were viewed as
progressive syndromes, not subject to lasting interventions. The hereditary nature of
some was without doubt. Huntington’s chorea provided an example of strictly Mendelian
inheritance. Lack of accurate statistics for many other syndromes allowed for much
speculation as to their hereditary nature and anecdotal histories generally conﬁrmed these
suppositions. It was recognized that chronic depression had a hereditary character, but the
enigma of the pattern of inheritance remained unclear.13

This is not to say that the environmental nature of some mental illness was not
recognized. Bacteriology provided direct proof for the etiology of treponemes in
syphilitic dementia in the ﬁrst decades of the century though the connection to syphilitic
disease had been made much earlier.” And though other forms of bacterial encephalitis
had been demonstrated microscopically, in an age before the advent of electron
microscopy, many types of viral encephalitis could only be categorized as illnesses of
unknown origin, probably with a genetic character. Heavy metal poisoning was also

known to cause mental aberration. Yet excluding the neuroses, for which physiological

 

‘3 Wilson. Pg. 46-48. Vaughan’s understanding of heredity in 1914, held that individual attributes were
sometimes inherited as distinct “unit characters” such as those for eye and hair color, while the inheritance
of stature and body weight seemed to be under the control of two or more characters producing a much
more complex pattern of inheritance. In effect, while unit characters followed Mendelian patterns,
phenotypic characteristics under the inﬂuence of two or more unit characters were highly variable. This
interpretation of the inﬂuence of individual genes upon the inheritance of phenotypic characteristics
remains very close to current interpretations.

‘4 Garrison, Fielding. History of Medicine. Pg. 644-646. Gullain-Thaon syndrome (transitional
cerebrospinal syphilis) identiﬁed in 1909.

105

aberration was not generally ascribed, none of these illnesses were ameliorated by
contemporary treatments.

The causes of and treatment for many viral diseases presented a continual
challenge to the bacteriologists. Vaughan’s tenure with Walter Reed’s team of physicians
showed clearly the infectious nature of the disease, the mode of transmission, but not the
infectious agent itself. Treatment of the patients constitution, though in the less humoral,
more biomedical sense of managing body chemistry proved the only effectual means of
dealing with the diseased; prevention the only proof against it. The 1918 ﬂu epidemic
again proved to Vaughan the power of prevention (i.e. hygiene) over treatment and
inherent differences in people’s physical constitutions”.

In an era when preventions outweighed cures in terms of medical efﬁcacy, a focus
on the deterrence of environmental causation (i.e. infection) and hereditary transmission
remained the most effective means of controlling the propagation of disease, mental and
physical. Thus heredity became a catchall for those disease processes which could not be
ascribed to environmental causes.

Vaughan as a devotee of Mendelian genetics believed that the germ plasm was
stable, though like Weismann, modiﬁable by environmental toxins. In either event, a
corrupted inheritance corresponded with irremediable disease processes. The only means
of preventing propagation of the disease was to halt the procreation of the afﬂicted.

Vaughan’s colleague on the State Board of Health and an inﬂuential surgeon and

physician in his own right held distinctly different views on the nature of heredity.

 

‘5 Ryan, Frank. Virus x: Tracking the New Killer Plagaes. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co. 1997) Pg. 49-65.
Even with modern medicine’s insights into immune systems and the molecular interactions of etiological
agents, physicians confronted with emerging viral disease must often resort to the tried and true methods of
prevention and treating symptomologies, in effect the patient’s constitutional imbalances.

106

Kellogg maintained that a Larnarckian pattern of inheritance existed. In this paradigm,
somatic changes could be passed on to the progeny though the means by which a somatic
change was transformed into alterations of the germ cells remained a mystery.

Kellogg’s medical practice was focused on the Battle Creek Sanitarium of which
he was the director and guiding light. Though an eminent thoracic surgeon, Kellogg’s
reputation has most often been associated with his views on the importance of diet and
exercise. He developed a theory of euthenics, which prescribed a healthy vegetarian diet,
sunlight, fresh air, exercise and sexual abstinence. An empiricist, he conducted many
experiments on the effects of various “toxins.” He proscribed tobacco, tea, coffee,
alcohol, narcotics and various other sundry intoxicants as causes of cancer and performed
numerous experiments to prove the effects of these substances on the body. Similar “back
to basics” health regimens were also prescribed in Germany during this period, later
becoming part of national health policy under the Nazi regime.16

Kellogg along with Luther Burbank, unlike most American eugenicists, was a
follower of Paul Kammerer, the Larnarckian biologist and Austrian socialist. Kellogg
believed that physical changes to the body brought on by alterations in the environment
could be propagated in the progeny. Like Kammerer, he believed that a healthy and ﬁt
society could be achieved by improving the social and physical environment. Physical
exercise, proper diet and better environmental standards would lead to physical and

mental health.17

 

’6 Proctor, Robert. The Nazi War on Cancer. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) Pg. 120-241 ,
Proctor’s disquisition on the lifestyle and environmental factors that concerned the “back to natural health”
movement in Germany parallel very closely Kellogg’s euthenic themes. These included a basic diet of
relatively unprocessed foods (e.g. whole-grain breads), exercise, and proscriptions on tobacco and alcohol.
’7 Weindling. Paul. Health Race and German Politics Between National Uniﬁcation and Nazism: 1870-
_1_911§. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) pg. 331. The Mendelian basis for eugenics was
rejected by Lamarckian biologists such as Paul Kammerer. He was an Austrian socialist, who sensationally

107

American eugenicists particularly concerned themselves with showing that groups
likely to become social charges, such as paupers, the insane, the feebleminded, and
epileptics, were chieﬂy the product of their heredity. Dr. Kellogg had seized upon the
interest in the subject to point out that public hygiene alone would lead to the
deterioration of the human race by keeping alive larger numbers of the weak and feeble.
Instead, he advocated deeper commitment to the principles of biologic living as a way to
offset such an “unfavorable tendency."18

Much of Kellogg’s work on the Board of Health was directed at just these types
of environmental improvements. Kellogg ﬁrst joined Michigan’s State Board of Health
just four years out of medical school in 1880, the year the Board was ﬁrst convened. He
served two concurrent 6-year terms, in which he began studies in to the relationship of
health to an individual’s occupation and personal habits. This allowed him to further his
own studies in to the effects of environmental toxins, water pollution and beneﬁts of

proper ventilation. He served on the “model school” committee and numerous sanitary

conventions held around the state to promote healthy living. He often digressed from his

 

committed suicide in 1926, after being accused of faking the evidence for species transformation in the
midwife toad. He rejected Darwinism and selectionism as typifying the conservative and bourgeois nature
of racial theories. He claimed it was mistaken to see the extermination of the weak and poor by
sterilization, incarceration and immigration controls as the only way to rid society of degenerates, instead a
healthy and ﬁt society could be achieved by improving social conditions, nutrition and education. The
mutual aid of socialism could therefore beneﬁt future generations. This amounted to a socialist programme
for positive eugenics. Physical exercise could be productive eugenic work. It would be possible to eliminate
all racial defects and criminality. Social challenges required new characteristics. He supported the League
for the Protection of Mothers and Sexual Reform. With Eugen Steinach, the surgeon, Kammerer researched
on transplanting animal glands for the purpose of rejuvenation, hoping to further peace and progress.
Kammerer shows how critics of racial hygiene were themselves working from biological premises. His
reformist views were akin to those of a good many social hygienists like Alfred Grotjahn and Julius
Tandler. Few were the critics of racial hygiene who were not in some way eugenicists or committed to
biologistic solutions for social problems. Despite great differences between eugenicists such as Grotjahn
and Lenz, they unanimously urged the nation to adopt to the dictates of biological politics.

’8 Schwarz. Paul. John Harvey Kellogg M.D.. (Nashville: Southern Publishing Association, 1970) pg. 221-
222

108

current specialties of proper ventilation and pure water to discuss the dangers of meat
diets, overeating and the use of condiments, tea, coffee, alcohol, and tobacco.19

Kellogg took time away from his duties on the Board of Health and at the
sanitarium to study surgery abroad in the 1880s. He spent a month studying abdominal
surgical techniques at the Hospital of St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew in London before
moving on to Vienna to study under Theodor Billroth, the founder of modern gastric
surgery. Upon returning to the sanitarium, he outﬁtted new surgical wards and performed
a considerable amount of surgery. As more difﬁcult cases appeared, he realized the need
for further study and in 1889 journeyed to New York City to study under the eminent
gynecological surgeon Horace Hanks, thence to Birmingham, England where he spent
nearly ﬁve months under the tutelage of Lawson Tait. Tait, who specialized in abdominal
and gynecological surgery, at this time held a record of 116 successive Operations without
a death. Kellogg would eventually improve on his master’s record with 165 cases at a
time when aseptic surgical technique was as yet still developing. During this visit abroad,
Kellogg also studied under Vaughan’s friend and colleague Joseph Lister.20

With Kellogg’s improved surgical techniques creating increased demand for his
services as a surgeon in addition to his duties as director of the sanitarium, he left the
Board of Health in 1892. When in 1910, his friend Chase Osborn became governor,
Kellogg was ready to rejoin the Board having ﬁnished with his acrimonious attachments
to the Adventist Church and its Medical Missionary Society. Kellogg was named to the

ﬁrst vacancy in 1911.

Dr. Kellogg began his six-year term with great enthusiasm conferring with the

 

‘° Schwarz. Pg. 224-226
2° Ibid. pg. 113-117

109

state Attorney General on legislation needed to increase the board's authority and
efﬁciency shortly after accepting the appointment. The press throughout Michigan
considered Kellogg to be "in strong" with Governor Osborn, and the doctor himself
believed that he had a "special commission" from the governor to invigorate the State
Board of Health. Dr. Beverly Harrison, the secretary of the State Board of registration in
Medicine noted that Kellogg was “probably the best-qualiﬁed medical man in the state”
for the appointment, in that he not only had “a national reputation as an expert in
preventive medicine, but an international.”21

Kellogg summarized the progress which had been made in his ﬁrst six months: the
board had prepared a traveling health exhibit to tour the state in a railroad car attached to
an exhibition train sent out by the state agricultural service; had approved plans to
promote healthful living in connection with the winter farmers' institutes sponsored by
the Michigan State Agricultural College; had authorized the issuance of weekly press
bulletins on matters vital to public health; had established a committee on health
education, with Kellogg as chairman, and was planning to hold sanitary conventions in
several cities; and had authorized an inspector to examine water, milk, and food supplies,
public schools, and "other conditions affecting health" throughout the state, with wide
publicity to be given to his ﬁndings. The doctor held that one of the most effective health
measures the board could make was to inculcate a greater health consciousness in the
people of the state. Within his ﬁrst year, he and the state board persuaded Governor
Osborn to proclaim an ofﬁcial Health Day. Kellogg viewed it as an opportunity to supply

teachers and clergymen with outlines for health talks. In later years, Dr. R. L. Dixon, the

 

2‘ Schwarz. Pg. 226

110

state board's secretary, characterized the atmosphere of those years as "evangelical."22

In the summer of 1912 the Board of Health established a committee that included
Drs. Kellogg and Vaughan to consider needed health legislation. The committee
recommended increased board control over contagious diseases, the right to supervise
sources of public water supply, authority to regulate sewage disposal throughout the state,
power to initiate proceedings for the removal of local health ofﬁcers, and authorization to
study and control all types of disease and to manufacture antitoxin and vaccine for the
people of the state.”

The arguments which the state board marshaled in favor of its proposals gained
their reward when the legislature in 1913 passed more public health legislation than it had
enacted during any previous session in the preceding quarter of a century. Although the
board did not get all the legislation that it desired, it did receive power to supervise and
control urban waterworks and sewage disposal systems. It also secured laws requiring
organizations supplying public drinking water to provide either individual drinking
utensils or sanitary fountains, laws penalizing the sale of adulterated sausage and meat
derived from sick or diseased animals, regulations providing for more sanitary conditions
in milk processing plants, legislation deﬁning adulterated ice cream and RA. 34:1913-
“An act to authorize the sterilization of mentally defective persons.”

With Kellogg and Vaughan on the state board, Michigan became the seventh state
in the US. to enact sterilization legislation. Though this legislation was relatively

ineffective as it covered only those patients in state institutions and thus was found

 

22 Ibid. pg. 227.; “Sterilization Records” Archives of the State of Michigan. Interestingly, R.L. Dixon
would become a leading advocate of compulsory sterilization and the instigator of the majority of
compulsory sterilization procedures performed at the Michigan Home and Training School in Lapeer.

lll

unconstitutional in 1918, it set a pattern for future legislation. During the next two
decades, improved statistical analyses and surveys led to growing concern throughout the
state and nation concerning the increase in the degenerate elements in society.

Richard Schwarz summarizes Kellogg’s response to the improved public
statistics available and American eugenicists’ beliefs that the " growing incidence of
feeblemindedness, insanity, crime, and pauperism" demonstrated racial deterioration in
America.

Naturally, Dr. Kellogg took advantage of their concern and
pointed to what he considered to be the chief causes: the
increased use of alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, improper
methods of dress, and unhealthful foods. The Darwinian
connotations of the eugenics movement, however, limited
the interest Kellogg dared show in it during his years as an
Adventist leader. Once freed from religious restraints, his
addresses and writings picked up a heavier coloring of the
conventional statistical examples of racial degeneracy.24

Larnarckian genetics was a double-edged sword in terms of the propagation of
inheritance. While positive modiﬁcations in an individual’s physical and mental
condition could be reproduced in their progeny, so too could deleterious alterations.
Restrictions on the reproduction of the recalcitrant showed the dark side of even a
positivistic eugenics of Lamarckian derivation.

In 1914, Kellogg established the Race Betterment Foundation. To the progressive
middle-class intellectuals who comprised the American eugenics movement the

foundation’s name epitomized their goals. Through the RBF and connections made

through his patients at the sanitarium, Kellogg arranged to get his ideas before many

 

According to Hilrner Gellein, the Director of Corrections, of the over 850 sterilizations performed in the
state under the 1923 statute (P.A. 285:1923), 95% were performed in the Lapeer facility.

’3 Schwarz. Pg. 228

2‘ Ibid. pg. 221

112

important molders of public opinion whom it would otherwise have been nearly
impossible for him to reach. The most successful of Foundation activities in this respect
were the three nationally publicized conferences, which it held in 1914, 1915, and 1928.25

Newell Dwight Hillis, pastor of Brooklyn's Plymouth Congregational Church,
which had been made famous by its former pastors Henry Ward Beecher and Lyman
Abbott, suggested to Kellogg the idea of holding a Race Betterment Conference. Hillis
shared Kellogg's interest in the challenges to social Christianity posed by the growing
problems of large urban areas. After talking with him, Kellogg enlisted the assistance of
several old friends: Yale economist Irving Fisher, journalist Jacob Riis, and agronomist
Sir Horace Plunkett, in planning the ﬁrst conference.”5

Over four hundred ofﬁcial delegates traveled to Battle Creek to take part in the
ﬁrst Race Betterment Conference in January 1914. Dominant personalities in the
eugenics movement, such as, Charles B. Davenport and J. McKeen Cattell, editor of
Popular Science Monthly, and others presented more than ﬁfty papers in the conferences
general sessions. Also in attendance were leading ﬁgures in social welfare circles, like
Judge Ben Lindsey and Jacob Riis, who stressed the need to improve environmental
factors. Through this venue Kellogg managed to establish a link between the Battle Creek
Sanitarium’s program of biologic living and those interested in improving America
through eugenics.27

Sufﬁcient public attention resulted from the ﬁrst Race Betterment Conference

to cause Dr. Kellogg and his associates to sponsor another such meeting the following

 

251bid. Pg. 222
2‘ Ibid. Pg. 222-223

113

year. They decided to hold it in connection with the great Panama-Paciﬁc Exposition
scheduled for San Francisco. Although the second conference had fewer delegates and
formal papers, several of the participants were men of national prominence, including
David Start Jordan, chancellor of Stanford University, botanist Luther Burbank, and Paul
Popenoe, editor of the American Genetics Society’s Journal of Heredity.

At the Second Race Betterment Conference Kellogg suggested the
establishment of a Eugenics Registry. He proposed that a campaign he initiated to get
persons to receive physical examinations which would determine their physical ﬁtness
and their hereditary traits and tendencies. Afterward the examiners would enroll the
names of those who met certain standards in a "human pedigree" book. Although Kellogg
denied that he was advocating that marriages be arranged solely on the basis of some
biological formula, he professed the hope that the Eugenics Registry would encourage
intelligent persons to consider the importance of hereditary traits in planning their
marriages.

Dr. Kellogg wanted to make the Race Betterment Conferences annual events,
but American involvement in World War I and his own health problems prevented
another conference until January, 1928. Although Kellogg's Foundation sponsored the
third conference and held it at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, Kellogg persuaded University
of Michigan president C. C. Little to plan and preside over the program. Dr. Little’s
organization of the conference demonstrated his academic orientation in the presentation

of papers by scholars from Harvard, Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, Tulane, and

 

27 Ibid. Pg. 223; Proceedings of First National Eugenics Conference. Pg. —67-72, v-x. Kellogg also had the
beneﬁt of Michigan’s other eminent eugenicist and physician, Victor Vaughan, whose position was
celebrated by his listing as second only to the ERO’s Davenport.

ll4

Johns Hopkins.28

The third Race Betterment Conference received wide publicity with more than
1,600 news stories related to it appearing in 574 different newspapers scattered
throughout forty-seven states. The RBF conference afforded an excellent forum for
Kellogg’s beliefs. He made the best possible use of it by extolling biologic living in an
address entitled "Habits in Relation to Health and Longevity." The success of the
conference caused him to plan to make them annual affairs once again. The onset of the
Great Depression and the resulting ﬁnancial difﬁculties of the Battle Creek Sanitarium
delayed arrangements for a fourth conference, which had advanced to the deﬁnite
planning stage when World War II intervened. Before the war ended, Dr. Kellogg's death
had deprived the Race Betterment Foundation of its major source of energy and initiative.
The Foundation limited its subsequent activities to the sponsorship of a variety of public
lectures on biologic living, publication of Good Health until 1955, and encouragement of
the Battle Creek Sanitarium and Miami-Battle Creek Sanitarium.29

During the ﬁrst two conferences Kellogg maintained his stance regarding the

maleability of the germ plasm, not until after the Kammerer’s suicide in 1926 did
Kellogg foreswear his Larnarckian beliefs, just in time for the last conference. Though he
and Vaughan differed on the nature of heredity, their perspectives converged with regard
to the fundamental problems of preventing the procreation of degenerate offspring.
Vaughan was enough a believer in the importance of environment to agree with Kellogg
on a host of issues, wherein, for example both saw the importance of improved sanitary

conditions. On the issue of sterilization it did not matter whether their perspectives on

 

28 Proceedings of the Third Race Bett_erment Conference. (Battle Creek: Race Betterment Foundation,
1928) Report of the Executive Secretary. Pg. 739-742; Schwarz. Pg. 223

115

Mendelian and Lamarckian patterns of inheritance diverged, they intersected with regards
to the necessary measures to be taken.30

Vaughan’s hereditarian beliefs were further substantiated by the writings of such
early apostles of social-Darwinism as Herbert Spencer. A brief exposition regarding the
philosophical, social and political contexts of these transformations in social-Darwinist
perspectives illuminates the historical intellectual background of both Vaughan and
Kellogg. Both had studied in Germany in the closing decades of the nineteenth century
and were aware of debates over the meaning of heredity in both the US. and Germany.
Both Kellogg and Vaughan remained avid readers of German medical literature and
continued contacts with their German medical peers. The German experience also reveals
remarkable parallels with the American, both in how divergent political groups sought
biological justiﬁcations for their different social theories, and how these diverse groups
could come together to support eugenic legislation.

For many rrriddle-class progressives the turn-of-the-century seemed to mark the
beginning of an era when the scientiﬁc rationale would rule as the supreme arbiter in
choosing among different social remedies and ultimately in decisions of social worth.
Herbert Spencer, probably the most inﬂuential social-Darwinist of his time, transformed
Darwin's concept of the evolution of species through competition for ﬁnite resources into
a dogma of social evolution. Originally, his idea of social progress reﬂected a monistic

belief in mankind's individual and social perfectibility.

 

’9 Schwarz. Pg. 223

30 Proceedings of the First national Race Betterment Conference. Pg. 90-96. Vaughan apparently changed
the nature of his presentation to the conference to be more in accord with Kellogg’s focus on environment
by discussing the dysgenic effects of venereal disease; Kellogg. John Harvey. Plain Facts for Old and

Young: Embracing the Natural Histog and Hygiene of Organic Life. (Burlington: l.F. Senger & Co.,
1891), http://etextlib.virginiaedu/modeng/modengO.browse.html, 1995 Pg. 146, Kellogg held that VD

116

Initially, this concept of the evolutionary process in the social progression to
perfectibility embodied the most harsh aspects of competition and survival of the ﬁttest.
By the tum-of-the century, Spencer’s views changed to include an appreciation for the
social impulse towards charity. Yet, he like many other nriddle-class social reformers of
this period would face a seemingly intractable problem posed by this charitable impulse.

Spencer’s Principles of Biology published in the 18608 had argued that the
universe of man and nature existed as a state of continual and endless ﬂux from which,
"Changes numerical, social, organic, must... work unceasingly toward a state of
harmony." This state of harmony though would include a great deal of necessary
suffering for some. In Social Statics he asserted, “the process must be undergone and the
sufferings must be endured,” he continued, “No reform that men ever did breach or ever
will breach can dirrrinish that one jot. Regarding “Sanitary Supervision,” Spencer
admonished against aiding nature’s “failures,” a group that included the ill and those
whose “stupidity, or vice, or idleness, entails loss of life.” Likewise, Spencer’s views
regarding the competition among the races of men were equally harsh. This competition
embodied in the “old predatory instinct” ha “subserved civilization by clearing the earth
of inferior races of men.”3 1

Yet by 1900, he would assert in a later edition of First Principles that this state of

continual and endless ﬂux would result in " the greatest perfection and most complete

happiness." Robert Bannister suggests in Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Angl_o_—

 

was, “a crime against the race. . .[and those knowingly passing it on were].. .are guilty of abuse of the
reproductive function in bringing sickly offspring into the world to suffer?

3’ Bannister, Robert. Social Darwinism: Science and ME in Anglo-American Social Thought.
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979) pg. 37-63

117

Ameer Social Though_t, that Spencer came to believe that natural selection would
produce both an industrial and a social ﬁtness, the latter including a charitable impulse.

Paradoxically, Spencer confessed his inability to resolve the problem with which
he had struggled for decades. Public and private charities were doing much to "save the
bad from the extreme results of their badness, ..... unmanageable multitudes of them." Yet,
if left to operate in all its “stemness the principal of survival of the ﬁttest... would quickly
clear away the degraded." Popular sentiment for the ameliorative effects of social welfare
programs seemed to make this course impracticable. This perspective reﬂected even
industrial society’s revulsion for, in Spencer’s words, “the forces [in industrial society]
which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of
incidental suffering...exterrninat[ing] such sections of mankind as stand in their way with
the same stemness that they exterminate the beasts of prey and herds of useless
animals.”32 These sentiments displayed the beneﬁcent aspect and social ﬁtness of a
“civilized” society in that, industrializing societies tended to take some account of the
“incidental suffering” and seek to prevent such exterminations. Nevertheless, for many
reformers in the industrialized societies of the West, ever increasing unmanageable
multitudes of them demanded some immediate action if only in order to prevent social
degeneration.

Such views were not limited to the United States. Throughout the last decades of
the nineteenth century, many industrializing nations, in Europe most particularly
Germany, demonstrated similar concern regarding the management of social resources.

As in the US, the idea of the eugenic administration of a nation’s human resources

 

32 Bannister. Robert. Social-Darwinsim: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought.
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989) Pg. 50-55

118

attracted a wide variety of supporters from radical socialists to capitalist conservatives.
Eugenics drew such a variety of support because it embodied a supposedly empirical
method of evaluating and implementing legislative policies designed to most effectively
manage social resources. Eugenics would often make for strange bedfellows amongst
those holding the most antithetical political positions.

In both countries, while people of varied political stripe would come to support
eugenic legislation, the medical profession and the biological sciences would supply the
greatest number of effective propagandists. The greatest ﬁnancial support for these
efforts would similarly come from the ﬁnancially “ﬁttest” classes. This support might
seem to show a simple correlation of the latter’s class interest in demonstrating how
scientiﬁc principles seemingly justiﬁed the social and political status quo and their
position within this hierarchy, which of course it did in their view. Likewise, socialist
support of eugenics was based on their view that social-Darwinism provided a scientiﬁc
justiﬁcation for their social and political positions. Social-Darwinism provided an
opportunity for the propagandists of evolutionary theory to promote a biological
paradigm they considered rational and socially applicable, in effect, eugenic management
of social resources.

One of the powers of industry in Germany, Friedrich Alfred Krupp decided to
fund an essay prize to answer the question, “What can we learn from the theory of
evolution about internal political development and state legislation?” Friedrich Alfred,
grandson of Friedrich, founder of the steel conglomerate, and son of Alfred the arms
magnate, possessed an avid interest in marine biology leading to a collateral interest in

evolution. His dislike of socialism, while obviously ﬁnancially and politically self-

119

serving, emanated from his social-Darwinist views and was epitomized in some other
marine interests. These interests dovetailed in a most interesting way to bring about the
1900 Krupp Prize.33

Friedrich Alfred, like most German industrialists, was no friend of socialism. This
was amply demonstrated when Alfred yon Tirpitz became Secretary of State of the
Imperial Naval Ofﬁce and advocated a policy of F lottenpolitik. Tirpitz “won the support
of those interests that had a stake in commercial and industrial expansion, starting with
the chambers of commerce of the coastal cities, then enlisting some of the larger banking
houses, and ﬁnally attracting the eager interest of heavy industry.” While the ﬁnancial
stake of these groups might seem obvious, Tirpitz’s propaganda for a larger ﬂeet was also
part of the Sammlungspolitik of Miquel and Bulow, which sought to attract the support of
all those who feared the threat of socialism and believed F lottenpolitik would help defeat
it. When the cod-liver oil manufacturer Stroschein wanted to found a Naval League to
mobilize the support of the lower middle classes in this nominally anti-socialist crusade
and was refused ﬁnancial support by the Berlin banks, Krupp supplied the necessary
funds.34

Likewise, Krupp’s decision to fund the essay contest revealed a similar linkage of
his anti-socialism and marine interests. With the collusion of Germany’s most eminent
marine biologist, Krupp sought to separate eugenics from its associations with socialism.
Ernst Haeckel, Germany’s most distinguished marine biologist and self-appointed apostle
of Darwin, sought as early as his 1877 debate with the eminent pathologist Rudolf

Virchow to publicly sever the link between Darwinism and Social Democracy that had

 

’3 Weiss, Sheila. Racial Hygeine and National Efﬁciency: The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.) pg. 67-69

120

been forged by several prominent German socialist in the 18608 and 18708. In this debate
Haeckel claimed that Darwinism “is anything rather than socialist! If this English

hypothesis is to be compared to any political tendency... that tendency can only be

9935

aristocratic, certainly not democratic and least of all socialist. In words reminiscent of

Spencer’s position a decade earlier regarding social competition, Haeckel went on even
more menacingly,
The theory of selection teaches that in human life, as in animal and
plant life everywhere, and at all times, only a small chosen minority
can exist and ﬂourish while the enormous majority strive and perish
miserably and more or less prematurely ...... The cruel and merciless
struggle for existence which rages throughout living nature and in the
course of nature must rage, this unceasing and inexorable competition
of all living creatures, is an incontestable fact, only the picked minority

of the qualiﬁed “ﬁttest” is in a position to resist it successfully, while the
great majority of the competitors must perish miserably.36

Sheila Faith Weiss, in Ra_cial Hygeine and National Efﬁciency, asserts that
“Haeckel’s uncompromising anti-socialist interpretation, while certainly reﬂecting his
own personal political position was also designed to promote the teaching of Darwin’s
theory in the public schools.” Haeckel’s interpretation by decoupling Darwinism and
socialism demonstrated that the theory presented no threat to the political status quo.
Thus, Krupp was undoubtedly delighted when the biologist Heinrich Ernst Ziegler
informed Krupp of “Haeckel’s willingness to preside over a written contest designed to

demonstrate, once and for all, that the new biology was anything but staatsfeindlich. ”37

 

3" Criag, Gordon. Germany: 1866-1945. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.) pg.307-309

35 Ibid. pg.67-68 Craig also details the antithetical socialist support for Social-Darwinism in the following:
“Social Democratic leaders such as Friedrich Alfred Lange, August Bebel and Karl Kautsky-to name only
the most important embraced Darwinism and viewed it both as a legitinrization of the inevitability and
desirability of socialism and as justiﬁcation for materialism and atheism.

3" Haeckel, Ernst. Freedom in Science aﬂeaching. (New York: D. Appleton, 1879) pg.90-93

3’ Weiss, Sheila w Hygiene and National Efﬁciency. Pg. 67-70

121

The Krupp Preisausschreiben is particularly important not only because the
wining essay was expected to comment on the evolutionary process and its place in the
rational management of social resources, but because the ﬁrst qualiﬁcation was to
address the hotly contested issue of Lamarckianism versus Weismannism.
Lamarckianism referred to the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, while
Weismanism was associated with Mendel’s theory of inheritance and the stability of the
germ plasm. The different social, political and medical perspectives derived from
evolutionary theories depended upon these two divergent theories of heredity.38

The Larnarckian theory of acquired characteristics allowed for social advances
through improvements in individuals’ behaviors and physical health. These
improvements would constitute acquired characteristics, which would be passed on to
their progeny. Thus, social welfare policies aimed at ameliorating the supposedly
dysgenic effects of socio-economic differences would lead to increased individual social
ﬁtness and thereby to an improved society.

In contrast, Weismannism, or the Mendelian theory of a stable germ plasm
precluded behavioral or physical improvements from being passed on to progeny. The
social implications of a strict interpretation of this theory could be construed as decidedly
against a platform of improvement through social welfare policies. By providing for an
enhanced survival rate of those individuals whose germ plasm was defective in terms of
their social ﬁtness, social welfare policies aimed at relieving deﬁciencies in the social
environment were downright dysgenic to the society as a whole. Furthermore, the
different socio-economic classes could be viewed as merely the natural outcome of

individuals’ immutable hereditary ﬁtness.

 

’8 Ibid. pg. 69

122

The question of what comprised social ﬁtness would also ﬁgure prominently in
the debate between Lamarkianism and Weismannism. For example, exactly which
behavioral characteristics were inheritable rather than learned products of the social
environment, or which physical characters reﬂected dysgenic environmental effects were
hotly debated. The strict dichotomy adopted by many between the perspectives on which
physical and behavioral characteristics were attributed to environment or heredity
probably derived in large measure from both the level of rancor in the scientiﬁc debate
and the social implications derived from the two perspectives.

This is not to say that there was no middle ground in the debate at this time. Both
Mendelian and Lamarckian eugenicists generally accepted nature and nurture as
important aspects in the development of hereditarily determined human potential. They
differed in the weight assigned to each regarding those hereditary characters. Proponents
of Mendelian genetics recognized the effects of environmental insult, particularly the
effects of nutritional deﬁciencies, physical trauma or infectious disease on physical and
mental development. Yet, the state of medical knowledge at this time could provide little
empirical data on the exact relationships between developmental syndromes and the
causative factors.

The dichotomy on causation led to interesting paradoxes regarding the
hereditability of characteristics related to individual social ﬁtness. For Mendelian
eugenicists, environmental insult would not necessarily reﬂect a decreased hereditary
social ﬁtness in the progeny as the germ plasm would not necessarily be affected.

Contrarily, for proponents of Larnarckian heredity, the unalterable effects of

123

environmental insult to the individual amounted to acquired characteristics passed on
through a mutable germ plasm to the next generation.

Yet, arguing from a perspective on the value of nurture on an individual’s
potential development, both Mendelian and Larnarckian eugenicists could advocate
restrictions on the propagation of such individuals. In effect, from the Mendelian
perspective the environmental impairment of an individual’s development, While not in
itself visited on the progeny through hereditary taint, would be visited through the
parental deﬁcit in the ability to nurture a hereditarily normal offspring. For Larnarckian
eugenicists the acquired hereditary taint compounded the nurturing deﬁciency

Kellogg and Vaughan epitomized this divide among Michigan’s medical
professionals. Vaughan was an adherent of Weismannism, or Mendelian genetics, while
Kellogg would remain a devotee of Lamarckianism for nearly three decades after the
rediscovery of Mendel’s work and would not clearly renounce Lamarckianism until
Kammerer’s suicide and Vaughan’s death. Yet for the reasons provided above, both men
would advocate sterilization of the socially unﬁt. The most persuasive argument for
Vaughan’s form of eugenics emerged from the Krupp essay competition.

The winning essay in the Krupp Preisausschreiben provides an example of what
would be become the dominant hereditary paradigm, Mendelian genetics, and the social
and political implications of this perspective. Perhaps more importantly, the winning
essay provides an insight into the ﬁrst coherent and holistic rationale for the eugenic
management of social resources, national efﬁciency.

Wilhelm Shallrnayer, a German physician with an enduring interest in eugenics,

won the 1903 Krupp Prize for his treatise on eugenics, Vererbung und Auslese im

124

Lebensltai‘ﬁder Volker (Heredity and Selection in the Life History of Nations). In it he

 

stated,
[as] a prerequisite for a higher development of social
organization, all efforts in the area of domestic as well as
foreign policy must be judged from the standpoint of
whether they are likely to strengthen or weaken the ability
of the population to survive and procreate... in order for the
state to hold its own or have supremacy over the other
peoples, domestic policy must not neglect the hereditary
composition of the population...a selection which is not
only the necessary condition for all progress but even for
the preservation of the status quo.39

Simply put, control of the reproductive capacities of the population constituted a
fundamental interest of the state and should be reﬂected in all legislation. Schallmayer’s
treatise would not result in the passage of such legislation for 30 years, but did present a
fundamental framework for considerations of what a state’s eugenics policies should
include.

This thesis promulgated the idea that government had the obligation to promote
national efﬁciency by regulating the procreation of its citizenry. Schallmayer's concepts
held that government policies Should foster the procreation and development of the
classes of people seen as necessary to the progress of society. Concomitantly, it called for

the restriction, through disincentives to procreation (though not necessarily sterilization),

of the supposedly inferior classes. Their contemporary basis for delineation of genetically

 

3” Weiss, Sheila. Racial Hygiene and National Efﬁciency. pg.83: Schallmayer had ﬁrst written a treatise on
eugenics in 1874. He and Alfred Ploetz, another physician would become the intellectual founders of
German eugenics. Ploetz had two other interesting connections, one American and another socialist. In
1892, while practicing medicine in the US, he ﬁrst ventured his sentiments on eugenics in a short article
for a socialist publication. Subsequent articles along these lines included Racial Fitness and Socialism
(1894) and The Relationship Between the Principles of Social Policy and Race Hygiene (1902). His most
important treatise was published in 1895, entitled The Fitness of Our Race and the Protection of the Weak:
A Discussion Concerning Race Hygiene and Its Relationship To Humanitarian Ideals, Especially to
Socialism. That Schallmayer and Ploetz’s differing political orientations could both coalesce in a shared

125

positive and negative characteristics, would today, generally be viewed as a class biased
interpretation.

The impulse of the statistical movement of the nineteenth century combined with
the institutional reform programs of late nineteenth century led to increased awareness of
the number of people qualiﬁed as deﬁcient in “social ﬁtness” throughout the
industrializing nations. The US. led the way in taking radical actions on a perceived
problem that seemed to be growing a rapid rate. But the peculiarities of the American
social, political and economic structure led to different methods from many other
European nations. While some nations like Germany moved to provide national medical
insurance programs (e.g. Hartmannbund), America’s approach was private charity
supplemented by state government programs (a product of the states rights philosophy).
Yet throughout the industrialized Western world, the numbers of the socially unﬁt
seemingly were ever on the increase and the costs associated with them likewise.

Many social reformers throughout the Western world had come to believe that
charitable social reforms meant to uplift the degraded classes of society instead worked
merely to preserve if not expand those in such degradation. As Spencer noted, " the mass
of effete humanity to be dealt with is so large as to make one despair: the problem seems
insoluble." "Certainly, if solvable, it is to be solved only through suffering.” Yet he
claimed that, " no serious evil would result from relaxing its operation [survival of the
ﬁttest] if the degraded were to leave no progeny."40

The esteemed Chicago surgeon, Dr. G. Frank Lydston, Professor of Genito-

Urinary Surgery at the State University of Illinois and Professor of Criminal

 

eugenic scheme founded on the principles of national efﬁciency and Mendelian heredity will be dealt with
further in later chapters. pg. 104-105

126

Anthropology at the Chicago-Kent College of Law, took up this gauntlet with the 1904
publication of The Diseases of Society: The Viceﬁand Crime Problem. Lydston is
credited as the ﬁrst American to publish a book calling for “the application of
sterilization in the prevention of social disease.” He asserted that,

individuals whose physical or moral status is such as to
insure the unﬁtness of their prospective progeny should be
given the alternative of submitting to sterilization as the
only condition upon which matrimony is legally
permissible. Persons with a history of insanity, epileptics,
dipsomaniacs, incurable syphilitics, certain persons who
suffer from deformity or chronic disease, criminals, and
persons with criminal records should not be permitted to
marry upon any other conditions. Incurable criminals,
epileptics, and the insane should invariably be submitted to
the operation, irrespective of matrimony. Even the rare
cases of reformed habitual criminals should be subjected to
the operation, for the cure of their own criminal tendencies
will not interfere with the transmission of those tendencies
to their progeny."1

As state governments around the US. moved to replace private charitable
institutions with those of the state, reformers advocating these measures were shocked by
the unforeseen magnitude of the problem. As the US. Census Bureau began publishing
the compiled statistics on the numbers of inmates in the nation’s insane asylums, they

seemed to demonstrate horriﬁc increases in the per capita rates of insanity. The 1913

edition of the S_tatistical Abstract of the United States showed an increase from 118.2 per

 

‘0 Bannister, Robert Social Darwinismpgss-ss

4’ Lydston, G. Frank. Diseases of Socieay and Degeneracy (Philadelphia: J .B. LippincottCompany, 1904)
p564: It is necessary here to point out a problem with Pernick’s The Eek Stork which cites Reilly’s m
Surgical Solution as a source for the erroneous claim the Lydston “advocated the use of a hermetically
sealed apartment with a secret pipe for the admission of deadly gas “to kill promptly the convicted
murderer and the driveling imbecile.””(Reilly p38). Not only does Reilly incorrectly cite the publication
date as December 1906 when it is 1904, but Lydston calls for the cessation of capital punishment as
arbitrary, barbaric and ineffective. He instead advocates the use of an indeterminate sentence and
reformation. This is a horriﬁc defamation of a man who seems to me to be a sincere reformer. There is

 

127

100,000 in 1890 to 186.2 per 100,000 in 1903. By 1910 the per capita numbers had
climbed to 204.2 per 100,000. This amounted to a 73% increase over 20 years. In
addition, the problem seemed to be conspicuously prevalent among the foreign born.
While the foreign born constituted 14.7% of the population, they represented 28.8% of
the institutionalized insane.42

The distribution of the poor as enumerated in the public almshouses also fell
predominately among the foreign born. Of the 82,198 people in the 1910 almshouse
population 33,125 or 40.3% were foreign born. While this number only amounted to .2%
of the foreign-born population, it was twice the rate for the native-born white and black
populations (.06%).43

These ﬁgures convinced the mostly native-born white reformers that an increasing
rate of degeneracy among the US. population was a reality. That this was largely a
problem of undesirable immigrants also seemed to be born out by the census data.
Particular elements of the foreign-born population were also singled out as responsible.
That the foreign-born of Irish derivation constituted 42.6% of those foreign-born in
almshouses also contributed to a perception that some immigrant populations constituted
a speciﬁc detriment to society. Though these numbers reﬂected underlying social
inadequacies in assirnilating the foreign-hem and increasing government surveillance of
heretofore unaddressed social'problems, this was often lost sight of in the reformers’

exasperation with seemingly increasing numbers of the degenerate members of society.

 

nothing in the quotation above (Lydston Pg.564), or the rest of the cited page (per Reilly) which would
include consumptives in the list of those for whom sterilization is prescribed.

"2 1913 Statistical Abstract of the United Stages: #36: Native-bom vs. Foreign-bom, Pg. 45, #31; Population
by Race and Sex, pg. 34, #24; Insane by Nativity and Race, Pg. 59, #39.

"3 Ibid. pg. 45, #31; Almshouse Population by Race and Nativity Pg. 56, #36.

128

Reforrners of various stripes thus began to propose more radical solutions to the
perceived problem of societal degeneracy. As the ratios of the degenerate seemed to be
increasing among particular divisions of society, solutions would have to be devised that
would encompass particular segments, if not all of those regarded as the nation’s
degenerates.

As the perceived magnitude of the problem increased so did the number and
nature of radical proposals to deal with the problem. Afﬂicted individuals became
increasingly marginalized in society as particular syndromes were construed as especially
dangerous or degraded in aspect. The overtly degenerate, those, whose deﬁcits were most
obvious physically, generally had the worst of the changing public attitudes and policies.
The physically deformed, epileptic, and “mongoloid” fell into the latter category, while
the more insidiously threatening, those with communicable diseases (or whose etiology
was as yet not fully elaborated), in effect, the syphlitic and tubercular were also viewed
as in need of sequestration, if not more ominous treatment. At bottom there seemed to be
a progressive alienation of these others from society. With an increased alienation
followed more radical proposed solutions as these others were perceived not to be a
portion of the body politic.

States throughout the nation rushed to pass eugenic legislation to meet the
perceived problem. While only six states preceded Michigan in enacting negative eugenic
laws, in effect, compulsory sterilization statutes, In the ﬁfteen years following
Michigan’s ﬁrst such law over nineteen states would follow suit. These laws were neither
enacted or implemented without challenges. The next chapter deals with the vagaries in

the history of this legislation.

129

Chapter Five: It’s the Law

To understand the often-sporadic nature of the enactment of sterilization
legislation it is instructive to understand the evolution of the legal arguments for and
against such statutes. AS legal arguments changed through adjudication so did the laws
and the methods of utilizing them. An understanding of how and why these changes
occurred illustrates Why there was so much variance among jurisdictions within the US.
over time, and how inﬂuential these legal disputes were in the formulation of new laws.

In 1897 Michigan became the ﬁrst state to promulgate a sterilization statute,
though it was never passed in the legislature. Another sixteen years would pass before
such legislation would become law in the state. But lack of enabling legislation would not
prevent some physicians from performing such operations.

The April 22, 1899 issue of the Journal of the American Medical AssociaLon
contained the ﬁrst article supporting sterilization of the criminal classes, Dr. A. J.
Ochsner’s Surgical Treatment of Habitual Criminals. Dr. Ochsner suggested that if it
were possible to “eliminate all habitual criminals from the possibility of having children,
there would soon be a very marked decrease in this class.” Furthermore, he asserted that
vasectomy presented a socially acceptable method of doing away with hereditary
criminals which “could reasonably be suggested for chronic inebriates, imbeciles,

perverts and paupers.”l

 

’ Reilly, Philip. The Mal Solum. (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1991) Pg. 30-31.
Dr. Ochsner, chief surgeon of St. Mary’s Hospital in Chicago, revealed that in 1897 he had performed the
ﬁrst successful vasectomy upon a patient complaining of prostatitis. The patient in a follow up twenty-two
months later noted improved “sexual power” which was “as good as any time during his life.” Dr.
Ochsner’s report noted general and speciﬁc improvements in the two patients thus operated upon, and
extended these claims of beneﬁt to the criminals and other socially undesirable classes.

130

Dr. Harry Sharp, chief surgeon of Indiana’s J effersonville Reformatory, reported
in the March 1902 edition of the New York Medical Journal, that he had performed
vasectomies on 42 inmates between the ages of 17 and 25 since 1899. In his article, “The
Severing of the Vasa Deferentia and Its Relation to the Neuropsychopathic Constitution,”
Sharp showed his greatest concern for the increasing numbers of socially defective
classes. Surveying the 1890 US. Census data, the doctor reported that from 1850 to 1890
the proportion of the criminal population had increased by more than three and a half
times, and that,

This is of the criminal alone. If all dependents were

considered, such as inhabit public and private insane

hospitals, almshouses and institutes for the feeble-minded

we should ﬁnd the proportion to be in the neighborhood of

one to three hundred.2
Sharp insisted that the post-operative inmates “feel that they are stronger, Sleep better,
their memory improves, the will becomes stronger, and they do better in school.” Dr.
Sharp’s claims for the beneﬁcial effects of vasectomy would be elaborated in future
articles, which would also include an expanding number of surgical cases to validate his
claims. The 1902 article by documenting a relatively large and successful post-operative
patient base provided the ﬁrst source of ammunition for eugenicists’ demands for
sterilization legislation.

In 1909, Dr. Sharp reported in JAMA, that between 1899 and 1909, he had
performed 456 sterilizations on inmates of Indiana's Jeffersonville Reformatory, with no
adverse effects, and in most cases highly favorable results. Dr. Sharp’s operations were

performed exclusively on young men. The “therapeutic” reasons given for these

operations most generally related to remedying a “morbid fascination with masturbation.”

131

There were no court or legislative sanctions for these operations. They were performed
on the basis of the professional opinion of the institution’s physician, Dr. Sharp. As will
be noted in the most famous case, Buck vs. Bell, physicians operating on their own
prerogatives to originate and carry out such policies were not too unusual.3

In 1905, Pennsylvania’s legislature passed the ﬁrst sterilization bill entitled “An
act for the prevention of idiocy.” The act called for every state institution entrusted in
with the care of “idiots and imbecile children” to appoint at least on Skilled surgeon who
with the chief physician would examine the mental and physical condition of the inmates,
and Whose ﬁnding would be passed on to a Committee of Experts and the Board of
Trustees. The latter two would then authorize the physician “to perform such operation
for the prevention of procreation as shall be decided is safest and most effective” upon
those inmates whose “procreation is inadvisable, and there is no probability of
improvement of the mental condition.”4

Governor Samuel Pennypacker vetoed the legislation within three months. Noting

that the legislation failed to specify the particular surgical procedure, the governor

sarcastically continued, “It is obvious that the safest and most effective method of

 

2 Ibid. Pg. 31-32.

3 Laughlin, Harry. Eugenical Sterilization in the United States. (Chicago: Psychopathic Laboratory of the
Municipal Court of Chicago, 1922). Pg. 119. 145-146, 156, 161, 196. Dr. Sharp began sterilizing inmates at
the Indiana reformatory in October 1899. Between this time and passage of the 1907 Indiana statute
authorizing such operations, Dr. Sharp performed 176 such operations “upon men who desired the
operation upon being discharged from the facility [Laughlin’s commentary Pg. 145-146]? Subsequent to
passage of the enabling legislation, Dr. Sharp performed at least anOther 118 operations before the
inauguran'on of Governor Thomas Marshall in 1909, who put a stop to the procedures. Dr. Sharp was
quoted in several journals (e.g. JAMA (1909), New York Medico-Legal Journal (1909). Pearson’s
Magazine (1909)) as having performed 456 such operations through 1909, though reasons for the
discrepancy in the total number of operations performed (456) and those noted as performed in the
reformatory (394) are unexplained in the available literature. While Dr. Sharp insisted at the time that the
operation led to improved behavior among the inmates, Laughlin's 1922 commentary regarding inmates’
requests suggests later efforts to validate Sharp’s legally questionable operations. That such operations
were

4 Laughlin. Pg. 35

132

preventing procreation would be to cut the heads off the inmates, and such authority is
given by the bill to this staff of scientiﬁc experts.” The governor speculated that
“scientists, like all other men whose experiences have been limited to one pursuit. . .and
have developed in a particular direction, sometimes need to be restrained.” Pennypacker
asserted that the bill “violates principles of ethics” regarding the trust of parents and
guardians in the purpose of the institutions, and experimenting upon the children without
consent and not for their beneﬁt but for that of society. The governor surmised further
that for any such law to be effective, it would have to apply to “the world at large,” and
that “to permit such an operation would be to inﬂict cruelty upon a helpless class in the
community which the state has undertaken to protect.” The govemor’s admonitions Show
a prescience for the future legal challenges such legislation would encounter.5

The three major legal objections to compulsory sterilization laws throughout the
ﬁrst quarter century asserted such laws constituted one or all of the following: class
discrimination in violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause (e. g. limiting
the operation of the law to those people in institutions), cruel and unusual punishment in
violation of the 8th Amendment (i.e. as punishment), failure to provide due process and a
violation of the police power of the state in violation of the 5‘" and 6lh Amendments to the
US. Constitution (i.e. not providing suitable opportunity for inmates and/or their legal
guardians to challenge the decisions of the states’ medical or legal administrators.

Between 1911 and 1919, members of the Pennsylvania legislature promulgated at
least eight other pieces of sterilization legislation before ﬁnally passing a much more
comprehensive bill in 1921 . This law called for the sterilization of inmates in institutions

for the “idiotic, imbecilic, epileptic, feebleminded and insane.” Governor William

 

5 Laughlin. Pg. 35-36

133

Sproul, vetoed the bill as a violation of the equal protection clause in that the operation of
the law pertained only to those in institutions. Extending the logic of his decision, he
noted “if the object sought requires the sterilization of the class, then it requires the
sterilization of all of that class. . ...in fact, there is more danger to be apprehended from
persons. . .who are at large than those conﬁned to institutions,. . .who are presumed to be
conﬁned in such manner that they have no opportunity for procreation?"

Though Michigan’s legislature failed to enact the nation’s ﬁrst sterilization
statute, its members could claim to have also promulgated another ﬁrst in eugenic
legislation. In 1903, Lincoln Rodgers, state representative from Muskegon, attempted to
attach a rider to a funding bill for the state home for the feebleminded, which would lead
to the electrocution of seriously deformed infants. The Detroit News suggested Rodgers
probably received the idea from “scientists,” noting “the same proposition had been heard
from in scientiﬁc quarters.”7

Debates over euthanasia bills introduced in Iowa and Ohio in 1906, included well-
known forensic psychiatrist Dr. Walter Kempster’s advocacy for the inclusion of
“lunatics and idiots” in any euthanasia law. Similarly, Dr. R.H. Gregory asserted that
“hideously deformed or idiotic children should be put out of existence by the

administration of an anaesthetic.” These proposals were typical of support for such

legislation in the Midwest.8

 

6 Laughlin. Pg. 36-39. Though Pennsylvania’s legislature was the ﬁrst to pass a eugenic sterilization statute
and many attempts were subsequently made to enact such laws in the Commonwealth, the state would
never have such legislation.

7 Pemick, Martin. The Black Stork. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) pg. 24

8 Ibid. pg. 24; New York Times January 26, 1906; Van der Sluis, Euthanasia, pg. 135. Pernick refers to
similar calls for eugenic euthanasia by G. Frank Lydston in the latter’s Diseases of Society. Pemick cites
Reilly’s Surgical Solution, who cites Lydston’s 1906 work above. Reilly asserts that Lydston “advocated
using a hermetically sealed apartment with a secret pipe for the admission of a deadly gas “to kill the
convicted murderer and the driveling imbecile.’”’(Reilly. Pg.38). I can ﬁnd no evidence for Reilly’s

134

In 1907, Indiana became the ﬁrst state to enact a compulsory Sterilization statute,
due in large part to the efforts of Dr. Sharp and his fellow practitioners. Indiana’s statute
called for the sterilization of ““inmates of all state institutions charged with the care of
“conﬁrmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles, and rapists” deemed by a commission of three
surgeons to be unimprovable, physically and mentally and unﬁt for procreation.” Over
the next two years, Sharp continued to perform such operations, until the newly elected
governor Thomas Marshall curtailed funding and forbade further procedures.9

Washington became the second state to enact such legislation in J unel909 as part
of its criminal code. This statute allowed for the sentencing court “in addition to such
other punishment or conﬁnement as may be imposed, direct an operation to be imposed,”
(i.e. sterilization). “Whenever any person shall be adjudged guilty of carnal abuse of a

female person under the age of ten years, or of rape, or shall be adjudged to be an

 

assertion in Lydston’s 1904 work Diseases of Society, also titled Diseases of Society and Mnerﬂ. In
fact, Lydston’s discussion of capital punishment notes that it fails as a deterrent, has often led to the
execution of the innocent through errors or perﬁdy, displays inequality in its application, may lead to
execution of the insane (whom Lydston holds as incompetent), and constitutes a “barbarous instrument of
social revenge.” (pg. 599-604) Dr. Lydston further argued that capital punishment’s most offensive aspect
was that it precluded rectiﬁcation of court’s mistakes and the results of perjured testimony against the
innocent. He argued adamantly for indeterminate sentencing as the only just and reasonable alternative.
This author has been unable to ﬁnd a 1906 edition of Dr. Lydston’s book, but ﬁnds it highly unlikely that
Lydston would have reversed such strong opinions in two years time.

9 Laughlin. Pg. 145-146; Haller. Pg. 136. Subsequently, the chief physician of the Indiana Reformatory
initiated proceedings for the sterilization of Warren Wallace Smith, a teenager arrested for incest with his
12 year-old half sister. This test case resulted in a permanent injunction in 1919 as the law was found to
inadequately provide for due process. The decision was upheld in 1921 by the Indiana Supreme Court.
Under subsequent legislation, Indiana would eventually sterilize over 2,400 of its citizens. Sterilizations
Performed Under US. State Sterilization Statutes. (Princeton: Association for Voluntary Sterilization,
1961) formerly Birthright Inc. Supp. 1 Box 73, Sterilization Statistics. Social Welfare History Archives,
University of Minnesota. The SWHA of U. of Minn. contains the most comprehensive collection of
sterilization statistics compiled by various interested groups. Gosney and Popenoe’s Human Betterment
Foundation, established in 1928, began collecting data through direct contacts with relevant state agencies.
With Gosney’s death in 1942, the HBF compilations stopped, but were subsequently brought up to date by
the New Jersey Sterilization League, which later became Birthright, Inc. and ﬁnally the Association for
Voluntary Sterilization. The latter names indicating the change from advocacy of compulsory sterilization
legislation to defending women’s rights to surgical sterilization and other forms of birth and population
control. These records henceforth referred to as Sterilization Records: SWHA.

135

habitual criminal."10 The law was strictly punitive in nature. Though it appears to have
resulted in only one sterilization, the law was instrumental in making compulsory
sterilization legal in the sense of not constituting “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Peter Feilen, a disabled locomotive engineer, was sentenced to life imprisonment
and sterilization under the statute in 1911 for “having carnally known and abused ...a
female child of the age of 8 years.” Subsequent to his injury and up until that time, Feilen
acted as constable in his small town of Kirkland, a few miles from Seattle. Though, the
state Supreme Court heard his appeal in 1912 and ruled against Feilen, he was never
sterilized. In 1919, the State Superintendent of the State Penitentiary at Walla Walla,
Henry Drum, stated,

In view of the fact that there was grave doubt as to Feilen’s

guilt, he having a great number of the best people in that

vicinity behind him, protesting his innocence, he was

pardoned on December 27'", 1916 ...... I am convinced that

he never was guilty as charged.
Noteworthy also was the fact that the Washington Supreme Court’s decision held only
that the punishment was not cruel, Washington’s state constitution saying nothing about
unusual punishment. Nevertheless, the case, State vs. F eilen (Washington) 126 Pac.
Rep. 75, would be cited as evidence that compulsory sterilization did not constitute cruel
and unusual punishment in numerous courts throughout the nation as afﬁrmed by the
state Supreme Court of Washington in 1912.11

Hardly more than two weeks after, Washington passed their criminal statute,

California enacted a sterilization statute encompassing both criminals and the

 

1° Laughlin. Pg. 15.
“ Laughlin. Pg. 142, 149-162, 170-173, 292; At least two other persons were sentenced under the law
though who actually was sterilized under the aegis of this statute remains unclear; Pg. 15. Washington

136

feebleminded in state institutions. Santa Rosa state senator, W. F. Price’s bill won near
unanimous approval with only one dissenting vote in the state Senate and none in the
House. Less than 300 sterilizations were performed under the aegis of this Statute, but the
1913 repeal and replacement of the 1909 statute with a more comprehensive law allowed
California to begin sterilizing its citizens at an unprecedented rate. Passage of the 1913
statute ran into considerably more opposition than the 1909 bill with four noes cast
against 21 ayes in the Senate and twenty-four noes against forty ayes in the Assembly.
While one might naturally assume that the votes cast against the legislation reﬂected
opposition to sterilization, this was apparently not the case. In 1917 with only seven noes
cast in the Assembly, the 1913 statute was twice amended making it more comprehensive
than before.12 Through the mid-19308, California alone accounted for half or more of all
the compulsory sterilizations performed in the United States. Not until 1957 would
California account for less than a third of all such operations in this country.13
Connecticut passed similar legislation in 1909 with the overwhelming approval of its
assemblymen, 130 ayes against 28 noes. This state’s statute also applied to the
feebleminded, insane and criminal classes though Connecticut remained much less active
in applying the law, sterilizing about two inmates a year in its ﬁrst decade. New Jersey
followed suit in April 1911, when Governor Woodrow Wilson signed into law Chapter
190, an act to “authorize and provide for the sterilization of the feebleminded (including

idiots, imbeciles and morons), epileptics, rapists, certain criminals and other defectives.”

 

would enact an eugenic sterilization law in 1921, which applied to inmates in all state institutions for the
“feebleminded, insane, epileptic, habitual criminals, moral degenerates and sexual perverts.”

’2 Laughlin. Pg. 17-19. The ﬁrst amendment replaced “hereditary insanity or incurable chronic mania or
dementia” with “mental disease, which may have been inherited and is likely to be transmitted to
descendants, the various grades of feeblerrrindedness, those suffering from perversion or marked departures
from normal mentality or from disease of syphilitic nature.”

‘3 Sterilization Statistics. SWHA.

137

By the time Wilson became the nation’s president in 1912, his eugenic legacy to
the state had resulted in no operations and never would. Unlike many laws of the period,
New Jersey’s statue provided for notiﬁcation of next of kin, the provision of counsel, and
court appeal of the Board of Examiners’ decisions. Within two month of the bill’s
passage, the Board of Examiners selected Alice Smith, a feeblerrrinded, epileptic, twenty-
six year-old inmate of the New Jersey Village for Epileptics as their test case.

For eugenicists, Alice’s background presented an ideal eugenic history for a test
case. At the age of seventeen, Alice became pregnant by a local black man, showing she
“possessed none of the normal aversions of a white girl to a colored man, who was
perhaps nice to her.”14 Of Alice’s surviving ﬁve Siblings, four resided in state institutions
for the epileptic and feebleminded. Both parents were considered feeblenrinded and/or
epileptic, as were several of their siblings. Modeled on the research style developed from
studies at New Jersey’s Vineland Training Home, caseworkers compiled an eugenic
history of the family reminiscent of the infamous J ukes study. Going back three
generations, they documented feeblemindedness, epilepsy, illegitimacy, sexual
immorality, drunkenness, consumption, criminality, dropsy and virtually any other
negative “unit character” imaginable.15 Also typical of the Vineland method was the full
patient history, including, by contemporary standards a sophisticated battery of mental
tests. On eugenic grounds, Alice’s case was nearly ideal. Supposedly, the law would be

tested on its merit alone.

 

'4 Laughlin. Pg. 296. The term “normal aversion” is especially important, in that, Alice grew up in a black
neighborhood, and thus normal aversion implies an inborn trait. The peculiar racism inherent in eugenic
thought at this time especially directed against “race crossings” reﬂects an old humoral precept dressed up
in new Mendelian terms. In effect, the deleterious effects of humorally disparate, constitutional crosses was
equated with the dominance of “bad unit characters” in such crosses. Dr. V.C. Vaughan’s comments on
race mixing in Eaggnics: Twelve University Lectures are typical of the genre. Cultural inﬂuence in such
aversion was not denied, but considered secondary to “normal” inborn reﬂexes in pure races.

138

The New Jersey Supreme Court heard the case with the State’s Attorney General
representing the defendants, the Board of Examiners. Citing the Iowa, Indiana, California
and Connecticut statutes, the defense held that the legislature formulated the law within
the legitimate police powers of the state, further citing F eilen v. Washington 126 Pac.
Rep. 75, that the operation prescribed did not constitute cruel or unusual punishment.
Eventually, both defense and prosecutrix accepted due process constraints embodied in
the application of the law. The Board of Examiners held that the only question for the
court arose from whether the state had the right to apply such surgical techniques to its
citizens (i.e. were the prescribed surgeries in the statute within the police powers of the
state?). The prosecutrix’ case maintained that the statute constituted a violation of the
equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, was cruel and unusual, and exceeded the
police powers of the state. The court in handing down its ruling, maintained that the law
arbitrarily created two classes, in effect, those within and those without state institutions,
and thus did not afford equal protection entitled to every citizen in the US. Constitution.
The court did uphold the police powers of the state and let stand the assumption that
sterilization did not constitute cruel and unusual punishment found in F eilen v.
Washington. In actuality, Washington’s constitution barred only cruel punishment,
having nothing to say regarding the unusual. Thus the New Jersey decision amounted to
an extension of F eilen v. Washington applicable in‘this broader context to a greater

number of state constitutions.16

 

‘5 Ibid. Pg. 297-305.

'6 Laughlin. Pg. 6, 163-177. The New Jersey Supreme Court narrowed the decision further by noting that
the statute contained an exclusion clause, barring the invalidation of the entirety of the law if some portion
was found to be unconstitutional. Thus the court noted that its ruling applied only to the section of the law
applying to epileptics, not to other classes named within the statute.

139

Though the law failed to meet the constitutional test of the equal protection clause
and thus was declared unconstitutional in November 1913, it set several precedents of
importance to future cases. The court upheld the police power of the state to perform such
operations, extended the precedent of F eilen v. Washington, established what constituted
due process procedures and nulliﬁed only those sections of the law applying to
epileptics.17 The importance of the statute and the legal challenges to it was not only that
they represented the ﬁrst test case of a purely eugenic statute, but that they showed what
was necessary to formulate a legally functioning sterilization statute.

In terms of breadth, Iowa’s 1911 law went further than any thus far, by simply
labeling Section 1 of the statute, “Unsexing of Criminals, Idiots, etc.” In actuality, the
law only added “drug ﬁends” to the lists of the socially undesirable that other states had
previously promulgated. The vague nature of the statute led to its repeal and replacement
in 1913 and again in 1915. Iowa began slowly, sterilizing only 49 inmates in the laws’
ﬁrst decade of operation, with nearly three-quarters of the operations being performed on
men in two state hospitals. Yet by the mid-19308, Iowa like Michigan would have the
dubious distinction of having sterilized more than three times as many women as men
(381 men, 1315 women).18

Nevada followed Washington’s lead to become the sixth state to enact such
legislation by making sterilization part of the criminal code under a Crimes and

Punishment Code in 1912. Though the legislation passed with better than two-thirds

 

’7 Laughlin. Pg. 23-25, 81; Despite continuing efforts by groups such as the New Jersey Sterilization
League, the Garden State never subsequently amended the functional parts of the 1911 statute to bring them
in line with contemporary court decisions or enacted new sterilization legislation. Sterilization Statistics.
SWHA

’8 Laughlin. Pg. 21-23, 64; Sterilization Statistics. SWHA, 1937.

140

majorities in both the House and Senate, no such operations were ever performed. In a
1918 test case, the statute was declared unconstitutional in a federal court.19

New York State also passed by substantial majorities in both state houses
(House78-9, Senate 48-0) a sterilization statute in 1912. Justice Rudd of the Supreme
Court of Albany County held the law to be unconstitutional in an opinion handed down
March 5, 1914. The following spring, as a result of an informal agreement between the
Board of Examiners of Feebleminded, Epileptics and Others Defectives and the Rome
Custodial Asylum to provide a test case, Frank Osborn, a 22- year-old, feebleminded
inmate of the institution was selected as a subject. Over the three years this case took to
move through the courts, the members of the Board of Examiners themselves became
defendants in the proceedings, were defended by the state’s Attorney General and
eventually “perpetually enjoined and restrained from performing or permitting to be-
formed the aforesaid threatened operation.” Justice Rudd reiterated his opinion of the law
in his 1915 decision holding that Osborn had “no adequate remedy at law” for the
aforesaid threatened injuries and damage,” in effect, the law provided insufﬁcient “due
process,” and denied equal protection under the law to those not institutionalized, a
violation of the 14th Amendment. The appellate division of the Albany Supreme Court
unanimously upheld Rudd’s decision in 1918, which then led to the defendants and the
Attorney General’s appeal to the State Court of Appeals in March 1919. On Maleth,
1920, New York’s House and Senate unanimously voted to repeal the bill. Though, the

legislature made the legal contest moot through repeal, the Osborn case ﬁgured

 

’9 Laughlin. Pg. 21-21, 79; No compulsory sterilizau'ons were reported in Nevada through 1963.
S_terilization Statistics. SWHA. 1963

141

prominently in future deliberations on the formulation of eugenic legislation that would
meet judicial muster.2o

Laughlin showed a thoroughgoing disgust for the course of the New York
legislation and the related test case. As Laughlin noted, though the case did uphold the
precedents set in the New Jersey decision in Smith v. Board of Examiners,

The statute was copied almost bodily from the New Jersey
law, and no effort was made to improve or adapt it. In
short, the history of this law in New York State is a record
of politics, incompetency and discredit. It has set back
eugenical progress among the state's institutions more than
ten years.2lThe test case was selected well after the legal
challenges to the New Jersey statute had become clear
(1915). Without amending the law, prior to selecting a test
case, the New York authorities virtually guaranteed the
statutes failure in court.22

In Laughlin’s opinion, the selection of the test case, Frank Osborn, showed little
of the care evident in the detailed eugenic patient history provided in Smith v. Board of
Examiners. Laughlin further condemned the New York ﬁasco as having been brought
about not by “persons interested in eugenics, but for the primary purpose of creating a

9,9923

commission for “deserving friends. At best, the case reinforced those portions of the

 

2° Laughlin. Pg. 10, 81-88, 216-241 , 291, 305; Under the provisions of the act, only one vasectomy was
performed at the State prison in Auburn. According to Laughlin, forty-one salpingectomies and
ovariotornies were performed on women in two state hospitals, giving New York the most lopsided gender
ratio in the nation. The latter operations were performed in the state hospitals for the insane at Collins and
Buffalo under their own responsibility. These institutions failed to use the law while it was in force.

2‘ Laughlin. Pg. 82

22 Ibid. Pg. 305-318. Laughlin stated “ It appears that there was no detailed or extensive family history
study made in this case as was secured in the case of Alice Smith in New Jersey.” Laughlin went through
the court records, and compiled an extensive history for his book, though as he notes these facts came to
light in court largely through the questioning of Osborn by the court not through evidence supplied by the
responsible authorities.

23 Ibid. Pg. 82. Laughlin noted that over $29,000 had been appropriated for the execution of the statute,
most of which had been “spent largely for fees and traveling expenses.” The Board of Examiners failed to
issue any reports, other than an expense statement, “nor, from the detailed reports of the institutions did
[they] ever attempt any serious study,” succeeding only in bringing a ﬂawed case and law before the courts.
Considering the large sum of money spent, Laughlin’s opinion regarding the pork barrel nature of the
statute would seem justiﬁed.

142

Smith v. Board of Examiners decision, which eugenicists considered valuable legal
arguments for such legislation (i.e. not cruel and unusual, and with in the state’s police
power) and clariﬁed the legal necessities (i.e. constraints relative to due process and
arbitrary class distinctions), and as such would be cited in defending future legislation.

In 1913, while Vaughan served as president of the State Board of Public Health,
Michigan established a commission to “investigate the extent of feeblerrrindedness,
epilepsy, insanity and other conditions of mental defectiveness prevalent in the State of
Michigan and to make a study of the causes productive of these conditions.”24 The
legislature also enacted a statute for the sterilization of “mentally defective persons
maintained wholly or in part by public expenses in public institutions.”25

Though the records available cannot establish a direct connection between
Vaughan, Kellogg and the formulation of these laws, it seems evident that they with the
assistance of Dr. R.L. Dixon, secretary of the state board and director of the Michigan
Home and Training School at Lapeer, worked for the passage of these Michigan statutes.
All three men were prominent eugenicists, who served on the Central Committee of the
ﬁrst RBF conference, publicly supported sterilization legislation and served on the State
Board of Public Health at the time of the promulgation and passage of the statute.

In January 1913, Allegan representative, Arthur Odell introduced a bill to

authorize sterilizations of defective persons maintained at state expense in state

 

2” Public Act 150: Public A_cts of Michigan: 1913. Pg. 262-263

25 Public Act 34: Public Acts of Michigan. 1913 Pg. 52-54 Vaughan’s involvement in the promulgation of
these statutes can only be assumed on the basis of his prominent position in relevant state agencies and his
public pronouncements on the value of such laws. Most legislative records were lost in a ﬁre at the Lewis
Cass building in 1951. Seeking to avoid the Korean War draft by virtue of having committed a felony, a
state employee set ﬁre to the building. Ironically, as the father of two daughters and no sons, the employee
was ineligible for the draft. Due to decisions by the current Department of Community Health, on the
advice of the State’s Attorney General, other pertinent records of the State Board of Health are inaccessible
to this historian.

143

institutions. Like prior legislation in other states, the Statute garnered strong support in
both houses (House 72-16, Senate 21-9). The Michigan legislature’s passage of a
sterilization law, made Michigan the seventh state to enact functioning legislation.
Though it had taken Sixteen years from the time of the ﬁrst state proposal for such a law
to actually be passed in 1913, many other states besides the Six States which preceded
Michigan in such legislation were actively working on such legislation. From 1905
through 1913, ﬁfteen state legislatures would pass sterilization bills. Of these bills,
governors vetoed four and several would be challenged in the courts.26

Michigan’s law fell into the latter category. From the passage of the bill in 1913
through 1918 when it was declared unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court, only one
sterilization was performed under the aegis of this law. Nora Reynolds, a feeblenrinded
girl with a mental age of 9 years and the mother of an illegitimate child became
Michigan’s test case in 1916. Though little in the way of a eugenic family history existed,
Reynolds presented a demonstrated and present danger in eugenic terms. Already the
mother of one illegitimate child, Nora demonstrated a history of eloping from the
institution to meet with different men.27

For eugenicists like Vaughan, women held the “stronger eugenic power [i.e. for
good or evil]. ..between the sexes.” According to Vaughan many a young man of quality
fell prey to beauty and wiles of a “female moron, especially when of high grade” who “in
early womanhood, is often very attractive.” Such women presented the appearance of
being “the daintiest, sweetest, most innocent creature in the world. ...she is a “little girl”

,9”

and She will never be anything more. Mentally she never grows beyond “sweet sixteen.

 

2° Reilly. Pg. 45-46; Laughlin. Pg. 651, 99-147.
27 Luaghlin. Pg. 305

144

Describing several examples with which he was personally familiar, he could say in sum,
“many a young man of good stock and of excellent personality falls a victim to the
bewitching moron girl.” Perhaps expressing a general view in the medical community, he
noted, “Every family physician of years of experience and observation knows how
disastrously such marriages end...I speak with some feeling on this subject, because I
have known-former students of mine to tie these millstones about their necks...After vain
struggles most of them sink out of sight.”28
Vaughan went on to describe the case of a close and respected friend, who had
made such an ill-fated match and managed to thrive against the odds. The friend, from a
poor family but brilliant, was “unusually equipped both by nature and nurture” for his
profession. Even though his friend had attained professional success, his wife cast an
intellectual pall over his personal life and delivered to him three defective sons. He
continued, speaking “to the young men of my audience, I wish to say, “Shun the
attractive frivolous girl.” She is found in every community. The object of the eugenicist is
not to multiply her kind, but to exterminate her.”29
Dr. Haynes, who brought the Reynolds case before the court as Medical Director
of the MHT S (a.k.a. Michigan Institute for the Feebleminded), little doubt concurred with

Vaughan’s opinions as did most other physician/eugenicists in the state. Haynes

 

2” Vaughan. Eugenics: Twelve University Lectures. Pg. 66-68
29 Ibid. Pg. 67-69. The friend, who had “won more than a competency; there was no ofﬁcial position within

the gift of his state which was not within his reach; his professional service was sought by both rich and the
poor; from the one he demanded and received liberal compensation, to the other he gave time and labour
cheerfully and gratuitously. . ...All of these victories he had won and at the same time he carried a heavy
load. His wife never grew mentally.” The three male offspring were eugenic disappointments, the eldest
unable “even with the help of private tutors” to ﬁnish high school, the second a drunkard, the third “hardly
able to take care of himself.” From Vaughan’s fervency on the topic one can imagine how strongly held
and proselytized were his views. His notions, taken with his professional position (president of the AMA,
MMA, Board of Public Health, Dean of the U. of M. Medical School) indicate the mainstream nature of his
perspectives within the medical profession of the state if not the nation.

[45

subsequently became Medical Director of the U. of M. Medical School, an unlikely
circumstance without the approval, if not the recommendation of the medical school’s
dean, Victor Clarence Vaughan. These perspectives on the special eugenic threat
constituted by mentally deﬁcient women goes along way to explaining not only the
selection of Nora Reynold’s case, but for the propensity to sterilize women at a three to
one ratio in this state.30

Michigan’s statutes provided for the notiﬁcation of next of kin, the appointment
of legal counsel, and judicial appeal; its ﬂaw was to draw a legally arbitrary demarcation.
Like the New Jersey and New York statutes, the 1913 law was challenged in circuit court
as a constitutional violation of the “equal protection clause” in the case of Haynes vs.
Williams (201 Mich. 138-166 NW. 938). Because the law applied only to those
individuals in institutions, it amounted to class legislation as it failed to apply to the
public as a whole. The court found the law unconstitutional on these grounds. In
September 1917, citing F eilen v. Washington and Smith v. Board of Examiners, the
Michigan Supreme Court sustained the circuit court’s ﬁnding. In sum, the constitutional
ﬂaws of the New Jersey, New York and Michigan statutes set the parameters for legally
functioning eugenical legislation and Michigan alone of the three would pursue them.31

The governors of Idaho and Vermont vetoed their states’ ﬁrst sterilization bills
(resp. 1919, 1913) citing deﬁciencies in the legislation relative to the litigation cited
above.32 Ironically, though Michigan legislation would be reformulated so as to be within

the constitutional bounds set by continuing litigation; invariably, the people who went

 

3° Vaughan, Eugenics. Pg. 66-69. ; Sterilization Statistics. SWHA, Yearly Summaries, 1930-1963.
3‘ Laughlin. Pg. 203-215.

146

under the state's knife were those who fell under the jurisdiction of two state departments,
Corrections and Welfare, originally conjoined in the Board of Corrections and Charities.
Even though the law necessarily applied to all citizens of the state, the vast majority of
those operated upon continued to be inmates of the state’s institutions.

By 1920, court decisions throughout the United States had provided a pretty clear
picture of what a model eugenics statute should look like. The goal of Laughlin’s 1922
work, Eggenicgl Sterilization in the United States, was to provide a comprehensive
review of all legal precedent and render from this a model eugenic statute. In the light of
this goal, the book was exhaustive in its research and the legal guidelines arrived at
unimpeachable throughout the next several decades. Laws predicated on Laughlin’s
model were sustained throughout the courts, and legislative repeal or veto appeared the
only option for reversing the original legislative will to sterilize.

Nonetheless, several states’ sterilization laws (e.g. Alabama (1919), Wisconsin
(1913), Nebraska (1913), Kansas (1913), North Carolina (1919), New Hampshire (1917),
North Dakota (1913) and South Dakota (1917)) enacted in the 19108, clearly deﬁcient by
the standards cited in the prior cases, were never challenged. This is particularly
interesting in that hundreds of operations were performed under their aegis.”

Laughlin’s Model Law and the extensive treatment of prior legal decisions
contained in Eugenical Sterilizagon in the United Stages unleashed a ﬂood of eugenic
sterilization legislation. On March 15, 1923, Montana passed its ﬁrst such statute,

followed in April by Delaware, Michigan acted in May. University of Michigan law

 

32 Laughlin. Pg. 44-46, 48-51. Both governors cited problems with the legislation’s arbitrary class
distinctions (i.e. the law applied only to the institutionalized) as violations of the equal protection clause of
the 14th Amendment. Both governors also noted their general approval for the embodied in the legislation.

147

professor, Burke Shartel wrote the Michigan law at the instigation “of an organization
interested in social work.” The law was amended in April 1925 to grant probate courts
the right to hear sterilization requests and thus theoretically further extend the potential
reach of the law to all defective citizens within and without state institutions.34 The legal
implication was to make the statute less vulnerable to tests relative to the equal protection
clause. The amended statute was challenged within two months in Smith v. Command,
Wayne Probate Judge 231 Mich. 409, 204 MW. 140.

Commenting in the Michigan Law Review, Professor Shartel noted the new statute
had been challenged on four counts: as an unreasonable exercise of the state’s police
power, as a cruel and unusual punishment, as discriminative class legislation and as a
violation of due process of law. The law was upheld in the Michigan Supreme Court in
1925. Shartel believed it likely that Michigan’s test case would likely be further tested in
the US. Supreme Court.35 The law was tested on the same grounds in October 1926 with
the same result, further conﬁrming the precedent set in Smith v. Command.36

On March 20, 1924 Virginia passed its ﬁrst such statute. In the case of Carrie v.
Priddy the test case of Carrie Buck was ﬁrst upheld in the circuit court of Amherst

County in April 1925. In November 1925 the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals

 

33 Landman, J .H. Human Sterilization: The History of the Sexual Sterilization Movemen_t. (New York:

MacMillan & Co., 1932) Pg. 54-96.

34 Public Acts of Michigan 1923, No. 285; Public Acts of Michigan 1925, No. 1925.

35 Michigan Law Review. Vol.24 No.1 November 1925, Pg. 1-21. Dr. Harley Haynes, who was Medical

Director of the Michigan Institute for the Feeble-Minded from 1912-1924 and principal in the original test

case of the 1913 law, assisted Shartel in composing the article. Dr. Haynes served as Director of the

University Hospital in Ann Arbor after leaving the MIF. The University of Michigan provided an

impressive number of eugenics advocates or at minimum, protégés willing to assist in furthering their
oals.

g6 Landman. Pg. 72. In re Salloum (1926) 236 Mich. 478.

148

sustained the decision of the Amherst court citing Smith v. Command. The Michigan Law
Review regularly noted the case’s progress through the Virginia courts.37

Eugenic sterilization, with state sanction and compulsion, constituted an
unprecedented invasion into the reproductive autonomy of its citizens. Considering the
history of prior challenges to such statutes, it was nearly inevitable that a test case
challenging one of the new statutes based on the model law would be pursued to the
highest levels of the judiciary in an effort to establish legal precedent.

Michigan’s statute and the relevant court decisions held merit for a constitutional
test of the eugenicists’ chosen method of negative eugenics, compulsory sterilization law.
But unlike the Virginia statute, Michigan’s law excluded the insane. As the statute’s
author, Professor Shartel, noted, “the distinction between the two [feebleminded and
insane] is that between a person who never has a complete mind, and a person who does
have one but loses it through the action of disease or accident...,” and who might yet be

expected to regain it.38 For many eugenicists, there was all too often a hereditary

 

37 Landman. Pg. 83-84; Michigan Law Review Vol. 24, No.1. November 1925, Pg. 500-501

3’ Shartel, Burke. Michigan law Review. Vol. 24, November 1925. No. 1, Pg. 3-4. It is worth quoting at
length Dr. Shartel’s reasoning in that it epitomizes many of the fears regarding the sexuality of the
feebleminded and how these apprehensions came to be extended to the insane when the law was replaced in
1929. It also shows the problem of a legal presumption that the patient’s condition might improve in the
one case [insane] and a differing set of belief about the inheritance of insanity. The Michigan statute
speciﬁcally required a certiﬁed medical opinion that the patient’s condition would not improve. “A feeble-
minded person is a mental dwarf, a person whose mind has never developed, sometimes because his
ancestors are also underdeveloped mentally, sometimes because of disease, or of an accident at birth or in
early childhood; but always be is a person with sub-normal mentality. The insane person is in theory at
least a person who has at one time enjoyed normal mentality, but who has, owing to disease or accident,
lost it. Roughly, the distinction between the two is that between a person who never has a complete mind,
and a person who does have one but loses it through the action of disease or accident. We would not need.
any special experience to conﬁrm the impression that these mental children, who are only too often en-
dowed with normal sexual power and appetite, but entirely devoid of ordinary feelings of shame,
responsibility, and so on, would require different care, and would present different social problems, from
the mental adults who are affected by disease, possibly only late in life or only in one limited mental
sphere. Perhaps the most marked characteristic of the feeble-minded--and this ought to weigh heavily in
making a distinction such as we are discussing--is the hopelessness of cure. It is as much, but no more
according to human experience to cause a feeble-minded person to attain full mentality as it is to cause an
adult dwarf to grow to normal stature. To be sure few cases of insanity are ever cured either, but some are.

149

component to insanity and cures remained vanishingly few. Bringing a more eugenically
comprehensive law before the US. Supreme Court held substantial legal risks, but
potentially greater eugenic rewards. In 1927, the case of Buck v. Bell (State of Virginia),
was heard before the US. Supreme Court. This case was generally recognized as setting
legal precedent for all future cases.

Carrie Buck was sterilized on October 29th, 1927 in the operating theater of the
Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and the Feebleminded. Carrie Buck was selected as a
legal test case for a variety of reasons. First she represented three generations of
feebleminded in one institution and the obvious ﬁnancial costs associated with their
maintenance. Her illegitimate daughter represented not only the inheritable nature of
feeblemindedness but also the perceived social threat inherent in the supposedly
uncontrolled sexual impulses of her class. Because of the legal problems associated with
including the insane in eugenics legislation, in terms of a legal strategy, the selection of a
“demonstrably” inherited example of hereditary feeblemindedness made an ideal case for
defending a law that applied to both the feebleminded and the insane. Her state-
sanctioned sterilization was the culmination of a legal battle to validate the
constitutionality of a new and more comprehensive type of sterilization law.

Beyond extending the eugenic legitimacy of such statutes to the insane, the
outcome of this case represented a constitutional validation of the sterilization law in "at

least three respects: that it was not an abuse of "Police Power", nor was it without "Due

 

And if nothing else is to be considered, the affectionate hope of the insane man's relatives for a restoration
of the personality, which they once knew and cherished, is worthy of some consideration. The relatives of
the feeble-minded man have never known him other than he is and they can hardly wish him to have
children. Besides these differences there are the differences pointed out in the passages above quoted, the
difference in the probability of uncontrollable sexual impulses, the difference in the degree of proof that
insanity and feeblemindedness respectively are inheritable.”

150

Process of Law", nor was it punitive or "Cruel or Unusual Punishment"". The United
States Supreme Court based its decision conﬁrming the "Police Power" of the state to
perform sterilizations, upon the precedent of compulsory vaccination in the case of
Jacobson vs. Massachussetts ,(197 US. 11; 25 S. Ct. 358; 49 L.Fd. 643). But most
importantly, like the judicial test of Michigan’s statute, the Supreme Court decision
eliminated the most prominent problem with prior legislation, the legal obstacle presented
by the Fourteenth Amendment’s “equal protection clause.” The vexing question of how
to discriminate against a class of people and not be found guilty of arbitrary distinctions
upon judicial review had been settled. Even if they had played it safe by excluding the
insane from the law’s purview, Michigan’s courts and eugenicists had helped pilot a new
course to their perceived better future. The Michigan Law Review noting the US.
Supreme Court’s decision, commended the Smith v. Command decision as helping make
the “Michigan act and those similar to it. . .. safe from the federal constitutional
guillotine.”39

The objective result of the legislation and court decisions was to emphasize the
eugenic nature of the statutes, the restriction of the propagation of the supposedly socially
inadequate. The Supreme Court decision provoked the adoption of new eugenic
legislation throughout the states. The opinion of the nation’s most celebrated jurist could
only have exacerbated the situation. Chief Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes, in his written
majority opinion (Buck vs. Bell), went so far as to say,

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may

call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be
strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the

 

39 Michigan Law Review. Vol. 27, 1927 Pg. 908-909. Reference to Burke Shartel’s 1925 law review article
“Sterilization of Mental Defectives.” was included as a useful discussion on various aspects of the subject

151

strength of the state for these lesser sacriﬁces, often not felt

to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being

swamped with competence. It is better for all the world, if

instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for

crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can

prevent those who are manifestly unﬁt from continuing

their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory

vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian

Tubes. "Three generation of imbeciles are enough"."0
As Kellogg noted thirty-seven years earlier, Holmes had not recently arrived at this
conclusion regarding the inheritance of dysgenic traits.41

The Buck case is signiﬁcant not only for providing legal sanction for sterilization

legislation in the highest court in the land, but for demonstrating an example of the
strange conjunction of private medical actions taken in the public name and their
subsequent validation in the courts. In Carrie Buck’s case, her foster parents had ulterior
motives for petitioning for Carrie’s commission as did the surgeon who performed the
sterilization. Such medical procedures performed by public servants without legal
sanction, in effect, on the personal professional opinion of the state’s agent (e.g. Dr.

Priddy, the institution’s physician) were usually substantiated legally either in court or

through subsequent legislation as in this case.

 

‘0 Reilly, Philip. The Surgical Solution: A Histog of Compulsory Sterilization in the United States.
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1991), pg. 87; Smith, J. David and Nelson, K. Ray. m

Sterilization of Carrie Buck. (Far Hills: New Horizon Press, 1989), pg. 177-178. Landman. Human
Sterilization. Pg. 97 -99; The reference to Fallopian tubes would seem to have an ironic signiﬁcance in
regard beyond its relation to the Buck case; well over half (57%) of the sterilizations "recorded" nationwide
through January 1, 1935 were performed upon women. In Michigan, the ratio varied over the years from
one to one, to over one to ten (men to women). The average male to female ratio in Michigan, over a
twelve year period from 1923 through 1935, was three to one. Gillein, Hilmer. "Memorandum" Pg. 1;
Gillein, Hilmer. "Memorandum to Ruth Bowen (Deputy Director, State Welfare Department)", Sterilization
Records: State of Michigan Archives, pg. 1—2, Table l.

4’ Kellogg, John Harvey. Plain Facts for Old m Young: Emgaging the Natural Histog and Hygiene of
Organic Life. (Burlington: I.F. Senger & Co., 1891), http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/modenglmodeng0.
browse.html, 1995, P. 448, Kellogg noting then Professor Holmes views on heredity, summed up saying,
“It cannot be doubted that the throngs of deaf, blind, crippled, idiotic unfortunates who were "born so,"
together with a still larger class of dwarfed, diseased, and constitutionally weak individuals, are the
lamentable.”

152

Carrie Buck was adopted by her foster parents, Alice and J .T. Dobbs. Carrie had
been in their care since age three, when her mother had given her to the Dobbs. In 1923
the Dobbs petitioned for Carrie's commission to the Virginia Colony for the Epileptic and
Feebleminded. Three years earlier, her natural mother, Emma Buck, had been committed
to the same institution. Smith and Nelson, in The Sterilization of Carrie Buck, assert that
Carrie's institutionalization was a result of her pregnancy by the Dobb's nephew. Carlie,
her mother, and sister Doris, were all institutionalized and sterilized.42 Carrie was chosen
as the test case for the new Virginia Law by Dr. A. S. Priddy, Superintendent of the
Virginia State Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded. Dr. Priddy had a personal
reason to want the law validated, as he had recently "been sued in a Richmond court for a
large amount of damages for having sterilized a feebleminded woman patient in the
Colony.""3

The eminent eugenicist, Harry Hamilton Laughlin, was asked to testify as to the
efﬁcacy of the law and its applicability to Carrie Buck. Though Laughlin never
personally examined Carrie, he was able to render a convincing indictment of her mental
and hereditary defects. The results of IQ testing on Carrie, her sister, mother and daughter
were never presented in court. Indeed, though there was ample subjective testimony as to
their familial defects, no objective testing had been done. This was nature of the case that
set the legal standard for compulsory sterilization for the next several decades. Further

legal conﬁrmations would follow, but this case would remain the legal standard.44

The ﬁrst judicial challenge following the Buck vs. Bell decision was again

 

42 Smith, J. David. The Sterilization of Carrie Buck. (Far Hills: New Horizon Press, 1989), pg. 1-38.

43 Ibid. pg. 49.; "Conversation with Audrey Strode". Strode had written the Virginia legislation and was
chief administrator of the Virginia Colony. He stated that Dr. Priddy had approached him with a proposal
for the law, following Dr. Priddy's aforementioned Richmond court case.

153

directed upon a presumed infringement of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection
clause." The 1928 of case Smith (Kansas Attorney General) v. Schajfer, (270 Pac. 604)
held that compulsory sterilization was not a constitutional violation of the Fourteenth
Amendment (i.e. as arbitrary class legislation), nor did it exceed the "Police Power" of
the State. In addition, it was found not to constitute a violation of the constitutional
provision for "Due Process of Law".45
In 1929 Michigan, taking advantage of the license provided by the US. Supreme
Court’s Buck v. Bell decision, again acted to broaden the scope of its law by for the ﬁrst
time including the insane. Representative Cuthbertson introduced the bill on the 22nd of
February with passage transpiring three months later to the day. The vote was nearly
unanimous with eighty-three yeas to three nays, the nays without comment. The law
passed through committee without amendments and gained passage with twenty-three
yeas against two nays. Of the ﬁve nays cast in both houses, three were by Catholic
legislators perhaps reﬂecting the Church’s opposition to such statutes.”5
The Catholic church’s opposition had not concretized at this point. As Judge

Higbee of Kent County noted in his address to the 1928 RBF Conference,

A Roman Catholic Bishop of western Michigan told me a

year and a half ago. . ..he saw no reason, after the matter

had been explained to him, why he should not approve of

sterilization. The judge stated his belief that neither religion

nor ethnicity stood as a bar to such legislation. Education
was the key to his way of thinking.47

 

‘4 Ibid. pg. 89-184; Gellein, Hilmer. "Memorandum", pg. 1-6.

‘5 Gellein, Hilmer. "Memorandum" 18 March 1937, pg. 2-4.

‘6 Allward, Dennis. Sec. Of Senate. Journal of the Senate of the State of Michigg. Vol.2 1929 Pg. 901,
936, 977, 1066, 1393; Gray, Miles. Clerk of the House of Representatives. Journal of the House of
Rwresentatiles of the State of Michigan. Vol. 1-2, 1929 Pg. 225, 250, 550, 575, 587, 1003, 1041, 1060,
1383, 1388, 1393.

47 Proceedings of the Third Race Bettermerg Conference. Pg. 180-181. Judge Higbee noted also that Kent
County over the past two years had been sterilizing at a greater rate than anywhere else in the US. and yet
there “no popular clamor against the sterilization law.” He continued. I believe all that is necessary is to

154

Education of the public had proceeded apace throughout the decade on a number
of fronts. Addressing the 1928 RBF Conference, Dr. W.A. Evans, Professor of Hygiene
at Northwestern University and the “How to Keep Well” columnist for the Chicago
Tribune, asserted that the most effectual means of educating the general public about
sterilization and genetics was through the popular press. Also addressing the conference,
Professor M.V. O’Shea, Head of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Education
and Columbia University’s Dr. Thomas Wood discussed how health education including
eugenics education had and could gain a broader hearing throughout the citizenry. Noting
that the ﬁfty percent of the population living in rural settings had in four generations gave
rise to eighty-eight percent of the total population, Dr. Luther West, Professor of Biology
and Eugenics at the Battle Creek College, remarked upon the past and future success to
be expected from the Better Babies and Fitter Families contests in inculcating eugenics
theories among the laity. The sterilization legislation passed immediately after the Buck v.
Bell decision reveals not only a favorable legal climate, but a receptive public.48

The Republican Lansing State Journal noted the 1929 statute’s introduction in
February and the expected swift passage, which was also duly recorded without editorial
comment in May. Judging from election statistics, the educational efforts of the
eugenicists proved successful. Voter apathy, at least by today's standards cannot be cited
as Michigan's electorate regularly turned out 70 percent at the polls. Republican

domination at the polls throughout the state was shown by regularly tallying 70 percent or

 

educate the leaders in each county. . . .. The intelligent people of every state will approve of sterilization if
they understand the biological laws and if they understand exactly what it means.” Exactly who constituted
the “intelligent people” can be imagined.

‘8 M. Pg. 654-659, The Newspaper-The Most Eﬂective Agent for Adult Education;_Pg. 91-117, The Fitter
Families Contests: The Practical Application of Eugenic Principles; Pg. 640-647, The New Education; Pg.
648-653, The Contribution of Health Education to Race Betterment.

155

more of the vote for all ofﬁces. The variation between counties in the votes given to
Republican and Democratic candidates varies from 2-1, to more than 4-1. Wayne County
encompassing the Detroit vote, represented the greatest diversity of religion and ethnicity
and revealed somewhat closer races (e. g. Governor’s race in 1928, Republicans 62.4% to
37.6%). This had been a consistent trend since the Civil War. In the legislature, most
opposition to the statute came from Detroit area legislators suggesting greater support for
such laws among the rural constituencies. Working class opposition to such measures
might also be inferred, though this is difﬁcult to substantiate from available data.49

In 1929, Nebraska's sterilization statute was "upheld as far as the constitutionality
of sterilization of insane or feebleminded persons in the case of Clayton vs. the Board of
Examiners of Defectives, (234 N. W. 630). This decision acted as an additional legal
validation of Michigan’s new statute and the state’s authorities proceeded apace in its
implementation. In the wake of these decisions, several other states also acted to beef up
their existing laws or implement similar statutes.so

Its legislature already in session when the Bell decision was handed down, North
Dakota passed its second and more comprehensive statute in 1927, as did South Dakota.
Only one state, whose legislature happened to be in session in even years, Mississippi
passed new legislation in 1928. Until the year 1929 the effect of the Buck v. Bell decision

was somewhat belated, since few states conducted legislative sessions in even years. But

 

‘9 White, John P. Mgan Votes:;l_ection Statistics 1928-1956. (Ann Arbor: Bureau of Government,
Institute of Public Administration, University of Michigan, 1958). . It was not until after 1930 that the
Democratic Party would actually give Republicans a run for their money. The ﬁrst signs occurred in 1930
when Detroit went heavily for William Comstock the perennial Democratic candidate for governor.
Though he won Wayne County narrowly the vote still went statewide for the Republicans albeit by a closer
margin than ever before. At this time, most state legislatures met only on odd years and thus the passage of
legislation is usually attributed only to odd years, explaining various apparent delays between judicial
stimuli and resulting legislation. Example: 1927 Buck v. Bell decision and 1929 passage of Michigan
sterilization law.

156

1929 witnessed new statutes in eleven states: Arizona, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Maine
Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Utah and West Virginia. By that
time both Michigan and Iowa were passing their fourth statutes, both states becoming
more encompassing in their eugenic grasp. The year 1931 observed the enactment of new
legislation in Indiana, Maine, Oklahoma and Vermont. In addition to these sixteen states,
there were eighteen other states that advocated such legislation in their respective
legislatures during the combined years 1928, 1929, 1930 and 1931, but were not
successful in passing them. These states were California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois,
Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. By 1932 twenty-
seven states had functioning legislation. Only two more states, South Carolina (1935) and
Georgia (1937), and the territory of Puerto Rico (1937) implemented such statutes after
this time, but many of the states with such legislation moved quickly to take advantage.51
In 1922 when Laughlin produced his seminal compilation on the history of eugenical
sterilization, only 3,233 operations had been performed, nearly eighty percent or 2,558 of
these in California. By the end of 1932 over sixteen thousand people had been sterilized
with California’s percentage falling to just over ﬁfty percent. Within four years an
additional seven thousand people would fall victim to the statutes, more than twice as
many than had been sterilized in the ﬁrst ﬁfteen years of such legislation. Laughlin and
the other advocates of negative eugenics measures had been amazingly successful in their
efforts.52

As late as 1937, the Director of the Michigan Department of Corrections, Hilmer

 

5° Gellein, Hilmer. "Memorandum" 18 March 1937, Pg. 2-6
5‘ Landman. Pg. 104-106, Appendix C.

157

Gellein could claim, "I might state that the law is well settled as far as idiots, imbeciles,
insane, epileptic and feebleminded persons are concerned. The law relative to feeble
minded persons can be considered a matter of universal recognition."53 Indeed though the
criticism of such laws increased in scientiﬁc, medical and religious circles throughout the
decade, none of the laws were repealed and surgeons sterilized on average over two
thousand patients a year until the beginning of the Second World War.
In its annual reader’s survey of 1937, Fortune queried, "Some people advocate
compulsory sterilization of habitual criminals and mental defectives so that they will not
have children to inherit their weaknesses. Would you approve of this?" As Reilly notes in
The Surgical Solution, “Sixty-six percent of the respondents favored sterilizing mental
defectives and 63 percent favored sterilizing criminals. Only15 percent of the respondents
were opposed. Given that by 1937 even most eugenicists acknowledged that a strictly
hereditarian view of criminal behavior was untenable, the response is startling?“
While the legislatures and the public in the vast majority of states at least actively
considered such legislation, ﬁve states remained aloof from the crowd. Arkansas, Florida,
Massachusetts, New Mexico and Rhode Island seem to have never promulgated such
laws. Large Roman Catholic constituencies in four of these states may explain their
reticence. In those states with large Catholic populations such legislation if proposed,

seldom passed, or if so was constrained in its action.

The courts also acted to limit and discriminate within the legal purview

 

52 Laughlin. Pg. 96; Landman. Appendix c; Sterilization Statistics. SWHA 1933, 1936.

53 Gellein, Hilmer. "Memorandum" 18 March 1937, Pg. 2—6; Public A_cts of Michigg. 1923 & 1925. Its
history of amendments is reﬂective of attempts to bring it into compliance with changing legal
perspectives. Public Act 285 :I 923 perceived as a possible violation of the “equal protection clause” in
specifying inmates of state institutions was amended per Public Act 71 :1925. The latter act established a
broader jurisdictional basis by sanctioning County Court's sterilization proceedings against "mentally
defective persons.”

158

established by the legislatures’ acts. In 1929, Utah enacted its second sterilization statute
allowing for the “sterilization of sexual criminals, idiots epileptics, imbeciles and the
insane.” The warden of the Utah State Prison, R.E. Davis petitioned the State Board of
Corrections for the sterilization of a Negro man, Esau Walton. Walton appealed the
Board’s afﬁrmation of the petition to Utah’s Supreme Court, which agreed with Walton’s
assertion that his behavior though covered by the law was not of a hereditary nature.

Walton, a native of Georgia and from a broken home, had served ﬁfteen months
in reform school as a child, not gone beyond the fourth grade, and though arrested several
times for various crimes had never been convicted until sentenced in Utah for robbery.
Four years after his incarceration, prison authorities caught him “practising sodomy with
one of the other inmates,” which led to the warden’s petition. While the Supreme Court
validated the constitutionality of Utah’s law it held that Walton’s behavior was more
likely the result of environment rather than heredity. The court further noted that the
stated intent of the law was not penal in nature but therapeutic. Remarking that parole and
sterilization would not preclude him from future acts of a similar nature, while
reeducation and reconditioning might, the court observed that since his sterilization
would not promote either Walton’s welfare or that of the state, the state’s petition failed
to meet the eugenic intent of the law.55

The courts consistently upheld the constitutionality of the “model laws” after
Buck v. Bell, but retained the right to discriminate among cases presented for their
review. Though the statutes provided for legal counsel, in a system where the best justice

was to be had by those best able to pay for the services of those able to deliver it, the

 

5“ Reilly. Pg. 125-126
’5 Landman. Pg. 99-106.

159

wards of the state almost invariably came out the losers. Among the members of the
eugenic categories enumerated in the statutes, and regardless of modiﬁcations in the laws
made in the most part to bring them into constitutional compliance with the Fourteenth
Amendment, the states’ knives fell predominantly upon the institutionalized. As
Landman contended in 1932, the courts would be able to discriminate, but only within the
context of the laws. The highest court in the land had upheld the legislatures’ actions, and
now only they could rescind the power they had granted the eugenicists and their
sympathizers. If the legislatures were the creatures of the electorates, then the latter must
bare responsibility for the formers’ actions. Eugenicists had appealed to something dark
and deep within the public’s soul, called it a virtue and cast it as the necessary boon to
guarantee an auspicious posterity. Plausibly dressed in the garb of science, until denuded
of this modern justiﬁcation for age-old bias the sterilizations would continue. Four over
four decades, Michigan’s electorate turned if not a blind eye then certainly a jaundiced
one upon these deeds. From the implementation of its ﬁrst judicially competent statute in
1923 through the next four decades, Michigan sterilized over thirty-seven hundred

people.

160

Chapter Six: Michigan’s Eugenie Success?

To understand the limitations in ascertaining the exact nature of eugenics
programs in the United States and elsewhere, it is helpful to see how confusing the
picture was to contemporary investigators. Proponents of negative eugenic measures
often had a difﬁcult time gaining the cooperation of the practitioners responsible for
carrying out the programs. Sometimes, as was the case in Michigan in the 19308, there
seemed to be no controlling legal authority from which to discern either the mode of the
law’s operation or its extent. What emerges is at best a partial description of sterilization
policy and use, though an immense range of variation characteristic of such programs is
more than evident. ’

Buck vs. Bell and related cases provided the legal precedent for states to pursue
their eugenic policies.1 The decisions also provided, by example, a model statute (the
Virginia law), on which to model their own legislation. Indeed, several groups were
active in formulating and disseminating "model eugenic statutes". While Laughlin acted
vigilantly through the 19203 and early 19303 to promote the adoption of legislation
mandating immigration restrictions and compulsory sterilization, other eugenicists took a
more cautious scientiﬁc view on the merits of negative eugenics. The latter’s
investigations depended more on statistical analyses rather than the anecdotal research
that characterized so many of the earlier studies (e. g. Kallikaks) of the ERO.

Typical of these individuals and their endeavors was Paul Popenoe, editor of the
Journal of Heredity. The journal operated as the ofﬁcial organ of the American Genetics

Society, a sister organization to the American Eugenics Society. Though the journal

 

1 See Chapter Five, Pg. 21-26

161

devoted signiﬁcant space to studies of human genetics, it chieﬂy provided a forum for
geneticists studying bacterial, plant and animal genetics. Because of the more rigorous
scientiﬁc standards applied to the joumal’s contents, it proved inﬂuential among
scientists, doctors, legislators, and the lay public.

By the late 19203, as Laughlin’s star waned, this new breed of more moderate
scientiﬁc eugenicist lent a renewed credibility to calls for negative eugenic measures.
Substantial amounts of data from the early eugenical sterilization programs was available
for analysis and the scientiﬁc basis of Mendelian inheritance became ever more ﬁrmly
established, if not also ever more complicated. The increasing sophistication of these
eugenicists was reﬂected in the types of data and analysis conducted by organizations and
institutions associated with compulsory sterilization. In 1927 self-made millionaire and
recently converted eugenics advocate, Ezra Gosney, approached Popenoe with the idea of
forming a new organization to monitor the progress of sterilization measures throughout
the US. With Gosney as president and Popenoe as secretary, they established the Human
Betterment Foundation the same year. As early as 1925, Gosney had advanced the idea to
California ofﬁcials of conducting a survey of California institutions responsible for
implementing the state’s eugenic sterilization law. Over three years, beginning in 1927,
Gosney and Popenoe published the results of their ﬁndings in various scientiﬁc journals
and ﬁnally in a popularized version for laymen, entitled Sterilization for Hunga

Betterment.2

 

2 Popenoe, Paul & Gosney Ezra. Twent -ei t Years of Sterilization in California. 3rd edition (Princeton,
Birthright Inc. 1946). Pg. 1-3. The HBF ceased to exist with the death of Gosney in 1942, but Birthright
Inc. and the New Jersey Sterilization League continued to carry out the work through the 19603. Without
the data sets compiled by these organizations it would be impossible to provide accurate numbers on the
number of operations performed. In Michigan, many of the records have been lost or destroyed and the
current attitude of state authorities is to deny access to those records that do exist.

162

According to the authors, “The state authorities co—operated unreservedly in this
undertaking.” Apparently the authorities were pleased with the study as they asked the
l-[BF to conduct a follow up survey several years later, published as Twenty-eight Years
of Sterilization in California. Ofﬁcials in other states seconded Gosney and Popenoe’s
popularity with the California institutions. By the early 19303 the HBF had begun
conducting surveys of each state’s sterilization numbers, tabulating the results and
publishing them in yearly reports. It was largely due to the efforts of these two men, that
we know the extent of compulsory sterilization in the United States.

The HBF’s inﬂuence went beyond the mere acquisition of data. Their requests for
detailed information regarding the types of patients selected and the criteria used in these
selections contributed to raise the level of state record keeping. The eugenic surveys and
promotions of this new breed of eugenicists heightened standards throughout the
discourse on eugenics.

In reviewing HBF and Birthright information requests to Michigan ofﬁcials, it is
evident that state authorities considered the surveys valuable and their cooperation with
the organization important. The completeness of the state institutions’ record keeping
improves throughout the 19303 with far more attention being spent in supplying objective
data in their sterilization requests to state boards and the courts.

The Archives of the State of Michigan contain very few records prior to 1930
though nearly nine hundred such operations had been performed. Of the records extant
for the period after 1930, approximately two-thirds were lost or destroyed in the arson
ﬁring of the Lewis Cass municipal building in Lansing. From passage of the 1923

sterilization statute, PA. 285 :1 923 and its subsequent amendments (PA. 71, 1925), until

163

the enactment of the 1929 statute only anecdotal evidence exists to reconstruct the nature
of Michigan’s program.

In response to a 1938 request for information on the number of sterilizations from
Ruth Bowen, Deputy Director of the State Welfare Department, Hilmer Gellein, the
Director of the Department of Corrections supplied a HBF tabulation for the period
through 1935 and noted that “from 1923 to 1937, inclusive, there were performed 1,103
sterilization operations and twenty castration operations at the Michigan Home and
Training School in Lapeer.” This indicated that of the 1,362 operations recorded in the
attached HBF summary, nearly 81% had been performed at the Lapeer facility.3 The
1937 HBF national survey reported 1,696 sterilizations performed in Michigan through
January 1St of that year with 1,404 of these representing procedures upon feebleminded
patients. If the latter number represents inmates of the Lapeer MHT S facility this again
equates to eighty-two percent of the total.

Speaking on the topic of “Sterilization of the Feebleminded in Michigan,” Dr.
H.E. Randall, President of the Michigan State Medical Society, told the 1928 RBF
conference that, “as a matter of record, but 111 patients have been sterilized at Lapeer
since the act was passed four years ago.” Following Dr. Randall’s presentation, Probate
Court Judge Higbee stated to the conference, “that in Kent County we have sterilized

something over 115 since the law went into effect (1923).4 Dr. Landman’s tabulation of

 

3 Gellein, Hilmer. "Memo to Miss Bowan", Pg. 1; Sterilization Statistics. SWHA 1930.

4 Proceedings of the Third Race Betterment Conference 1928. Pg. 177-181. Dr. H.E. Randall, Sterilization
of the F eebleminded in Michigan; Judge Clark Higbee, Sterilization Approved By Intelligent People in
Every State.

164

“The Number of Legal Sterilization Operations - January 1, 1932” reported only 629 such
procedures with 153 males and 476 females being operated upon in the state.5
Up until at least 1933 no state organization seems to have had a clear picture as to
how many sterilizations were being performed or where they were being performed in the
state. Grover Dillman, Director of the State Welfare Department, responding to a 1935
request from the HBF reported 1,239 sterilizations through January 1St of that year (307
males, 932 females). The letterhead on Dillman’s memorandum to the HBF includes the
State Welfare Commission, the State Prison Commission, the State Hospital
Commission, the State Corrections Commission and the State Institute Commission.
Presumably, state authorities were attempting to gain some insight into institutional
practices in response to HBF requests.6
Responding to Gosney in January of 1936, State Welfare Department Director

Fred Woodworth stated, “the total ﬁgure 1,239, includes both insane and feebleminded,
as we were unable, in this ofﬁce, to separate the two without causing some delay. There
were few sterilizations for the feebleminded - the majority were for the insane.” Some
two weeks later, Woodworth reported to Gosney “relative to furnishing you more deﬁnite
information.” It is worth quoting Woodworth at length to demonstrate the level of
confusion among the state’s relevant authorities.

The present sterilization law allows the Probate Court the

authority to pass on those sterilizations wherein the party is

feebleminded, epileptic or insane but has not been

committed to a State Institution. We have no record of

these sterilizations since the law does not require this ofﬁce

to be informed of such. Also, there is no record in this

ofﬁce of those sterilizations performed by voluntary
consent. In other words, we have a record of only those

 

5 Landman. Pg. 289, Appendix A
6 Dillman, Grover. “Memorandum to HBF, February 18, 1935" Sterilization Statistics, SWHA

165

sterilizations performed in our State Institutions wherein it

is required that the Medical Superintendent of each

institution secure the consent of the State Welfare

Commission and the State Hospital Commission before

proceeding with the operation.

You can readily see how it would be impossible for
us to furnish you with complete data on sterilizations that
are performed outside of the State Institutions.
Fred Woodworth, Director.7
Gosney and Popenoe recognizing the confused state of affairs proceeded to
contact the state institutions directly. The University of Michigan’s Record Librarian,
Florence Babcock noted that for the period from 1923 through 1935, the university
hospital had performed 316 sterilizations (36 males, 280 females). With the passage of
the 1929 sterilization statute, the number of sterilizations had doubled the ﬁrst year,
tripled the next and increased each subsequent year until 1933. Somewhat apologetically,
Miss Babcock concluded, “All of these cases have been performed at the request of the
Probate Courts of the State because of feeble-mindedness, mental retardation,
promiscuity associated with the above or venereal disease. I am sorry that I cannot give
you the deﬁnite ﬁgures for each diagnosis.”8
Miss Babcock, obviously feeling somewhat remiss in not being able to locate

accurate medical histories for these procedures, bumped Gosney’s request up the chain of
command to Dorothy Ketcham, Director of the Social Service Department, University
Hospital. Ketcham’s letter to Gosney of March 10‘h though sounding authoritative
provides further evidence of the confused state of affairs. Ketcham after inaccurately

noting the general conditions of the law, proceeded to spell out her interpretation of what

the university hospital had been up to.

 

7 Woodworth, Fred. “Letter to ES. Gosney. HBF, January 27, 1936” Sterilization Statistics. SWHA.

166

Most hospitals, of which the University Hospital is an
example, have limited their sterilizations to two types of
cases — those patients where sterilization is done on the
basis of medical pathology determined by conditions in the
course of treatment as essential for the progress of the
patient, or on order of the Court following examination,
hearing and ﬁndings with the order for sterilization.9

She then noted that Judge Higbee of Grand Rapids (Kent County Probate Judge),

has been very much interested in the problem of

sterilization, both from the biological and legal points of

view, and is entirely familiar with the changing practice in

the State over a period of years. I would suggest that he

would be very much interested in communicating further

with you.10
Further passing the buck, Ketcham noted, “there is no clearing house of information
centrally located and a wide variation of actual practice. The State Department of Welfare
at one time was interested in the number of sterilizations and might be able to advise you
further as to additional numbers.”ll

By April Gosney seems to have perceived the “wide variation of actual practice”

Ms. Ketcham noted. Dr. Perry Wagley, Medical Superintendent of the Pontiac State
Hospital (for the Insane) wrote Gosney thanking him “again for your interest shown in
furnishing me with statistics on sterilization.” The good doctor then proceeded to inform
Gosney that he was compiling some statistics of his own, which he would present to a

meeting of probate judges and “other institution superintendents, etc. and your

contributions will be of great help. . .and I trust. ...will be enlightening. If anyone requests

 

8 Babcock, Florence. “Letter to ES. Gosney, HBF, February 13, 1936” Sterilization Statistics. SWHA
9 Ketcham, Dorothy. “Letter to ES. Gosney, HBF, March 10, 1936” Sterilization Statistics. SWHA

1° Ibid.

” Ibid.

167

copies 1 will send for the pamphlets as you suggest. I certainly appreciate your
cooperation very much indeed.”12

Ten days later, the doctor reported to Popenoe that, “I think I have what you want.
It is a copy of the survey of the sterilization situation by the Probate Courts of Michigan
pertaining to the state institutions.” He added that it would be a few days more before he
had all the facts together, but that he would then forward a copy, noting that the State
Welfare Department had been very helpful.13 Two days later, Woodworth of the State
Welfare Department sent along a breakdown by diagnosis for 248 sterilizations, 184 of
which fell into the category of insane. Presumably, this referred to the number of
sterilizations done in 1935.14

If Gosney and Popenoe thought that they were at last getting a handle on the
state’s “sterilization situation,” they must truly have been amazed by the letter they
received in June from Dr. R.L. Dixon, Medical Superintendent at Lapeer’s MHT S. Dixon
reported that, “the total number of inmates sterilized [in that facility] from the beginning
of the practice up to January 1, 1936 is 1,014. Of these, 238 were males, and 776 were
females.” He further noted, “among our population a number who have been sterilized
previous to admission ...... or pending a vacancy in the institution. We do not have,
however, an accurate count of this group.” After noting that “the University Hospital at
Ann Arbor performed a great many sterilization operations,” he elaborated on the fact

that “certain of the larger counties, such as Kent County,...do a great many of their

sterilizations locally.”

 

i: Wagley, Perry. Letter to ES. Gosney, HBF, April 17, 1936” Sterilization Statistics. SWHA
Ibid.
’4 Woodworth Fred. “Letter to ES. Gosney, HBF April 29, 1936” Sterilization Statistics. SWHA

168

Furthermore, “it is our impression that the number of operations performed on mentally
defective persons within the Institution would just about be doubled by those performed
as mentioned above.” Disappointedly, Dixon went on to note that in Wayne County
(Detroit) the courts were generally “unsympathetic to sterilization, and very little
progress has been made there.”15
Trying to nail down the number of sterilizations performed outside the state

institutions, Popenoe again wrote to Dr. Wagley of the Pontiac Sate Hospital, who
helpfully forwarded the letter to Probate Judge Frank McAvinchey of Genesee County
(Flint). The judge informed Popenoe,

that with the exception of one county there are few, in fact

that only one county of which I have knowledge is Kent

County in which I understand there have been seventy one

sterilization which I call illegal operations because the

statute does not provide for sterilization except those

committed to an institution or those who have been

adjudicated sex delinquents.16
The judge was rather poorly informed as to the law and the state’s “sterilization
situation,” in that Judge Higbee reported eight years earlier at the Third RBF Conference
that Kent County had already sterilized over 115 people. Obviously in response to a
further query from Popenoe as to exactly whom the Michigan statute applied, the judge
wrote a rather preemptory one-paragraph letter stating to whom the law applied. Though
the judge did not admit his own previous lack of knowledge, the paragraph he cited and
the curt nature of his reply indicated his embarrassment.

Popenoe and Gosney tabulated the ﬁgures for Michigan for the period up to

January 1, 1936 as 1,555 total operations. They noted rather generously if not facetiously

 

‘5 Dixon, R.L. “Letter to Paul Popenoe, HBF, June 5, 1936” Sterilization Statistics. SWHA
‘6 McAvinchey, Frank. “Letter to Paul Poepnoe, HBF, June 24, 1936” Sterilization Statistics. SWHA

169

in the case of Michigan’s reporting that, “The ﬁgures by diagnosis from Michigan, Iowa
and Indiana, are to a very small degree the result of careful estimate, as accurate statistics
were lacking in regard to a few of the operations; but they are substantially correct.”17

The following year, the HBF proceeded to independently contact every institution
in the state in an effort to gather more accurate statistics. The results must have been
rather surprising, particularly as they only referred to the inmates in state institutions. In
addition to the twenty castrations performed at MHTS in Lapeer, the Ionia Reformatory
School had performed another Six along with the twenty vasectorrries done there. Jackson
Prison had performed one castration and six sterilizations on feebleminded inmates, with
another seven vasectomies on “others,” presumably sex offenders. Of the eleven
institutions responding, all but one had performed several sterilizations. The lone
exception was the Ionia Hospital, which had sterilized only one patient diagnosed as
insane.18

Apparently, Popenoe and Gosney gave up trying to tabulate the number of
sterilizations performed outside state institutions as their grand total from the state
institutions (1,696) was also the number issued in their nationwide summary for the state
as a whole. Evidently, the State Welfare Department had also given up in their attempts
at record keeping. The department’s new director, James Bryant wrote Popenoe
acknowledging receipt of the HBF’s survey of Michigan institutions, further noting,

Insofar as we are able to determine this information appears
authentic, and while there may be private hospitals in the

State of Michigan that perform sterilization operations, we
are not in a position to advise you as to the number

 

17 HBF. "Table of Sterilizations Performed In the United States, January 1, 1936” Sterilization Statistics.
SWHA

'8 HBF. “Table of Sterilizations Performed in Michigan State Institutions as of January 1, 1937”
Sterilizations Statistics. SWHA

170

performed. This pertains particularly to operations ordered
through the Probate Courts.19

The general lack of knowledge as to the extent of such operations was again evidenced
by the man nominally in charge, Hilmer Gellein, director of the Department of
Corrections. As late as March of 1938, he continued to report that “from 1923 to 1937,
inclusive, there were performed 1,103 sterilization operations and twenty castration
operations at the Michigan Home and Training School at Lapeer.” Yet, the MHTS had
reported to the HBF that as of January 1, 1937 they had performed 1,404 such operations.

If the MHTS’ director, Dr. Dixon was correct in his 1936 assessment, then the
overall numbers for the state, including the operations performed under Probate Court
orders may have been underestimated by ﬁfty percent or more. When Dr. Randall had
announced to the Third RBF Conference in 1928 that MHT S had performed 111 such
procedures in the ﬁrst four years since the passage of the 1923 statute, Judge Higbee had
proudly noted that his county alone had sterilized more than 115 by that time and that
“we are sterilizing at a greater rate in Kent County in the last two years than anywhere in
the United States.”20 Of the 339 sterilization records in the Archives of the State of
Michigan for the period from 1932 through 1937 inclusive, which at best represent half
of the cases, virtually all of the records refer to inmates of state institutions. Those cases,
which could conceivably be assigned to Judge Higbee’s jurisdiction, are very few. In his
address to the RBF in 1928, the judge voiced his disapproval of those state statutes, such
as California’s that allowed for the sterilization of the insane. Thus the cases from the

Kalamazoo State Hospital (for the Insane), a short distance from Grand Rapids [Kent

 

'9 Bryant, James. “Letter to Paul Popenoe. HBF. March 3, 1937" Sterilization Statistics. SWHA
20 Proceedings of Third RBF Conference. Pg. 178, 180.

171 '

County], are unlikely to be his, nor are those from the only other nearby institutions, the
Ionia Reformatory and Ionia Hospital (for the Insane).

Ms. Ketcham’s letter to the HBF indicates that sterilizations performed in
hospitals at the request of the probate courts were more numerous than Genesee County’s
Judge McAvinchey was aware. As all subsequent HBF requests for information were
directed only to state institutions, the full number of compulsory sterilization operations
performed in the state remained somewhat of a mystery. What was becoming ever more
clear from the HBF summaries was that the number of operations was increasing at a
rapid pace.

If Landman’s 1932 tabulation of 629 operations covered nearly the ﬁrst decade of
the program, then the rate of increase was indeed astounding, Within the following three
years, the ﬁgure nearly doubled to 1,239. The next year witnessed another 316
operations according to the HBF totals for state institutions only. Of these 180
represented patients categorized as insane.

In 1929, Michigan passed Public Act 281:1929, commonly referred to as the
"sterilization law". This law was enacted as a replacement for Public Act 285:1923 and
its subsequent amendments (PA. 71, 1925). Even with the confused legal picture the
1923 law enabled the state to sterilize approximately ﬁve hundred of its citizens before
the 1929 statute yet again broadened the scope of the state’s eugenic reach. The 1929
statute not only brought Michigan’s compulsory sterilization laws into greater accord
with provisions of the Buck v. Bell decision, but also permitted the sterilization of insane
persons with a “tendency towards idiocy or mental deﬁciency.”

With insanity now a legal form of mental deﬁciency under the 1929 law, the latter

172

term became an even broader catch all than before. In one sense, it may have been legally
necessary to include insanity within the purview of the statute as failure to due so could
be considered an arbitrary distinction between types of inheritable mental deﬁciencies.
The legislative intent of the law was the protection of society by the prevention of various
types of inherited social degeneracy.

The judiciary justiﬁed such actions as being within the police powers of the state
for this very reason, protection of the state/society from a clear and present danger. Part
of the legal justiﬁcation for sterilization statutes held that they were analogous to laws
mandating universal inoculation, the intent being to halt the propagation of malignant
disease. If both types of disease transmission (hereditary versus bacterial or viral
contamination) constituted potentially mortal threats to society, what then the difference
in the mode of transmission when compared to the ultimate outcome?

If it was necessary for the state to sterilize individuals who posed a hereditary
threat (in the form of the additional social cost of genetic degeneration), then
discriminating between different hereditary mental defects might be construed as a
violation of the equal protection clause. In the ﬁrst half of the century, available statistics
indicated signiﬁcant increases of mental illness in the population, and most physicians
considered treatment of these afﬂictions as problematic at best.

Before the advent of modern pharmacological agents, several forms of mental
illness, considered treatable today, remained incurable and progressively degenerative.
This remained the case throughout the ﬁrst half of the century. Insanity a broad term
itself encompassed two other very large diagnostic categories, dementias (schizophrenia,

related psychoses) and manic-depressive states. Though some psychiatrists recognized

173

other forms of mental illness, such as Huntington’s chorea, most other psychiatric terms
merely delineated subspecies within these major categories.

Both senile dementia and dementia praecox were considered a set of progressive
degenerative disorders with the latter representing only an earlier onset. Little hope of
remission existed for either of these broad categories. Psychiatrists recognized a
hereditary propagation of the disease, which failed to follow a simple Mendelian pattern
and thus fell into the category of a recessive multi-unit character form of inheritance.

Manic—depressive conditions often went into remission, but rarely stayed cured.
Such patients, particularly with milder forms of the disease, were expected to reenter the
outside world as semi-productive citizens though their eventual return to the institutional
setting was also considered highly likely, if not on a permanent basis then off and on
throughout their lives. The assumed pattern of inheritance seemed even more complicated
than for the dementias, yet for many psychiatrists a genetic component clearly existed.

Some pioneers like Freud focused on techniques, which held that some mental
illness, such as the neuroses, arose from environmental stress (psychic trauma) and thus
should be amenable to treatment. But most mental illness, which necessitated institutional
care, seemed to be the result of organic brain disease, in effect due to a physiological
defect. Many of these were clearly demonstrable upon autopsy. Whether such organic
defects arose from inborn genetic anomalies, physical trauma, or infectious processes was
arguable in individual cases, but the fact remained that such conditions seemed
progressively degenerative. Psychoanalytic techniques provided little hope for these
maladies.

A continuing chicken and egg debate existed about the etiology of some mental

174

conditions and continues in some form to this very day. Does behavior or psychic trauma
lead to changes in the organic structure and function of the brain or does the reverse hold
true? For most physicians of a hereditarian bent, the physiological structure and function
of the brain arose from the genetic instructions contained in the immutable germ plasm.

The central tenet of Mendelian genetics held that the germ plasm constituted an
immutable form in terms of its propagation, if directly traumatized the results were
inherited. For Lamarckians, it remained an open question at two levels. They believed in
the mutability of both somatic and germ cells. As Mendelian genetics gained ascendancy
throughout the century, belief in the positive mutability of somatic and germ cells waned.
This resulted in increasing pessimism about the possibility for reversing degenerative
physiological processes. All recognized that physical trauma either directly or as the
result of infectious agents could wreak havoc on normal organic development. This was
as true for insanity as for feeblemindedness. But for those cases in which the germ plasm
was implicated as the causative agent, their solution seemed clear, halt the genetic
propagation.

Failure to achieve improvement in the majority of cases led to a focus on
management and prevention. Most revolutionary treatments of the time resulted in more
manageable inmates, not cures. Electroshock and insulin shock therapies were joined by
surgical interventions such as prefrontal lobotomies. While some physicians claimed
remarkable patient outcomes, for most this was not the case. Such therapies generally
applied only to manic-depressives, a group whose conditions were always more amenable
to treatment than those of the psychotic patients (dementias). For the latter, management

often equated with physical restraint, chemical sedation or surgical intervention. Since

175

dysfunctional organic processes were seen as the cause of such disease, prevention
equaled lack of propagation, in effect, enforced sexual segregation or sterilization.

The HBF’s second study of California’s sterilization program showed that more
than half the men and a third of the women sterilized suffered from dementia praecox
(schizophrenia). Inmates with dementia praecox, considered a progressive degenerative
mental disease with virtually no hope of remission, were seldom paroled from
institutions. Yet, with the chronic shortfall in institutional space, many of those suffering
milder forms necessarily remained at large and sterilization was deemed appropriate
treatment.21 Of ninety-ﬁve patients sterilized at the Kalamazoo State Hospital for the
Insane between January 1933 and December 1937, 54 or about 57% were diagnosed with
dementia praecox. For both men and women sterilized at KSH, the frequency of a
diagnosis of dementia praecox was 58%.22 The majority of the rest were manic-
depressives.

The number of sterilizations performed at state institutions through the ﬁrst four
years of operation of the 1923 statute seems to have been well under two hundred total
with a similar number performed at hospitals under the sanction of the probate courts.
The Buck v. Bell decision and the national imprimatur it provided such legislation led to a
substantial increase in the number of operations in Michigan. Sterilizations were
performed primarily upon the feebleminded until passage of the 1929 Michigan act
permitting sterilization of the insane. By 1936 the state’s surgeons had operated upon one
hundred eighty patients classiﬁed as insane.

In order to answer Gosney and Popenoe’s HBF surveys, state ofﬁcials had to

 

2' Popenoe, Paul & Gosney Ezra. Twenty-eight Years of Sterilization in California. Pg. 10
22 Sterilization Rgguests. Archives of the State of Michigan. 1933-1937

176

investigate the number of such operations performed in the state. For some it seems to
have been a startling revelation. The surveys, which only initially requested information
on the total number of operations performed, evolved to include inquires about the
numbers of patients falling into various categories. Because the state had no central
clearing house for such information, the HBF wrote directly to all state institutions,
thereby becoming itself the source of information for state ofﬁcials seeking knowledge
about the extent of such practices.

The HBF survey for 1936 included information on the numbers of sterilizations
performed classiﬁed by sex and diagnosis (i.e. insane or feebleminded). By December
1937 the new State Hospital Commission deferred action on ﬁve requests for
sterilizations from the Kalamazoo State Hospital with the director of the commission
noting that “a great many questions were asked, and some feeling expressed in regard to a
possible promiscuous sterilization of numerous cases.”23

The commission’s director, Dr. Joseph Barrett noted in his letter to the hospital’s
superintendent that he had tried to explain to the commission that the procedure
requesting sterilization was similar to those used in the past and that all interested parties
were notiﬁed and given sufﬁcient time to ﬁle their objections. Dr. Barrett suggested that,
“in future this information “(family/guardian permissions)” be transmitted along with the
requests for permission and abstracts of the case records.” 24 After this meeting the

requests contained a great deal more information than previously supplied by the

Kalamazoo institution, yet the number of sterilizations performed on the insane continued

 

23 Barrett, Joseph. “Letter from Dr. Barrett, Director of State Hospital Commission to Dr. Morter, Medical
Superintendent of the Kalamazoo State Hospital.” December 8, 1937. Sterilization Rguests. Archives of
the State of Michigan. 1937.

2‘ Ibid.

177

to climb.

The I-[BF summary for sterilizations performed in Michigan up to January 1",
1930 lists 388 total. Presuming that this ﬁgure does not include the previous 115 plus
claimed for Kent County by Judge Higbee, then the state seems to have gone from about
twenty-ﬁve operations a year in the various institutions to over a hundred a year
following Buck v. Bell. Following passage of the 1929 act the number of sterilizations
performed upon the insane also averaged about twenty-ﬁve a year up until the 1937 HBF
(for the year ending 1936) survey documented eighty a year, whereupon the State
Hospital Commission began to take notice.

The 1937 HBF survey also revealed an interesting divergence in the selection of
insane patients. Three state institutions for the insane performed the vast majority of the
operations. The Kalamazoo institution had performed 111 operations with forty males
and seventy-one females receiving such treatment. The Ypsilanti facility performed ﬁfty-
one operations, ten upon males and forty—one upon women. The Traverse City hospital
had performed ﬁfty-three operations with only ﬁve on males while the remaining forty-
eight had been upon females. Unlike most states, Michigan was sterilizing its insane
female inmates at much higher rates than the males. The national ratio in 1937 was nearly
equal while Michigan’s was nearer to 3.5:1. For the feebleminded such a divergence in
numbers had been commonplace for a number of reasons.

The premise among most eugenicists was that prevention of propagation could be
accomplished through two direct actions, segregation and sterilization. The larger number
of sterilizations performed upon feebleminded women involved the generally less severe

forms of such mental deﬁciencies among women and thus the greater likelihood of their

178

parole. The additional information contained on a woman’s second X chromosome in
many cases supplied information missing or damaged in their male counterparts. Though
the reason behind this was not understood at the time, general observations of genetic
abnormalities showed male forms of feeblenrindedness to be more profound. In many
cases of genetic defect males are sterile (e.g. Down’s Syndrome). Doctors had also
observed the differing ratios in the sexual transmission of genetic defects in several
disease states, most notably Huntingtons chorea and hemophilia.

Nationwide two times as many feebleminded women were sterilized as men. Not
only was their mental incapacity less than their male counterparts, but eugenicists such as
Vaughan felt that women generally exercised more control in the selection of sexual
partners. Their belief was that women of normal intellect would certainly not select
feebleminded males as consorts thereby restricting the reproductive possibilities of the
latter, while men in general and feebleminded women in particular tended not to be
terribly selective in picking their purely sexual partners. These casual observations on the
sexual selectivity of the sexes by contemporaries have since been born out by
evolutionary psychology.

Segregation in state psychiatric institutions failed to prevent opportunities for
sexual liaisons. Though segregated by sex in separate buildings, even the Kalamazoo
State Hospital patients were allowed to attend church every Sunday, football games at the
local university, and dances most Saturday evenings. Though this group of patients would
be considered under close supervision, this did not mean that there were not opportunities

for sexual encounters, as the staff was well aware, and constantly on guard against.25

 

25 Conversation with Miss Virginia Hill R.N., Director of Nursing Education, Hurley Hospital, Flint,
Michigan. September 1993.

179

In the case of individuals sterilized at the state institutions for the insane, prior
behavioral problems may have provided more impetus for sterilization than the
possibility of parole, but pressure for paroling patients increased through the Great
Depression. State governments had less money to spend on the maintenance of the states’
wards and there never enough beds available. In addition it could be reasonably assumed
that the number of people suffering various mental health problems during those trying
times was on the increase.

In March 1938, the Detroit Free Press carried an article claiming that over one
hundred mental patients in Saginaw County were housed in county facilities awaiting
transfer to state institutions. Some of the commitments were over twenty years old.
Saginaw County Probate Judge John Murphy stated that two years previously cells had
been established at the county jail but that, this wasn’t enough, so the others have had to
be placed in the regular jail quarters.”26

1937 marked a sea change in the rate of sterilizations of the insane in Kalamazoo
county. Dr. Morter’s letter to the HBF surveyors for that year reports no sterilizations for
his institution, “because of the growing reluctance on the part of the Judges of Probate to
issue the legal order. This is largely due to sentiment on the part of the public, which
seems to be veering away from sterilization as a eugenic measure.”27 Only two such
operations were performed at the Kalamazoo institution during 1938 while the Traverse
City facility maintained its previous rate of about ten such operations a year. The state

hospital for the insane at Pontiac performed another 39 operations that year though they

fail to detail diagnosis. The decline in such procedures upon the insane originated at the

 

2” “Neglect of Insane is Cited by Judge” Detroit Free Pres_s. March 3, 1938.
27 Morter, R. “Response to HBF Questionnaire” Sterilization Records. SWHA. 1937

180

local level only in 1938, but by 1939 the change was evident throughout the state.

Kalamazoo again performed no such operations, while Traverse City reported
only a third as many as the previous year. The Pontiac institution performed only three,
one-thirteenth the number operated on in the prior year. Yet the statewide reversal lasted
only a short period. The following year, Traverse City would more than double the
number sterilized the previous year while Pontiac accounted for another three. Only the
Kalamazoo institution ceased performing such operations. By the end of 1940 over three
hundred of the insane had been sterilized in Michigan. But fear of the “possible
promiscuous number of cases” cited by the State Hospital Commission seems to have
eventually led to a substantial decline in sterilizations upon the insane. Through the rest
of the decade less than ten procedures a year resulted from a diagnosis of insanity.

The increased awareness brought about by the HBF’S surveys also led to an early
denouement for an anticipated increase in operations performed upon the state’s prison
population. In March of 1938 the director of the Department of Corrections, Hilmer
Gellein, wrote the director of the State Welfare Department, James Bryant regarding the
current state of the law regarding compulsory sterilizations, “In conclusion, I might state
that the law is well settled as far as idiots, imbeciles, insane, epileptic and feeble minded
persons are concerned.”28 Noting legal opinion in regards to the sterilization of the insane
and others not labeled feebleminded, Gellein concluded,

The law relative to feebleminded persons can be considered
a matter of universal recognition. As far as the sterilization
of sex criminals or repeaters of sex crimes or any other
crimes, we are at present starting upon the threshold of a

new ﬁeld which will undoubtedly raise a greater storm of
protest than did Indiana’s ﬁrst sterilization law thirty-one

 

28 Gellein Hilmer. “Letter to Mr. Bryant.” March 9, 1938. Sterilization Reguests. State Archives of
Michigan.

181

years ago.29
While the state sterilized a few prisoners in the past, plans for expanding such a policy
were stillborn in 1938. The state prisons and reformatories reported no sterilizations
performed in 1939 or 1940.30 Yet, Gellein’s assertion regarding the situation regarding
sterilization of the feebleminded remained true, both in law and among the lay public.

The MHTS in Lapeer continued to sterilize around one hundred of its inmates

each year with two to three times as many procedures performed on females as males.
With the presumed higher parole rates of feeblerrrinded women, this kind of disparity
made sense and was also reﬂected in national statistics. One other Michigan institution
produced similar numbers and ratios. Dr. Haynes, former director of the MI-IT S and
collaborator with Burke Shartel in framing the 1923 and 1925 statutes, as director of the
University Hospital in Ann Arbor reported to the HBF that his institution performed 103
sterilizations in 1940 (28 male and 75 female), slightly down from the 136 (18 male and
118 female) of the previous year. All but four of the sterilizations were listed as non-
eugenic, the other four being on feebleminded. In his letter to the HBF explaining the
category of “others,” Dr. Haynes stated,

The majority of these individuals were female patients who

were suffering from chronic illness, which could cause any

further pregnancies to endanger the life of the patient, or be

detrimental to her health. After consultation with at least

two specialists, the sterilization operations were performed.

We regret that it is impossible for us to give you
any further information regarding the 132 sterilization

operations. In order for us to release any further
information, it would be necessary for us to have the signed

 

’9 Ibid. Pg. 6

3° Kling, V.F. “Michigan Reformatory (Ionia) Response to 1937 HBF Questionnaire” S_terilizraion Records.
SWHA; Apparently, the Department of Corrections plans to enlarge the sterilization program among the
prison population had proceeded to a limited extent. The reformatory’s medical director reported six
sterilizations, three of which were castrations, presumably upon inmates incarcerated for sex crimes.

182

authorization from the patients.31
The HBF was in a quandary about how to include such ﬁgures. They had a category for
“others,” but their totals for the state do not seem to accurately reﬂect those supplied by
the Ann Arbor hospital as such.

The HBF compiled ﬁgures on the basis of operations performed under state laws,
in effect, laws related to compulsory sterilization. The category of “others” usually
referred to “eugenic” sterilizations not included as either insane or feebleminded. The
people who fell into this category under the Michigan law included “epileptic persons,
moral degenerates and sexual perverts.”32 The I-[BF survey ﬁgures on “others” seems to
refer to just these latter categories, particularly operations at the Wahameja facility for
epileptics, though patients with epilepsy were sterilized at a number of other facilities
also, notably the MHT S.

From what Dr. Haynes stated in his letter to the HBF, it could be inferred these
sterilizations required no permission under state law as they were medically indicated.
What was interesting about these numbers is that the Ann Arbor hospital now found itself
performing four to ﬁve times as many sterilizations per year solely on the basis of
medical indications than it had done in all categories in previous years. In the years
immediately prior to 1939, the vast majority of cases fell under the diagnosis of insane or
feebleminded. The Ann Arbor hospital’s response to the survey also revealed some
confusion about their accounting of the operations in this period. Their June 1938

questionnaire reported under “others” seven males and twenty-one females, all

 

3’ Haynes, H.A. “Letter to Mr. Reid, Assistant Secretary HBF“ January 29, 1940. Sterilization Records.
SWHA. Dr. Haynes speciﬁcally stated that in all but four cases of feeblemindedness. all Sterilizations at his
hospital were for non-eugenic purposes. Further proof that the Ann Arbor ﬁgures were not included in the

183

speciﬁcally identiﬁed as normal. An additional two women in the category of insane
were also recorded for a grand total of thirty. The report was later amended to record ﬁve
males and seventeen females as feebleminded with eight under “other operations.”
Apparently, the amended report indicates eugenic sterilizations on patients previously
identiﬁed as normal.

Because the Sterilizations Dr. Haynes referred to were performed on the medical
recommendations of at least two concurring specialists, he seems to imply that no patient!
guardian permissions were needed. What may be indicated in the Ann Arbor survey
reports is a practice of sterilization in the operating room at the determination of the
surgeon. At this time surgeons stalked hospital halls like gods. They practiced their arts
on almost every conceivable malady. Surgeons tried various techniques for an
increasingly wide range of illnesses; collapsing lungs (pneumothorax) and removing parts
of the rib cage (thoractomy) in tubercular patients. Radical mastectomies and
hysterectomies were routine treatments for patients suffering from cancers of the breast
or female reproductive organs. The removal of “extraneous organs” for medical
indications (such as the spleen during appendectomies) while performing related surgery
was not unheard of either.33

With the increase in the number of sterilizations done in Ann Arbor the question

of whether the hospital’s physicians had come across a means of circumventing the law

 

HBF summaries is evidenced by the comment of erroneous on the Ann Arbor questionnaire with a
reference to a letter of February 2, 1941.

32 Public Acts of Michigan. PA. 281: 1929. Pg. 689

33 Scale, Clive & Pattison, Stephen. Medicalgnowledge: Doubt and Certainty. (Ballmore: The Open
University, 1994) Pg. 48-49; Dally, Ann. Women Under the Knife: A History of Surgery. (New York:
Routledge, 1991) Pg. 137-140, 190-192. With the advent of Lister’s antiseptic surgical techniques in the
mid-19th century, abdominal surgeries became much more routine. By the late 18003 articles with titles
such as “Unnecessary Operations: The Opprobrium of Modern Surgery” and “Frenzied Surgery of the
Abdomen” had begun to appear in medical journals.

184

must be asked. It certainly seems strange that the hospital was performing so many more
sterilizations after 1937, and that sterilization for chronic ailments had previous to 1936
accounted for so few of the recommendations. In listing the 316 sterilizations performed
at the University Hospital from 1925 through 1935, Miss. Babcock, the record librarian,
stated, “All of these cases have been performed at the request of the Probate Courts of the
State because of feeble-mindedness, mental retardation, promiscuity associated with the
above or venereal disease.”34

With the number of sterilizations performed outside of state institutions at the
request of the probate courts and others performed for medical indications, most of which
seem not to be catalogued in the HBF summaries, it is nearly impossible to ascertain how
many such operations were performed throughout the state. With the advent of the HBF
surveys and their realization of the confused state of affairs, or as the University of
Michigan’s Dorothy Ketcham noted, “wide variation of actual practice,” state ofﬁcials
and the public became increasingly aware of the rapid increase in the numbers of those
being sterilized. While this led to a diminution in the numbers of such operations upon
the insane and criminal population in state institutions, it had no such effect upon those
labeled feebleminded.

Through the 19403 Michigan institutions sterilized on average one hundred
feebleminded patients in each year. Only ten or less of the insane suffered such a fate.
After 1953 the overall number of sterilizations started to decrease signiﬁcantly, varying
between seventy to twenty-six operations a year with an average of thirty-seven. By 1956

the number of sterilizations performed on the insane generally equaled the feebleminded.

The ﬁrst half of the 19303 witnessed the largest number of sterilizations with one

 

3" Babcock, Florence. “Letter to ES. Gosney, HBF” February 13, 1936. Sterilization Records. SWHA

185

hundred forty-one such operations performed in 1936. This was the year Dr. Morter
requested some sixty sterilization in his facility alone, which led to the State Hospital
Commission’s questioning of his practices and the local probate judges’ refusal to
sanction more sterilizations in his county. This reduction in the number of sterilizations
upon the insane continued for years afterwards throughout the state. Because of large
disparities in the types of statistics the HBF was able to obtain from the state there was
really no way to make an accurate estimate of how many Michigan citizens and wards
fell under the state’s scalpels. By the end of 1963 the minimum stood around four
thousand. How many more unaccounted for operations occurred varies tremendously.
The 132 “non-eugenic” sterilizations performed in Ann Arbor in one year and
subsequently left out of the state’s statistics would lead to much higher numbers
depending on whether one accepts the suspicious categorization of non-eugenic.35

Some years witnessed signiﬁcant variations in the numbers of sterilizations
performed. It seems nearly 173 feebleminded were sterilized in 1940 alone. The
incompleteness of the records for this period makes it difﬁcult to ascertain where these
sterilizations occurred. Throughout WWII approximately eighty operations were done
each year with the number jumping to a hundred and more after the completion of
demobilization. In another possibly war [Korean] related statistic, the number of
feebleminded sterilized in 1951 dropped to half the previous year rebounding to previous
levels in 1952 and 1953.

Equally mysterious was the upsurge in sterilization of the insane. In 1950 only

one sterilization had been performed on an insane patient, while in 1951 the number

 

35 Morter, R. “Response to HBF Questionnaire” Sterilizations Statistics. SWHA 1937; “Report on
Sterilizations Reported From States With Sterilization Laws” Sterilization Statistics. SWHA 1937

186

increased to thirty, all women. Of all the Sixty-six sterilizations performed in 1951 on
both the feebleminded and insane, all were upon women. Every year after that averaged
about ﬁve such procedures. Most all of the sterilizations on inmates in hospitals for the
insane were women. From 1941 through 1948 only four male inmates were sterilized
while nearly ﬁfteen times that number of women were operated upon. In the next decade
no male inmate would be sterilized while over sixty-two women would fall under the
institutions’ scalpels.

For two years after demobilization (1947 and 1948), sterilizations among the
feebleminded ran about equal numbers, but subsequently reverted to ratios of about two
or three to one. Through the middle part of the next decade an average of sixty .
feebleminded patients received sterilization averaging a little over thirteen a year
thereafter. In the three decades from 1933 to 1963 the HBF records show the state
sterilized some 3,786 persons for eugenic reasons. Seventy-six percent of these
operations were carried out on the feebleminded, seventy-three percent of those sterilized
were women. Women accounted for eighty-two percent of the insane and seventy-two
percent of the feebleminded. Of the HBF category of others, women accounted for
seventy-eight percent. Most women in this category suffered from epilepsy, while many
of the men were presumably sex offenders, some twenty of the latter suffering castration
rather than vasectomy.36

These statistics fail to include the Ann Arbor hospital’s category of others, which
for 1939 accounted for 132 procedures not noted in the HBF survey. Women accounted

for a startling eighty-nine percent (n=118) of this number. The University Hospital

 

187

sterilized more patients in that year than all state institutions combined. Their previous
obfuscation of the numbers sterilized and the categories to which they belonged suggest a
much larger “sterilization situation” than the hospital’s authorities admitted to the HBF
surveyors.

If not for the diligence of the I-IBF’S founders, Gosney and Popenoe, it would be
nearly impossible to ascertain the extent of Michigan’s program, if indeed such a level of
variation and local practice can be called a program. Ironically, Gosney and Popenoe,
avowed advocates of compulsory sterilization, revealed to the public and state health
ofﬁcials the extent of such practices, and ironically, most likely many other hapless
wards of the state would have lost their ability to reproduce without their efforts to
promote eugenic sterilization.

The “wide variation in actual practice” Dorothy Ketcham referred to 1937
bespeaks of a similar phenomenon that was about to occur with one of the latecomers to
the sterilization game, Nazi Germany. Not until Hitler’s accession to power in 1933 did
Germany have a sterilization statute though many doctors had advocated such laws for
years. When Hitler proclaimed it the law, Germany set up a nationwide program with
courts and review panels modeled on the Laughlin’s model law.37 Laughlin was granted
an honorary doctorate from one of Germany’s most eminent universities in recognition of

his contributions to the eugenics sterilization movement.38

 

3" HBF & Birthright Compilations of Sterilizations Performed in States with Sterilization Law. Sterilization
Statistics. SWHA. 1933-1963

37 Kuhl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Raaism and Gemn Nationaﬁociali_sng. (New
York: Oxford Universiy Press, 1994). Pg. 24-26; Weindling. Paul. Health, Race and Germﬂ Politics
Between national Uniﬁcation and Nazism, 1870-1945. Pg. 504

3" Kuhl, Stefan. The Nazi Connecﬁ_o_a._Pg. 86-88. For the 550th anniversary of the founding of the
University of Heidelberg, the Nazi regime chose to celebrate the “new spirit” of academia in Germany by
awarding honorary degrees to well-known German and foreign scientists as a means of courting American
eugenicists. Laughlin and Foster Kennedy, both eminent American eugenicists, were awarded honorary

188

Despite the uniformity of Germany’s law, practice varied in different
jurisdictions leading to what some have referred to as the “wild” time of sterilization and
euthanasia. Michigan’s “variation in actual practice” bears an unappetizing resemblance
in many ways with physicians and local judges pursuing their individual eugenic
agendas. But through the HBF’S efforts at promotion, Michigan came to have a more
transparent process, even if the result was the opposite of what Gosney and Popenoe had
hoped, in effect, greater resistance rather than support for eugenic measures.

It is arguable whether Michigan would have proved as reluctant to pursue its
eugenic program if it had suffered the human losses Germany had in the First World War,
undergone the depth of ﬁscal crises of Germany’s Great Depression or the humiliation
imposed by the victors. The German’s were not originators of their practices. They took
them to extremes perhaps unimagined in the United States, but then perhaps they were
imagined here, too. Dr. Randall in addressing the Third Race Betterment Conference in
1928, commented on the 75,000 feebleminded in the state noting that “sterilization was
not a panacea” but an instrument in controlling the growth of this population. According
to ofﬁcial ﬁgures the state barely exceeded sterilizing ﬁve percent of this number. All the
justiﬁcations that German physicians and eugenics advocates used to rationalize their
program were already extant in the America. Even the most heinous of German eugenic

actions had its American counterparts.

 

doctorates in 1936. Kennedy, a psychiatrist and member of the Euthanasia Society of he United States,
gained notoriety for his advocacy of killing the mentally handicapped. In 1939, Kennedy, who advocated
that “euthanasia be legalized for creatures born defective,” resigned his membership in the society because
of their advocacy of voluntary euthanasia only. In 1934, the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University in
Frankfurt awarded a doctorate of science to Henry Fairﬁeld Osborn, founder of the American Eugenics
Society, President of the Second International Eugenics Congress, founder of Columbia University’s
biology department and President of the American Museum of Natural History; Lifton, Robert. The Nazi
Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1986). Pg. 38.

189

The euthanasia of defective newborns was also advocated in Michigan (see
Lincoln Rodgers).39 Though it never became law, the practice remained one of the dirty
little secrets of the medical profession for decades. Some physicians “set aside” the
defective newborns while attending to the mother. If in the judgement of the surgeon, the
mother’s condition took precedence over the child’s then who could dare to second-
guess? Such practice could be likened to the surgeon’s judgement to sterilize a patient in
the course of performing a related procedure, such as c-sections, abortions, or operations
related to post operative infections or bleeding. In the medical profession derogatory
terms for these unfortunates included FLKs and FLPs, funny-looking-kids and funny-
looking-parents. Such terms of derision were not the province of the medical profession
alone, though their origin remained clear enough. A 19703 “Medical Issue” of the
National Lampoon listed a full page of such terms.

The widespread use of such medical jargon implies that Michigan’s medical
personnel were not very different from those in other states. Responses to HBF
questionnaires to other states often bore a striking resemblance to Michigan’s situation,
from which one might infer a similar level of confusion or ignorance. It is primarily due
to Gosney and Popenoe that we can begin to ascertain the range of these programs. If not
for the public attention they generated the number of sterilizations in Michigan would
most certainly have been greater. This was probably the case in other states as well. Their
labors seemed to have been entirely fruitless. Their bid to invoke a competitive spirit
among the states with sterilization statutes to accomplish more than their likeminded
neighbors failed in most cases. Their attempts to encourage states without such laws to

adopt them by example with those that did contributed to a virtual cessation in the

 

39 See Chapter Five, Pg. 135

190

proposal of new eugenic legislative throughout the country.

Following the death of Ezra Gosney and the demise of the HBF in 1942,
Birthright, Inc., successor to the ill-fated New Jersey Sterilization League, took over the
task of surveying and compiling the states’ sterilization statistics. They continued their
efforts through 1963 when the organization transformed itself into the Association for
Voluntary Sterilization, an advocacy group for women’s right to obtain voluntary
sterilizations (for reasons of birth control) throughout the nation. Ironically for them, they
were again ahead of their time in terms of sterilization of the “socially deﬁcient.” By the
19903, Michigan citizens would have to sue state agencies to provide or even allow their
handicapped children sexual sterilizations. But by then the AVS was gone, having at least

helped many mothers get the sterilizations they desired.

191

Chapter Seven: Michigan in Context: The National Perspective

While Michigan’s program of compulsory sterilization was unique in some ways,
it also mirrored trends in other states. An analysis of other states with such laws provides
a picture as to why there was so much variation in practice between states. Much of the
divergence was related to when and where laws were enacted. Treatment regimens
changed over time and with some regions seemingly decades behind others in the relative
dissemination of eugenic knowledge a diversity in practice was inevitable. As political
and ﬁnancial circumstances varied between states so too did their eugenic programs.
Introducing even more variability into the equation, the inﬂuence and actions of
individuals (e.g. state governors and directors of institutions) and courts could have
remarkable effects upon sterilization policy within and without a state.

Thanks to the Human Betterment Foundation and Birthright surveys a comparison
of the various state programs can be made for the years after 1930. Prior to that time the
periodic surveys and studies by eugenics advocates such as Harry Laughlin and J.H.
Landman offer only intermittent snapshots of the programs. Even with this data, the
historian is bereft of important demographic information that might shed light on the
development and evolution of the different states’ eugenic agendas. For these reasons,
piecing together the available statistics on the nascent compulsory sterilization programs
is of great importance and yet exceedingly difﬁcult.

Currently state administrators seem willing to issue blanket mea culpas for the
actions of their predecessors, yet resist opening their ﬁles to historians for fear of opening
a Pandora’s Box of litigation. Michigan’s Department of Community Health has issued

such a blanket apology, but resists efforts to view their ﬁles. The department hides behind

192

“concerns” of patient conﬁdentiality, ﬁnding this excuse judicially preemptive of
investigators’ efforts with Freedom of Information Act requests. Unless and until this
situation changes the history of eugenic sterilization in the United States will remain
obscured by bureaucratic intransigence on these issues. For the time being the best that
can be done is to survey the available demographic information in conjunction with what
relevant anecdotal evidence exists to sketch the general patterns of such programs.

The ﬁrst program of eugenic sterilization began not as a state sanctioned program
at all, but as a “medical intervention.” In 1899 a nineteen year-old inmate of Indiana’s
J effersonville Reformatory approached the institution’s physician with a rather unusual
request. The young man, who masturbated from four to ten times daily, sought castration
as a means of ending an obsession that contemporary physicians, believed responsible for
a range of ailments including dwarﬁsm, idiocy, rotting teeth, tuberculosis, early death and
a general decline of the human race. In his sections on the degenerative effects of the
“secret vice,” Kellogg at least included all, but rotting teeth in his 1890 health guide
entitled, Mn Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of
Organic Life.l

Dr. Harry Sharpe instead performed a vasectomy, which within three weeks

according to the doctor, led to the cessation of masturbation and hence to improved

 

I Kellogg, John Harvey. Plain Facts for Old and Young: Embracing the Natural History and Hygiene of
Organic Life. (Burlington: I.F. Senger & Co., 1891), http://etext.lib.virginiaedu/modeng/modengO.
browse.html, 1995, Pg. 119, Kellogg noted the “reproductive act is the most exhaustive of all vital acts. Its
effect upon an undeveloped person is to retard growth, weaken the constitution, and dwarf the intellect”;
Pg. 280, The vice causing “no end to the nervous affections to which the sufferer from this vice is
subjected. Headaches, neuralgias, symptoms resembling hysteria, sudden alternations of heat and cold,
irregular ﬂushing of the face, and many other affections,. . .Epilepsy. -- This disease has been traced to the
vile habit. . .. Dimness of vision, arnaurosis, spots before the eyes, with other forms of ocular weakness, are
common results of this vice.”; Pg. 282, “That solitary vice is one of the most common causes of insanity.”;
Pg. 183 -- If the practice is continued uninterruptedly from boyhood to manhood, imbecility and idiocy are
the result. Demented individuals are met in no small numbers in hospitals and asylums. . .who owe to this
vice their awful condition.”

193

health and school work. Encouraged by these results, Sharpe operated on seventy-six
inmates by the end of the year without accident or unfavorable symptoms. It was then
that Dr. Sharpe received an epiphany, “it occurred to me that this would be a good
method of preventing procreation in the defective and physically unﬁt.”2

Dr. Sharpe thus became an advocate of compulsory sterilization and persuaded
the institution’s superintendent, W.H. Whittaker to introduce a eugenic sterilization bill
before the legislature in 1905. Though the ﬁrst bill died in committee, a second proposal
in 1907 gained the legislature’s approval and Governor J. Frank Hanly signed it into law.
The statute required the sterilization of conﬁrmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists
in state institutions when recommended by a board of experts.”3 The bill proved to be of
limited effectiveness, particularly outside of the Jeffersonville institution. With Governor
Thomas Marshall’s inauguration in 1909, the law became essentially a dead letter when
the governor notiﬁed the “authorities at Jeffersonville not to continue sterilization,
otherwise he would take steps to see that the law was declared unconstitutional.”4

In the meantime, Dr. Sharpe had performed over four hundred ﬁfty vasectomies
upon the inmates there. Of these 118 were performed under the law’s aegis in 1908,
while those previous to the statute’s passage were presumably voluntary and/or medically
necessary. The law allowed at least seven Indiana institutions to perform such operations

though most secondary sources note that only two sterilizations were performed outside

of the Jeffersonville reformatory. In fact, Laughlin received a letter in 1921 from Dr.

 

2 Haller, Mark. Elmenics: H_ereditarjan Attitudes in American Thought. (New Brunswick: Rutgers,
University Press, 1963). Pg. 49
3 Haller. Pg. 50

‘ Laughlin. Harry. Eugenical Sterilization in the United States. (Chicago: Chicago Psychopathic
Laboratory, 1922). Pg. 63

194

George Bliss of the Indiana School for Feeble-Minded Youth in Fort Wayne attesting to
the fact that they had performed more than the two generally cited.5

Governor James Goodrich favored sterilization and so informed the state’s
institutions in 1920. In May of that year the law went before the Supreme Court of
Indiana and was declared unconstitutional as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Thereupon, Indiana’s second sterilization hiatus began, ending in 1927 with the passage
of a new statute. In 1931 the legislature enacted a third law as a step towards extending
the procedures to the general community.6 Though Landman’s 1932 survey claimed only
120 sterilizations performed under the aegis of these latter laws, the 1930 HBF survey
recorded 120 vasectomies and three salpingectomies. The Human Betterment
Foundation’s 1933 survey showed that in the three succeeding years, Indiana sterilized
another thirty-nine men and ﬁfty-ﬁve women.7 By the end of 1935 Indiana had sterilized
438 people within the statute’s provisions not including the earlier operations performed
by Sharpe prior to enactment of the statutes. Of these, a little over four hundred or 92%
were upon the feebleminded. N inety-eight percent of the two hundred and sixty-ﬁve men
sterilized had a diagnosis of feeblemindedness, while only eighty-two percent of the
women were so categorized. At this time, Indiana began sterilizing inmates in its
institutions for the insane and women comprised a disproportionate eighty-six percent of
this total. By the following year, the state’s institutions for the insane nearly doubled the
number of patients they sterilized, but attained a more equal gender distribution by

sterilizing nearly eight times as many men as in the previous year. For the ﬁrst time the

 

5 Ibid. Pg. 63-64. Bliss stated in February 1921 that, “we have sterilized one girl this summer and will
operate on another this week. We performed a few operations in 1908 just after the law was passed”;
Landman, J .H. Humaﬁterilization: The Histog of the Human Sterilization Movement. (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1932) Pg. 56, 231; Haller. Pg. 49-50

195

insane made up the majority of asexualizations performed in a year comprising ﬁfty-eight
percent of the total (111).8

The rate of sterilization in the state slowed somewhat during the war years but
rose immediately afterwards to an all time high of 192 procedures in 1946. While the
numbers would hardly ever again reach half this ﬁgure another trend emerges from this
peak year, the feeblerrrinded comprised ninety-two percent of the total. With the
remarkable exception of 1952, when seventy-eight percent of those sterilized were
categorized as insane. On average the feebleminded would make up ninety percent of the
sterilized population throughout the middle part of the decade. From then on an
increasing propensity to sterilize the insane coincided with reduced numbers of
sterilizations on the feebleminded to provide a more equal distribution between the two
categories, but while the male and female feebleminded had been sterilized in equivalent
numbers throughout this latter period of the state’s eugenic project, this was not so for the
insane. For the last eight years where survey data is available, among the insane selected
for sterilization, women made up eighty percent of this number.

This ratio indicated a kind of gender discrimination not so negative as it might at
ﬁrst appear. Two advances in treating the mentally ill conspired to increase the number of
women sterilized. With the advent of new drug therapies, patients became more
manageable and the likelihood of parole increased. Dr. Sharpe had ﬁrst popularized
vasectomy at the turn of the century as a means of altering behaviors associated with
hypersexuality and thus the procedure was often used on patients considered

unmanageable within the institutional setting, rather than as prelude to parole. By mid-

 

6 Landman. Pg. 54-56
7 HBF “Operations for Eugenie Sterilization.” Sterilization Statistics. SWHA 1930, 1933

196

century this contention became less tenable and as new drugs made patients in general
more manageable the indications for male sterilization decreased. The intermittent nature
of many manic-depressive disorders meant that these sufferers had always been more
likely to be paroled, women in particular. Drug therapies increased these numbers and
sterilization as a eugenic condition of parole meant that women would be sterilized in
greater proportions in consequence.9

Indiana’s eugenic sterilization program resembled Michigan’s in many ways.
Though beginning much earlier, it had suffered a decade long hiatus through the
intervention of the governor rather than as a result of legal challenges in the courts. Yet in
both cases the constitutionality of the law was questioned and eventually found wanting.
Until these issues had been fully resolved in Buck v. Bell, sterilization remained a
marginal means of achieving eugenicists’ goals. Though in numbers Michigan sterilized
far more people than Indiana, more than ﬁfty percent more than Indiana’s total, their
proportions of the general population sterilized were about equal at 56.7 and 53.6 per
hundred thousand respectively. This was not surprising in that their statutes bore a
striking resemblance in who they labeled cacogenic. Institutional sizes and types

paralleled each other and the population demographics were very Similar. They differed

most in the gender disparity between who was sterilized.

 

8 HBF “Table of Sterilizations” Sterilization Statistics. SWHA 1936, 1937

9 Popenoe, Paul. Twenty-eight of Sterilization in California Pg. 12-13. Popenoe summarized contemporary
opinion in noting that after age 25, women provided half again many manic-depressive than males. He
explained this as a result of men’s higher rate (three to four times higher) of adult suicide and “the further
fact that the burdens of marriage and childbearing bring about nervous breakdowns in many women who
otherwise might escape them.” He noted that the ﬁrst survey of California program found that of those
sterilized in state (mental) hospitals, manic-depressives accounted for 17% of those sterilized with women
accounting for 47%; the second survey found 21% and 37% respectively. Though his ﬁgures fail to jibe
with the HBF totals of the period, this most probably reﬂects that most insane males were sterilized with a
diagnosis of dementia.

197

¢_ ‘1

In this sense Michigan’s program more closely resembled those of other
Midwestern states, while Indiana’s program paralleled California’s experience of a nearly
equal gender distribution. California was the second state to enact a eugenic sterilization
statute and remained the largest program in the nation both in the Sheer number of cases
but also as a proportion of the population sterilized. Through the ﬁrst two decades of the
laws Operation, the mentally ill accounted for more than two-thirds of California’s
sterilizations. Popenoe explained this situation by noting the acute nature of psychiatric
illnesses demanded more immediate attention than feebleminded cases as the former
presented a more imminent threat to themselves and their society than the latter,
particularly in the view of most citizens. For this reason claimed Popenoe, all states
provided more institutional care for the insane, in California’s case more than three times
as much. Despite the state’s provision for the insane, inmate populations routinely
exceeded accommodations by forty percent. With the intermittent nature of manic-
depressive illness and thus the increased likelihood of parole as a means of freeing up
beds for more acute cases, sterilization as a condition of parole resulted in higher
proportions of the operations upon the insane. At least this was Popenoe’s explanation,
and presumably that of the state’s authorities as they “cooperated unreservedly” in both
HBF studies and instigated the second survey.10

During the 19103 approximately two hundred people were sterilized each year. In
what became a pattern of increasing tempo over the next two decades, forty-two hundred

sterilizations took place in the twenties. Initially, nearly half again as many males as

 

1° Ibid. Pg. 1, 6-8, 13-17. Popenoe records that of the 4500 admissions to state hospitals for the insane 45%
eventually returned to their homes, generally in less than one year. Based on a New York study, he
assumed that only a quarter of these “actually represented a durable recovery.” He noted that “of very four

198

females lost their ability to procreate. By 1930 the gender ratio evened up reﬂecting an
increased frequency in the sterilization of women inmates throughout the prior decade.
Throughout the 19303, on average the state sterilized nearly seven hundred patients a year
with feebleminded inmates making up a progressively larger fraction of the totals. While
the feebleminded accounted for about 30% of the total through 1935, by 1950 they
regularly represented almost 60% of those sterilized in a given year. The number of
procedures declined throughout the immediate postwar period; by 1950, less than four
hundred operations a year were being performed. In 1951, the last year when over two
hundred sterilizations were performed, the feebleminded made up seventy-two percent of
the total. A precipitous decline in California’s sterilization program throughout the latter
half of the decade was matched by an even more drastic decline in the number of
feebleminded sterilized.11

What emerges from an analysis of the California yearly totals as parsed by
diagnosis, is that among the feebleminded proportionately more females were sterilized
than males, about 20% more, conversely males represented 56% of the totals for the
mentally ill category. In discussing the psychiatric inmates, Popenoe notes, “the largest
number of patients is made up those suffering from dementia praecox (shizophrenia)
.....the most incurable of any of the important types of insanity. . .” ﬁlling “more hospital

beds in the US. than any other one disease, physical or mental.”12 What Popenoe and

 

“ﬁrst admissions” who were subsequently discharged, only one had been sterilized. Others are of an age
when parenthood is improbable, or for some other reason are not likely to have children”

” Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States, California Totals. The following examples are
illustrative of the trends. The following show total number of sterilizations up to the cited year: 1921, 1,492
males/1,065 females; 1930, 3,636 males/3,151 females; 1941, 7,495 males/7.073 females; 1951, 10,093
males/9,605 females. The following Show the number of cases per year: 1945, 258 feebleminded out of 436
total operations, equaling 59%; for 1951, 198 of 275 = 72%; 1953, 21 of 39 = 53%; 1955, 10 of 27 = 37%;
1957, 4 of 23 = 17%.

12 Popenoe. Twenty-eight Yeara. Pg. 10-11.

199

presumably the state authorities collaborating in the study failed to spell out was why so
many of the insane were sterilized, particularly as a large proportion of these (i. e. the
incurable shizophrenics) were unlikely candidates for parole. Popenoe asserted that,
“more than one half of the men and one-third of the women sterilized in California state
hospitals, were diagnosed as suffering from dementia praecox.”13
The focus throughout the study was on the cost to society, ﬁscal and otherwise, of
incarceration/segregation and procreation of future generations of defective offspring.
Thus sterilization prior to parole took pride of place in that it obviously accomplished the
latter and permitted a lessening of the cost of the former through parole of the inmate
population. Since parole of the schizophrenic inmate was unlikely, and the inheritance of
the full-blown disease by Popenoe’s own accounting equaled only ten percent of
progeny, one could reasonably infer these procedures represented attempts to alter
behavior of the permanently institutionalized males. With advances in treatment of
manic-depressive disorders in the 19503, increasing numbers of sterilizations upon
mentally ill women probably represented increasing parole rates among manic-
depressives, a diagnosis where women represented half again as many cases as males.
For physiological reasons noted earlier, among the feebleminded population,
males exhibited more severe forms of mental deﬁciency and higher levels of inherent
sterility. Thus, feeblenrinded women were more likely to be paroled (possessing
generally less severe manifestations of mental deﬁciency) and to be sterilized in greater

numbers for this reason and in consequence of their lower levels of inherent sterility.

Furthermore, Popenoe remarked, feebleminded males were “unable to compete with

 

‘3 lbid. Pg.ll

200

 

ﬁﬂL u.-. .._ _

more normal, aggressive, and economically competent men for the available women.”l4

Popenoe’s statement mirrored Vaughan’s contention that feebleminded women
constituted the most serious and insidious eugenic threat as they were much more likely
to procreate than their male counterparts.

California’s predilection to sterilize more women than men because of the greater
likelihood of their parole is the most consistent theme across all state programs.
California differed most in the large numbers of males sterilized; compared with other
states this disproportionate number of sterilizations reﬂected external eugenic (i.e.
paroled patients) and internal behavior management (i.e. institutional) concerns. The
latter cases can be further divided into two related conduct modiﬁcations, one a eugenic
concern and the other one of conduct adjustment. In cases where institutional segregation
proved ineffective in precluding sexual encounters, sterilization could be termed eugenic
whereas procedures carried out to modify behavior per Dr. Sharpe were only collaterally
eugenic.

In states where statutes were interpreted to allow sterilization only in cases of
parole or where segregation was demonstrably ineffective male sterilization ratios could
be expected to be lower. As a corollary of California’s high rate of sterilization vis a vis
the general population, states with similarly high rates per the general population and
with similar gender ratios should have had comparable distributions. In effect, elevated
numbers of procedures upon mentally ill women would follow initially higher ratios of

sterilizations upon feebleminded females as new treatments made the formers’ parole

 

'4 Ibid. Pg. 33. Irnportantly for understanding the authorities eugenic intentions in States with largely rural
populations, Popenoe elaborated on where “feebleminded males ﬁgure most conspicuously as family men
in isolated areas populated largely by their own kind.” He went on to present several anecdotal studies to
back up these claims.

201

more probable. Similarly, Delaware like California sterilized a larger proportion of its
general population than any of the other states and also maintained a nearly equal gender
distribution.

By 1949 as California’s program went into decline, Delaware surpassed
California in operations per hundred thousand of the general population. Delaware, which
enacted its ﬁrst sterilization statute in 1923, had sterilized 141 people by the time of
Landman’s 1932 study, of which one hundred three were men. The statute was modiﬁed
in 1929 to bring it in to greater accord with the important court decisions of the decade
though it had never been challenged. According to Landman, reluctance to enforce the
law for fear of its being declared unconstitutional resulted in few operations prior to the
1929. Subsequent to the modiﬁcation of the law, the number of operations increased
dramatically.”

While the state averaged only twenty-three operations per year through 1928, by
the end of 1929 the 1930 HBF survey recorded a total of 278, or a stunning 137
operations in 1929. Though this increase probably reﬂected only a problem in
accounting, subsequent HBF data showed a near doubling in the yearly rate of
sterilization through the 19303.16 Unfortunately, the HBF surveys did not include a

breakdown by diagnosis until 1936. At that time, a little over ﬁfty percent of cases were

 

'5 Landman. Pg. 82-83; Though an additional amendment passed at the same time allowed for the
sterilization of criminals, HBF surveys show no such sterilizations took place. The female sterilizations
occurring under the category of other most likely represented operations upon epileptic women. Why
epileptic women and not men were selected remains a mystery. Vaughan and Popenoe’s surmise regarding
the greater opportunities of women to form sexual unions than their similarly afﬂicted male counterparts
endures as the most likely explanation.

'6 Landman. Pg. 82; Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States, Delaware Totals; The
disparity in the numbers recorded in the Landman and HBF surveys mirror the problems evident in other
states in accounting for operations prior to the judicial clariﬁcation/validation of such statutes in the Buck v.
Bell case. Since the HBF surveys transpired in an era when the highest court in the land had validated such
laws, their authenticity should probably be assumed over prior survey data. In effect, fears of judicial

202

categorized as insane with three times as many males as females having been sterilized in
this population. Conversely, two times as many women had been sterilized among the
feebleminded population. By 1940, sterilization of the insane population ceased, though
procedures upon the feebleminded population continued at least through 1963, the last
year for which HBF data exists. While the yearly gender ratios became more equivalent
in the later decades of the program, the propensity to sterilize feebleminded women
remained consistent. Unfortunately, in terms of proving the hypothesis regarding
changing sterilizations ratios related to treatment of the insane, Delaware ceased
sterilizing the insane in 1940.

These two states with the highest number of sterilizations in terms of the general
population showed that sterilization of the insane, predominantly upon males
demonstrated essentially non-eugenic efforts to modify behaviors in the early decades of
such programs while those upon the feebleminded reﬂected more eugenic concerns
regarding the parole of inmates. Those states with the highest proportions of sterilizations
per the general population and whose programs were more actively pursued subsequent
to the decline of the California and Delaware programs revealed agendas which more
closely matched eugenic goals with results.

Virginia enacted its ﬁrst statute in 1924 and upon the US. Supreme Court
sustaining the constitutionality of the law in 1927 proceeded to implement a program

second only to California in terms of the numbers sterilized and as a proportion of the

 

challenge may have been responsible for less than complete disclosure before the validity of the laws was
afﬁrmed.

203

general population.17 By 1929 Virginia had sterilized 368 people, a number it nearly
tripled within the following three years. Through the 19503, the state would sterilize on
average 180 patients a year. In Virginia the insane population made up about eight
percent less of the total number of sterilizations than in California (for 1936: CA = 68%,
VA = 60%), but like the latter this proportion decreased over time. Virginia also
displayed a dissimilar gender ratio than California with 1.6 times as many women
sterilized (women = 61% of total). Compared with many other states though this ratio is
much more equal and thus similar to the California experience.

Initially, women accounted for about 65% of the total sterilizations performed
upon the insane though after 1950 the proportion increased to 75%. In effect, the
likelihood of a female patient’s being sterilized increased drastically, from 1.6 to 3.1
times as many women as men. Like California, the increased likelihood of an insane
women’s sterilization reﬂected advances in the treatment of manic-depressive diseases
and the consequently heightened chance for parole.

Unlike California though, the percentage of feebleminded patients sterilized
showed greater variation as a proportion of the total number of operations per year. Their
percentage of yearly operation ranged from a low of forty-one percent through a high of
ninety-six percent. Overall they would account for forty-eight percent of the 1963 total as
compared to California’s thirty-seven percent. This difference results from the earlier
implementation of the California program and the consequently higher number of the

insane sterilized initially.

 

’7 HBF Surveys Show changing rates of sterilization per hundred thousand of general population over time,
but though Delaware’s program held the record for 1949, this statistical record was eventually usurped by
programs operating over greater spans of time, ﬁrst by Virginia then by North Carolina.

204

By 1936, California had sterilized 10,801 people, more than half the total number
operated upon, while Virginia had only sterilized 2,386 or thirty-three percent of its total.
In 1936, the insane accounted for sixty-eight percent of the sterilizations, but by 1963 this
had dropped to only ﬁfty-eight percent. Virginia’s insane accounted for sixty percent of
their total in 1936, but by 1963 this proportion had declined to about ﬁfty percent. In
effect, as treatments for the insane became more efﬁcacious in the 1950s to divergent
processes occurred which worked to increase the number of women sterilized and yet
lowered the overall proportion of sterilizations performed upon the insane. More
successful treatment made this population more manageable in the institutional setting,
particularly the males, and lowered the overall number of sterilizations. Since women
were more likely to be paroled and thus sterilized, progressively fewer males were
sterilized and women’s proportions of the sterilized insane increased.

Because these shifts occurred at later stages in the two programs, we would
expect to see an overall decrease in the insane populations of both states but greater in
Virginia’s case. Likewise, Virginia’s proportion of sterilized mentally ill women should
be proportionately higher than California for the same reason, in effect differences in the
most active periods of both programs. Indeed, this is what the totals reﬂect with women
accounting for ﬁfty percent of the total sterilizations upon the insane while Virginia
women registered sixty-one percent.

Since no great advances in the treatment of the mentally deﬁcient occurred
during the history of either program, the gender ratios of these patients should have
remained approximately equal while their proportion of the total population increased.

While a wide range of variation in per year totals occurred throughout these programs,

205

women overall made up about sixty percent of the total number of those sterilized in any
ﬁve-year period.

One other group of people suffered the loss of their reproductive powers though
they comprised a small number of the total number of sterilizations. Sterilizations of
epileptics were often categorized as “others” in the HBF surveys when they were
differentiated from the feebleminded or insane categories. In Virginia they accounted for
about two percent of the total, though sterilization of this group did not begin until 1945
and had effectively ceased by 1960. The gender ratios were equivalent as would be
expected in a population differentiated solely on the basis of epilepsy. Though epilepsy is
slightly more common among males, many of these would have been subsumed under the
categories of insane and feebleminded as they were collateral to these processes.

California’s total included 808 operations classiﬁed as other in the HBF surveys,
only ten of that were performed on women. Because this constitutes four percent of
California’s total and thus twice as many as Virginia, this category probably includes
some operations on the epileptic, but most likely refers to procedures performed upon
those convicted of various sex crimes. Over seven hundred operations thus categorized
ﬁrst appear in the 1944 HBF survey, subsequent to a prior 1941 HBF survey indicating
some 560 such operations not included in the overall numbers ostensibly as they were
“voluntary.” A reasonable inference is that these were later determined to be not so
voluntary as earlier presumed and consequently included in subsequent surveys without

further explanation. 18

 

’8 HBF Surveys, 1941, 1944. Sterilization Records. SWHA. The HBF surveys speciﬁcally state that the
category of “others” usually refers to epileptics, though other categories of Sterilizations may be included in
this number.

206

California and Virginia provide the best examples of what fully-implemented
programs would have looked like based on the higher percentage of Operations
performed. What begs explanation is the diversity in the proportions of men and women
sterilized in other states. In some cases, the disparities can be resolved by a comparison
of the laws. States whose laws only allowed for the sterilization of more restricted
categories, such as either the insane or feebleminded should reﬂect different gender
disparities over time. Laws, such as Michigan’s that expanded the categories of those to
be sterilized would also show such differences further attenuated by when the new
policies were implemented. Yet the variations in the programs were much greater than
could be explained by these vagaries in the laws and their implementation.

North Carolina’s program, like many of those in the Southern states, began much
later than the others just discussed and in some ways mimicked the latter programs and in
others did not. The state originally passed a sterilization statute in 1919, but failed to
enforce it for fear of failing the constitutional test. With the Buck v. Bell decision, state
lawmakers enacted a new law in 1929 and somewhat cautiously proceeded to implement
it. By 1936 they had sterilized forty-six people, thirty-six of who were women. Three
years later the number had risen to 292, eighty-two percent of them women. Through the
first decade of the law’s operation, approximately one hundred patients a year were
sterilized. This number would double in the forties and triple in the ﬁfties. The state
continued to sterilize over two hundred patients a year through 1963 when the survey
data set ends.

North Carolina provides a picture of what a fully implemented program looked

like when continued into the 19603. The states proportions per hundred thousands of

207

population came to equal those of the other programs discussed and thus represents by
my deﬁnition a “fully implemented” eugenic agenda. In some ways the North Carolina
program bears out prior assumptions arising from the analysis of the California, Delaware
and Virginia programs and in others Shows a remarkable divergence.

Initially the proportion of insane in the totals was much less than for any of the
other states comprising only twenty-four percent of the totals with males making up only
half or less of this number. From 1936 to 1950 women would be 2.7 times more likely to
be sterilized. After 1950 the probability for women increased to 3.1 times that for men.
Because the North Carolina was much slower to start and far fewer men had been
sterilized in the earlier period (i.e. as means of behavior modiﬁcation prior to the 19503)
their percentages among the insane population and their contribution to the overall
proportion of the insane so treated were less than in the other states. Yet the disparities
were so great in this category that they indicated some other process.

Overall, eighty-three percent of sterilizations performed in North Carolina were
upon women. The feebleminded accounted for fully seventy percent of the totals and
women made up eighty-six percent of this total. The HBF category of “others” which
accounted for slightly over ﬁve percent of the total likewise contained a disproportionate
number of women, seventy-six percent. Because of the large number of women included
in the latter category, it most likely represented those afﬂicted with seizure disorders
(rather than males convicted of sex crimes).

In 1949, Moya Woodson, an Englishwoman with an interest in eugenics, availed
herself of an invitation to survey North Carolina’s program. Woodson was assisted in her

endeavors by the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North

208

Carolina and obtained “full-cooperation” of the Eugenics Board of North Carolina.19
Woodson toured state facilities and sent survey material to numerous state agencies in an
effort to ascertain the breadth of the program and to develop suggestions for further
implementation.

Ms. Woodson completed her survey before North Carolina’s program reached its
apogee some ﬁve years later when over three hundred sterilizations were performed a
year. Her study not only explained the contemporary situation in the state, but also most
likely inﬂuenced its subsequent development. She arranged for a questionnaire on
sterilization practice to be sent out jointly by the Eugenics Board and the Commissioner
of Public Welfare to all one hundred County Superintendents. She received ninety-ﬁve
replies, which showed a wide range of practice throughout the state. More than half of the
county welfare departments had not initiated any sterilization requests even upon patients
in public institutions. Yet by 1947, county welfare departments throughout the state had
instigated proceedings upon 688 non-institutionalized individuals (615 females, 73
males). This meant that county welfare agencies had arranged for the sterilization of
thirty-seven percent of the state’s total number of sterilizations.

The feebleminded accounted for six hundred twenty-seven of these sterilizations,

or over half of the sterilizations upon the feeblerrrinded. Woodson noted that most

 

'9 Woodson, Moya. Sterilization in North Carolina; A Sociological and Psycholog'cal Study. (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1950) Pg. ix-x; Reilly. The Surgical Solution. Pg. 126, 133-135.

Woodson was invited to study North Carolina’s program by Dr. Clarence Gamble, heir to the Gamble soap
fortune and an advocate of compulsory Sterilization. Dr. R.L. Dickinson of Birthright, Inc. solicited Dr.
Gamble’s help in Birthright’s efforts to expand its eugenic agenda throughout the country. Dr. Gamble
contributed generously from his fortune and personally toured the Midwest throughout the forties
advocating compulsory sterilization and establishing over twenty sterilization clinics in Michigan, Indiana,
Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri and Florida. In 1945, he sponsored extensive intelligence testing in
Orange County North Carolina, which showed three percent of the county’s children were mentally
defective. AS a result of the survey, the North Carolina Eugenics Board agreed to hire a sociologist,
Woodson, to conduct a study of the state’s program.

209

departments were favorable towards eugenic sterilization and the departments’
responsibility for distributing Federal A.D.C. payments allowed “many feeble-minded or
borderline defective women [to] become known to the local welfare departments.”20
The county welfare departments maintained responsibility for implementing
sterilization requests for all those “feebleminded, epileptic and psychotic persons” in their
jurisdictions. The questionnaires showed another 625 cases currently “reported as
suitable for petitions to be ﬁled if no difﬁculties stood in the way.” The principal holdup
in pursuing these cases was a lack of funds and procedural difﬁculties. “In order to obtain
quicker action. . .it has become the practice in some countries[sic]-though frowned upon
by State ofﬁcials-to arrange for therapeutic sterilizations which can be put through with
considerably less formality.”21
Woodson elaborated further, “in the nature of things, exact ﬁgures are difﬁcult to
obtain. It appears that some sterilizations are not primarily recorded as such, or the
operation is incidental to an obstetric procedure or major gynecological repair.”22 This
situation mirrored those of other states, most notably in Michigan. These types of
operations revealed that disparities in the gender ratios were probably even more skewed
than the ofﬁcial ﬁgures indicated. It is difﬁcult to get a grasp on the number of these
operations, but the following anecdotal evidence provided some measure of their

signiﬁcance.

The head of the obstetric department in one teaching
hospital estimated that more than 200 women had had a
bilateral tubal ligation performed on his service alone;
another semi-private hospital (in a town of 64,000
population) furnished a list of 58 sterilizations on white

 

2° Woodson. Pg. 40—42
2‘ Ibid. Pg. 44
22 Ibid. Pg.49

210

women which had been done during the previous two
years. The questionnaire circulated to county welfare
departments contained an item relating to participation in
therapeutic sterilization (See question 3.), and the reported
number of such cases over a 5-year period was 546. The
total of eugenic sterilizations in the departments during a
l9-year period was 688. In one rural North Carolina county
where an intensive Study of mental cases was carried out
during 1946, 59 sterilized women were located of whom
only 36 had gone through the Eugenics Board. This
situation, whereby a large proportion of sterilizations are
unofﬁcially arranged on mixed physical socio-economic
grounds, is being paralleled in other parts of the State.23

As with Michigan, the actual number of sterilizations performed on mixed grounds of
medical and/or eugenic necessity could increase the numbers by ﬁfty percent or more.
Woodson’s research demonstrated several reasons for the greater number of
women being sterilized in the state. Like elsewhere, Woodson found that indications for
male sterilization differed from those for females. The best indicator for male sterilization
remained behavior modiﬁcation rather than as a condition of parole. Perhaps the most
disturbing statistic from the North Carolina hospitals was that involving the sterilization
of black men at the Goldsboro State Hospital for Negroes, where twice as many males as
females were sterilized, particularly as nearly ﬁfteen percent of the total were castrations.
These ﬁgures differ markedly from those of any other institution and from the near
absence of black staff at this hospital one could infer white Southemer’s fear of black
males’ sexuality might be operative in the selection of cases. 24

In that so many operations took place outside state facilities and the state’s

welfare departments usually instigated such requests, those individuals who came under

 

23 .

Ibid. Pg. 49
2" Ibid. Pg. 27-28, 30-32. After conferring with the medical superintendent and Staff at the Dix Hill facility,
Woodson noted that the sterilization of males was generally opposed and only considered “in the case of

211

their scrutiny, usually recipients of ADC payments, bore a disproportionate probability of
becoming a target of the state’s eugenic agenda. Poor white women with illegitimate
children made up the bulk of this group. There was a belief that white illegitimacy in
particular stood as a marker for diminished intellectual capacity and that the state’s
county welfare agencies possessed a great deal of information on who comprised this
group. Furthermore, as a consequence of a dearth of available birth control methods
many such women were not particularly adverse to sterilization.”

After the release of Woodson’s report the number of sterilizations continued to
rise in North Carolina and remained above two hundred a year throughout the period for
which data is available. It can be assumed that her ﬁndings guided the future of the
program and that substantial numbers of sterilizations went unreported, but that many of
those reported were less than compulsory.

In researching the question of racial disparity, Woodson noted that folkways in
the Negro communities of North Carolina precluded many women from seeking such
operations as a means of birth control, yet that “Negroes-do not have any feeling that the
sterilization program is intended to reduce their numbers of their race or that such
motives are present in the minds of white social workers and administrators.”26 Far fewer
operations on a per capita basis were performed on Aﬁican Americans in North Carolina
than on whites. One welfare administrator noted that the differences in attitudes reﬂected

a tendency to ﬁnd more resistance among the uneducated, and more of the Negro clients

 

the male patient permanently institutionalized and a trouble-giver, where the operation would make him
easier to handle. It is also thought justiﬁed in very low-grade idiots who manifest unsuitable sexual traits.
25 Ibid. Pg. 40-45, 63-70, 79-86. Woodson noted further that illegitimacy in the Negro population was held
to be less of an indicator of feeblemindedness in that their folkways and local custom did not hold marriage
in the same regard as among the white population.

212

are uneducated proportionately.” He clariﬁed this further stating that “any difference
found is basically a matter of educational level rather than race,” a view corroborated by
other social workers.27

Because the state provided far less funding for institutions serving the black
community’s mentally deﬁcient and ill populations, the potential for sterilization in this
group was considerably reduced in that institutional requests were that much more
unlikely. The general disparity in funding black institutions meant that black men and
women throughout the South were less likely to be considered a eugenic problem,
particularly because a major factor in determining eugenic costs had always been the
ﬁnancial costs associated with the maintenance of dependent groups. Taken with the fact
that ADC payments at this time were largely directed to rural whites, the welfare
departments’ surveillance remained focused on whites rather than the blacks. This and
differing views on the meaning of illegitimacy in the two groups meant that black women
in particular would be less apt to fall prey to the state’s eugenic concerns.

Men in general eschewed sterilization. Woodson asserted that, “men everywhere
are going to take the same resistant attitude to proposals for operations on themselves.
We saw that psychic fears were general, not related to education, residence or social
class.”28 Due to these attitudes sterilization whether voluntary or compulsory was much
more likely to be performed on women than men, particularly those performed outside of
the institutional setting. The “psychic fears” of men in general for themselves and their

fellow men probably led to the disprOportionate number of men and women sterilized,

 

2” Ibid. Pg. 86—87. Woodson notes that race relations in the Upper South were quite different than those in
the Deep South and that the attitude of Negroes there, “to the program might contain more of distrust and
hostility.”

2" Ibid. 85-86

213

particularly in the South where the concept of manhood stood in perhaps an even more
exalted position than in other parts of the country.

In the development of other sterilization programs throughout the South, similar
patterns emerged. In West Virginia, another Border South state, the program likewise
started relatively late and resulted in disproportionate numbers of women sterilized.

West Virginia began sterilizing inmates in its institutions in the mid-19303 and ceased
operations in the mid-19503. More than ﬁve times as many women were sterilized, nearly
half of these classiﬁed as feebleminded and thus likely candidates for parole. Almost a
quarter of the total number of procedures fell into the “other” category and probably
reﬂected operations upon the state’s epileptics. The remainder of the total, categorized as
insane, comprised another quarter of the operations performed before 1950. In both of the
latter categories women’s chances of being sterilized were ten times that of men.29

The Deep South states generally demonstrated patterns exacerbating the trends in
the more northern Border States. All of the Deep South states promulgated sterilization
laws in the wake of the Buck v. Bell decision though Louisiana and Florida never enacted
such legislation. In the initial excitement to establish statutes, poorly developed support
led to the defeat of such legislation in the Florida and Georgia legislatures. The latter

state eventually passed a law in the 19303, but in Florida it became a joking matter.

Louisiana and Mississippi became the focal point for attempts to pass legislation in the

 

2‘ Ibid. Pg. 65-70. 96
29 Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. West Virginia.

214

late twenties. A strong Catholic opposition managed to stalemate the eugenicists’ efforts
in the former while Mississippi legislators accomplished their task in 1929.30

Though Alabama passed a sterilization law in 1919, few people had actually been
sterilized under its aegis. After the 1929 Buck v. Bell the state began its program in
earnest and sought further legislation. The law was rendered inoperative in 1935
following an adverse Supreme Court decision regarding efforts to expand the program
through new legislation. The ﬁrst statute precluded sterilization of the insane and all
procedures were performed upon feeblerrrinded. By 1932 the state’s sole institution for
the mentally retarded, the Alabama Home had sterilized 129 inmates prior to parole, half
of these women.

The following year the home’s director broadened the policy to include “some of
the delinquent boys who we fear night escape.”3 1 The institution practiced a strict sexual
segregation and a hard and fast rule regarding sterilization prior to parole. Director
Partlow stated, that this practice allowed for a liberal discharge policy without
endangering society, as patients would “not be released except on condition of
sterilization. . ..on account of the fact that the children of the feeblerrrinded would
themselves certainly be feebleminded.”32 The Alabama state home as the state’s sole
facility for the feebleminded needed a liberal discharge policy as recent surveys placed

the number of those needing institutionalization at over 7,000 while the home had been

 

3° Larson. Pg. 105-107, 115-125. Larson surmised that by the 1930s, increasing Florida tourism had led to a
more cosmopolitan attitude in the state compared to its neighbors resulting in decreased support if not
increased derision regarding such legislation.

3' Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Alabama; Larson, Edward. Sex Race and
Science: Eagthics in the Deep South. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) pg. 105-107

32 Larson. Pg. 106. Partlow subsequently asserted that “We have made no exceptions except for profound
idiots in whom we regard from mental deﬁciency and malformation no possible chance or reproduction.”

 

215

built to accommodate only 160 patients.” Why women were not paroled at a greater rate
remains a mystery, particularly when compared with the rates of parole for other states.

Mississippi passed its ﬁrst statute in 1928 along with legislation tripling the size
of the states institutions for the mentally ill and feebleminded. The onset of the Great
Depression resulted in a dearth of funding, allowing only the completion of some
building projects associated with the institutions.34 Bureaucratic problems further
complicated efforts to sterilize the inmate population and not until the mid-19303 when
the states economy began to improve did operations begin to take place.

Of the Deep South states, Mississippi’s program would eventually become one of
the most extensive, resulting in 27.3 operations per hundred thousand of the general
population, more than six times the ratio for Alabama. Just as the Alabama program
ceased, Mississippi’s began. Eighty-eight percent of the operations took place in the
state’s two hospitals for the insane. Not until 1936 had any of the feebleminded been
sterilized though over three hundred of the insane had received such treatment. Financial
resources for the institutions for the insane had been assigned to ongoing efforts to
improve the facilities, leaving little for sterilization programs. In both the mentally ill and
mentally deﬁcient populations women were three time more likely to be sterilized.
Sterilizations virtually ceased in the late 19403 with a three-year revival occurring in the
ﬁfties.35

Though Mississippi’s institutions were racially segregated, the separation for the
insane was accomplished by ward rather than institution, which was commonly the case

elsewhere in the South. In these institutions, black and white mentally ill patients

 

’3 Larson. Pg. 66-67, 81—84, 90, 139-152
3‘ Landman. Pg. 91; Larson. Pg. 106-107, 115-121

216

received equal access to sterilization. The state’s institution for the feebleminded
excluded African Americans up to 1968 and Governor Theodore Bilbo, who championed
eugenic sterilization, concentrated his efforts on the feebleminded, which resulted in
roughly equivalent numbers of sterilizations for both races.36
Both Georgia and South Carolina eventually passed sterilization laws in 1935, but
neither began implementing their programs until much later. Georgia, ofﬁcially the last
state to enact such laws, proceeded to sterilize far more patients than any other Deep
South state both in absolute terms and per capita. Through the 19403, around one hundred
sterilizations a year occurred while this ﬁgure would more than double in the next
decade. Initially, surgery was much more likely for women than men, but this changed in
the late ﬁfties when increasing numbers of both insane and feebleminded males went
under the knife. Despite this, feebleminded women remained 1.5 times more likely to be
sterilized. Through the 19503, insane men increasingly found themselves the target of
eugenic sterilization, eventually accounting for forty-six percent of the sterilized insane.37
Racial discrimination in applying the law seems not to have occurred for several
reasons. Like many other southern states, most of the state’s institutions were segregated
with inmates of each race living in separate facilities. Since the focus of sterilization
practice occurred in state facilities, a general lack of appropriations for such facilities for

the state’s black citizens meant that fewer would come under the state’s scrutiny and thus

escape surgery. Also many of the eugenics advocates in 19303 Georgia represented

 

35 Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Mississippi.
3° Larson. Pg. 122-123
37 Appendix c: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Georgia.

217

reformist attitudes associated with the New Deal and vociferously abjured any such
discriminatory racial practice.38

South Carolina, whose program did not begin in earnest until the 19403, sterilized
eleven times more women than men. Forty-one percent of its total suffered from mental
illness while the remaining ﬁfty-nine percent were categorized as mentally deﬁcient. The
state had one of the lowest per capita rates of sterilization with only 4.2 per hundred
thousand of the general population. Yet in every category women made up over ninety
percent of those sterilized.39

For reasons similar to those in other southern states (i.e. lack of institutions for
African Americans), few of the states’ black citizens came under the state’s eugenic
scrutiny and thus most sterilization procedures were performed upon whites. Also,
because few of the costs associated with the maintenance of dependent people were
associated with Southern blacks, the population remained of marginal interest to those
eugenicists primarily concerned with reducing public expenditures. In sum, the scarcity
of sterilizations upon black citizens reﬂected more a lack of interest in their eugenic
welfare than efforts to preclude discrimination against their reproduction.

Following the Buck v. Bell decision, he rush to implement eugenic programs or to
expand nascent ones continued throughout the country. In the Northeast, few States could
compare with the Delaware program’s high per capita rate. Most had put their programs
in abeyance with the demise of the New Jersey and New York programs. New Jersey’s

law failed the constitutional test with in months of passage and New York’s poorly

conceived efforts resulted in a total of only forty-two operations, though as usual women

 

3“ Larson. Pg. 136-139
39 Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. South Carolina.

218

comprised a disproportionate number. Efforts continued in both states throughout the late
twenties and thirties to promulgate legislation more in line with current judicial
guidelines, but opposition particularly from the Catholic Church precluded the
eugenicists’ success.40

New Hampshire, which had ﬁrst enacted a statute in 1917 (amended in 1921 to
allow for a legal guardian’s consent in place of the patient’s), allowed for sterilization
only with patient consent up until 1929 when taking advantage of the Buck v. Bell
decision the state enacted a compulsory statute similar to those in other states. By the end
of the year over sixty people had been sterilized, only four of who were men. Based on
operations per capita, throughout the thirties the state had one of the more aggressive
programs in the country.

By the 1936, when the HBF surveys began to include breakdowns by diagnosis,
the insane accounted for ﬁfty percent of the operations, with women making up eighty-
six percent of this group. Mentally ill women would continue to comprise the majority of
cases, eventually accounting for ninety percent of sterilizations performed on the insane.
Though the practice essentially ceased by the time it was recorded, sterilization of
epileptics, categorized as “other” in the HBF data sets, was entirely female, comprising
sixteen percent of those enumerated in 1936. In the mid-ﬁfties the sterilization of
mentally ill women increased reﬂecting their increased opportunities for parole, tapering
off by the end of the decade along with sterilizations in general.

Feebleminded patients, who comprised about a third of all sterilizations through

the mid-thirties, made up the bulk of procedures after this period. Initially, women were

 

‘0 Landman. Pg. 64-66. No application of the New Jersey was ever recorded and of the forty-two operation
in New York only one was performed upon a man.

219

three to four times as likely to be sterilized, and though by the mid-forties this had
changed to a more equitable distribution, women would still account for over two-thirds
of the operations in this group. Like other programs with high per capita numbers, New
Hampshire’s program showed that insane and feebleminded women were much more
likely to be sterilized, presumably as a condition of parole. Because the indications for
male sterilization (behavior modiﬁcation and parole) occurred less frequently, they never
exceeded twenty-ﬁve percent of the total.41

Like New Hampshire, Maine’s 1925 sterilization law allowed for eugenic
recommendation for the procedure but required patient consent. A 1929 amendment
allowed for consent to be given when the patient was deemed incompetent, but not until
1931 would the state enact a statute authorizing compulsory sterilization. Until that point
in time, only twelve operations had been performed, half on women. Through the thirties
the state’s surgeons sterilized about twelve to ﬁfteen patients a year, mostly the
feebleminded, but also a signiﬁcant number classiﬁed as “other” in the HBF surveys. The
insane comprised 5-10 percent of the totals, but these operations essentially ceased by the
end of the war with women accounting for three-quarters of the procedures upon the
insane. By this time, women, presumably epileptics, comprised all of those listed as
“other” and contributed another thirty-ﬁve percent to the state’s totals. The feebleminded
made up to seventy percent of the totals, with women comprising 70-80% of this group.

Sterilizations on this group continued into the 19603, probably as a condition to parole.42

 

4‘ Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. New Hampshire. Even in 1949, when the
state’s program had gone into decline, Sterilizations per hundred thousand still came to 113.4, a ﬁgure
surpassed by only six other sates at that time, most of whose programs had just swung into high gear;

Landman. Pg. 79-80

‘2 Landman. Pg. 90-91; Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Maine.

220

Vermont was even more reticent than the latter two Northeastern states in that she
did not pass a sterilization statute until 1931 and even then the law was completely
voluntary, eugenic to the extent that recommendations were made by state ofﬁcials and
the state bore the cost of the operations. A total of thirteen insane, twelve of whom were
women, were operated upon between 1937 and 1941, with no further operations in this
category occurring after this date. Three years later sterilizations upon the epileptic group
also ceased with women comprising two-thirds of this group. By 1947, the state stopped
virtually all sterilization of inmates. The feebleminded made up over eighty percent of
Vermont’s total of 250 operations, with women again comprising a disproportionate two-
thirds of the total for all sterilizations and for those among the feebleminded population.
Even though procedures could only be performed with the consent of the patient or their
guardian, sterilization as a condition of parole provided a strong incentive in gaining the
patients’ cooperation. In that two years after sterilizations had ceased, the state’s 69.9
procedures per hundred thousand still placed behind only ten other states, the program
could be considered reasonably successful by eugenicist’s standards.43

Connecticut began a program of compulsory sterilization more than a decade
before its other Northeastern neighbors, enacting its ﬁrst statute in 1909. Initially, the law
applied only to inmates in the state’s prison and hospitals for the insane, but by 1919 the
statute had been amended to include feebleminded residents of the Mansﬁeld State
Training School and Hospital. In the ﬁrst two years of the law’s operation, twenty-seven
patients in the state’s hospitals for the insane had been sterilized though only ﬁve were

men. A decade later, over 200 patients had endured the state’s scalpel, only seven of

 

‘3 Gallagher, Nancy. Breeding Better Vermonters: The Eugenics Proiect in the Green Mountain Stata.
(Hanover: University Press of New England) Pg. 122-126, 171-172, 176-177, 185-186; Landman. Pg. 93;

221

these were men. By the end of the 19303 the state’s total would have doubled to over four
hundred, and women made up ninety—four percent of the total. Women on average
comprised eighty-seven percent of the totals, in both the mentally ill and deﬁcient
categories throughout the course of the program. Though Sterilization of the insane had
practically ended by 1945, small numbers of feebleminded patients continued to go under
the knife through the early 19603. Sterilization as a condition of parole for the
feebleminded remained a consistent trend throughout essentially all state programs. Even
with its long head start on its neighbors, by 1949, the state ranked 20th in terms of per
capita sterilizations demonstrating to eugenicists a fairly ineffective program.

Two western states vied for last place in per capita sterilizations though both
programs continued to authorize such procedures through the late 19508. Arizona enacted
a very broad statute in 1929 in the wake of the Buck V. Bell decision, but hesitated to
utilize it for at least two years. Initially the law was applied only to the insane, with men
and women accounting equally for the twenty procedures. The surgeries essentially
ceased in 1936, with only one procedure performed every ﬁve or six years thereafter. All
of the operations performed after 1936 were on women, and in 1956 eight sterilizations
were performed, ﬁve of which were on feebleminded women. This largest group of
sterilizations in the state ended the program with no further operations occurring
thereafter.44

Idaho, which enacted its ﬁrst statute in 1925, proved even more reticent in
applying its rather encompassing law. In 1929, though no operations had yet been

performed and consequently no legal challenges encountered, the state amended its

 

Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Vermont.
‘4 Landman. 92-93. Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Arizona.

222

statute to bring it into greater accord with the results of the Buck v. Bell decision and was
immediately challenged on several points. In 1931 the states’ Supreme Court upheld the
law and implementation proceeded anon. Initially, like Arizona, the insane made up the
vast majority of cases (85%) though operations on this group ceased by 1936 with
women accounting for eighty-three percent of the total. N 0 further operations took place
through the next two decades, but in the mid-19503 the state more than doubled its
previous total in four short years. The feebleminded made up the entire latter group of
operations and feebleminded women accounted for three-quarters of these. Only a few
sterilizations were performed after this, all upon women.45

The numbers in both of the latter states were so small in absolute and per capita
terms, that they could contribute little to understanding what agenda the state or its
ofﬁcials were pursuing. The pattern of sterilizing far more women than men was common
throughout most states’ programs. Their self imposed hiatuses, broken in the mid-19508
reﬂects a general resurgence in smaller programs at that time though the reasons for this
remains unclear in light of the fact that most all of these operations were performed on
feebleminded inmates rather than on the insane.

Nine other Western states had rather vigorous programs, all but one enacting laws
in the teens and twenties. North Dakota and Kansas led the way in 1913, followed by
Nebraska in 1915, Oregon and South Dakota in 1917 and ﬁnally Montana and Utah in
1923. Through the teens and twenties these states were reluctant to enforce the laws, with

good reason. Oregon’s law was challenged within two years, found “repugnant to the

 

‘5 Landman. Pg. 84-86. The Board of Eugenics v. Troutman (Idaho 1931) was one of the last court
challenges of such laws following Buck v. Bell and was considered instrumental in settling the remaining
legal points not directly adjudicated in the 1927 US. Supreme Court decision; Appendix C: Table of
Sterilizations for Individual States. Idaho.

223

Fourteenth Amendment” and not replaced until 1923. In the wake of the Oregon law’s
demise, several states amended or reenacted statutes throughout the period preceding the
Buck v. Bell decision?6

Though sterilizations took place before the Buck v. Bell decision, only Nebraska
and Oregon proved truly aggressive in implementing their eugenic agendas. By 1921 the
Nebraska had sterilized over 155 individuals, more than half of them men. At the time
this gave Nebraska one of the highest per capita ratios in the nation. Oregon followed
closely with 127 operations performed by 1921, but more closely paralleled other states
predilection for sterilizing more women than men. With the 1927 US. Supreme Court
decision this all changed rapidly with the states rushing to bring their statutes into
compliance.47

Nebraska began sterilizing more women than men through this period though

maintaining a more equitable distribution than many states. The state’s program followed
the general pattern of states such as California with large programs in that the numbers of
procedures dropped following the Second World War only to increase again in the 19503.
Unlike the pattern in California though, the vast majority of the latter operations were
upon the feebleminded, with the insane accounting for several operations in only the ﬁrst
two years of the decade.48

Oregon, which notably had included 66 castrations in its earliest accounting to

Laughlin (subsequently left out of the states responses to HBF and Birthright), proceeded

to routinely sterilize some eighty patients a year through the 19303, decreasing the

 

‘6 Landman. Pg. 66-89; Laughlin. Pg. 69, 74, 88, 90; Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual
States.

47 Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Nebraska, Oregon; Landman. Pg.66-89

‘8 Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Nebraska.

224

number of operations through the 19408. The number of procedures increased again in
the 19508 though the insane rarely accounted for twenty-ﬁve percent of the yearly total.
The feebleminded made up sixty percent of the totals with women generally accounting
for Sixty percent of the operations, though epileptic women were twice as likely to be
sterilized within their cohort. Sterilizations continued throughout the remaining years for
which Birthright compiled data and left Oregon with the third highest per capita ratios in
the nation.49

North Dakota’s per capita numbers placed it ﬁfth in the nation by 1949, when the
program seemed in decline, only to surge forward again in the 19508. Like Oregon the
feebleminded made up sixty percent of the states totals with women accounting for sixty-
two percent of the operations. But unlike Oregon and Nebraska, the state paralleled the
California program’s increasing focus on sterilizing insane women as a condition of-
parole in the 19508.50

Competing with its Sister state to the North, South Dakota ranked sixth in per
capita numbers by 1949, though the feeblerrrinded made up a disproportionate ninety-ﬁve
percent of the state’s totals. Women comprised sixty-four percent of this number and
since so few sterilization were performed on the mentally ill (23 out of 789), they
contributed little to the minor resurgence of the program in the 19508. The program was
most active in the 19308 nearly doubling the number of sterilizations performed every
three years.51

Utah, which by 1949 had attained ninth place in per capita ratio, also concentrated

on sterilizing the feebleminded (85 %) though women and men were sterilized in nearly

 

‘9 Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Oregon.
50 Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. North Dakota.

225

equal numbers (males 310, females 350). Unlike most states, with the end of the war and
the return of the state’s institutional physicians, the number of procedures increased
dramatically. Apparently revulsion for the eugenic practices of their recent Nazi enemies
had not affected the doctors’ mindsets. After two years of performing three to four times
as many operations as had been done in the past, the numbers declined only to undergo a
resurgence of the program in the early 19508. Like the California model, the insane
accounted for a signiﬁcant proportion of the increase with insane women accounting for
all of the operations in this cohort. Yet by 1952, all operations on the insane ceased and
feebleminded men became more likely to be sterilized than ever before in this later phase
of the program.

Montana most closely resembled Nebraska’s program in the ﬁrst years of
implementation sterilizing more men than women (20 out of 35) and increasingly
demonstrating a predilection to sterilize women thereafter. The insane accounted for only
sixteen percent of the state’s totals and operations on this cohort essentially ceased with
the end of the war. Feebleminded women remained throughout the program two to three
times more likely to be sterilized than men demonstrating the usual preference for
paroling women on the condition of prior sterilization. The program ended in the mid-
19508 with women accounting for well over two-thirds of the operations.52

In 1931, Oklahoma became the last state in the Union to enact compulsory
sterilization legislation. The state made up for its tardiness with alacrity in last years of

the 19308, sterilizing an average of eighty patients a year. By the end of the war,

sterilizations had virtually ceased, yet in less than a decade the State had placed itself far

 

5' Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. South Dakota.
’2 Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Montana; Landman. Pg. 82

226

ahead of the other latecomers in per capita terms. The initial decline represented the loss
of institutional physicians in the war years, followed by a near total cessation after their
return. Operations on the insane represented slightly more than half of the total, with
women accounting for seventy-ﬁve percent of the insane and seventy-eight percent of the
feebleminded. For the short period when its program was operational, its totals reﬂect the
general trends in the region and nation as a whole.53

Kansas, one of the ﬁrst states to enact such laws, provides the major exception to
the foregoing trends. By 1930, the state had sterilized over 650 people, making it second
only to California in terms of absolute numbers and per capita sterilizations. Though well
over three times as many women as men had been sterilized by 1920, the situation
reversed itself within a decade with men making up nearly two-thirds of the totals. The
insane comprised more than two-thirds of those sterilized, and men made up almost 60%
of both the insane and feebleminded cohorts?4

The original Kansas statute made it mandatory for the “managing ofﬁcers and
surgeons in charge of all state institutions” to recommend sterilization for those inmates
deemed unﬁt to procreate. Failure to do so was punishable with a $100 ﬁne and a month
in jail. Any other sterilization performed outside the aegis of the law was subject to a
$1000 ﬁne a year in jail or both. Subsequent repeal and replacement of the law in 1917
maintained the obligatory nature of the law regarding recommendations and the ban on

other sterilizations.55

 

5" Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Oklahoma. Only three sterilization were
performed after 1944, all upon insane women in the 19508. Because the sample is so small it is difﬁcult to
say this reﬂected the increasing possibilities for parole in this group; Landman. Pg. 93-94.

5" Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Kansas.

’5 Landman. Pg. 68-69

227

To a large degree, the state’s high rate of sterilization resulted from the statutes’
provisions on reporting the eugenic standing of the state’s inmates. The high incidence of
sterilization upon the male insane probably reﬂects concerns of patient management (i.e.
behavior modiﬁcation) though rather than simple eugenic indications. Following the
Kansas Supreme Court decision in State v. Schaejfer (Kansas:1928) upholding the
statute, the number of procedures skyrocketed, going from about one hundred year in the
late twenties and early thirties to nearly two hundred-ﬁfty a year in 1936.56

In the feebleminded cohort, males made up almost sixty percent of the operations,
quite the opposite to almost every other program in the country. Only among epileptics
did women outnumber men, and even then by not nearly the ratio seen in other states.
Since sterilizations essentially ceased after 1951, it is impossible to say whether changes
in the probability of parole for mentally ill women in the 19508 would have altered the
state’s agenda. It seems from Landman’s commentary that parole outside the institution
did not ﬁgure prominently in the decisions, but rather parole from segregated wards,
again reﬂecting a different set of patient management concerns. This could to some
degree explain why so few women were sterilized as compared to contemporary
programs, in that many of the sterilizations performed in other states upon borderline
defective women seeking parole or those at large recommended for the procedure may
actually have reﬂected procedures more or less willingly submitted to as means of birth
control. With the provisions of the Kansas statute speciﬁcally precluding such operations,
the Kansas numbers may provide an insight only vaguely intimated in the University of

Michigan’s correspondence with the HBF, but more clearly outlined in Woodson’s study.

 

5° Ibid. Pg. 69; Appendix c: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Kansas.

228

In effect, many of the sterilizations performed on women in other states were for birth
control purposes with feeblemindedness providing a convenient legal justiﬁcation.

The programs in the three Midwestern states of Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota
resembled Michigan’s situation. In each state three or more times as many women as men
were sterilized and the majority of operations took place in institutions for the
feebleminded. Only in Iowa, the ﬁrst of these states to enact such legislation (1911) did
the numbers of the mentally ill come anywhere close to equaling those of the
feebleminded. And Iowa was the only state in the upper Midwest to sterilize more men
than women. Like California, Iowa began sterilizing far more of the insane than the
feebleminded, a trend that continued through mid-19508. Of this group men comprised
the majority of cases through the prewar period with the number of recommendations for
salpingectomies increasing markedly thereafter. The most proliﬁc period for the state’s
surgeons occurred in the early and mid-19508.

But even though the female mentally ill were much more likely to be sterilized,
probably as a condition for parole, the feebleminded often made up over two-thirds of
cases in this period. In this cohort women had always comprised the largest number of
sterilized patients, varying from two to nearly ﬁve times the number of men. Even among
the I-IBF category of “others,” generally specifying epileptics, women outnumbered men
two to one and there is some reason to believe that the relatively high number of males in
some years probably indicated the sterilization of those found guilty of criminal sexual
conduct rather than male epileptics. Iowa’s sterilization rate abated somewhat in the early

sixties, but continued throughout the period for which data was collected?7

 

57 Landman. Pg. 61-64. Though Iowa’s law was challenged on several occasions and found unconstitutional
twice, the state legislature proceeded to enact new legislation time and again. The state’s long commitment

229

Wisconsin enacted its ﬁrst sterilization legislation in the same year as Michigan
(1913), and like Michigan sterilized more than three times as many women as men. But
there the similarities stop. Only nine sterilization were performed upon the insane and
none of these until 1951. Though the states program Started at the same time as
Michigan’s the state was much more reticent in invoking the law even after the Buck v.
Bell decision. The state would sterilize around half the number Michigan had though
most of this difference could be attributed to Michigan’s more aggressive stance in the
early years as well as the inclusion of the insane, though they comprised only eleven
percent of Michigan’s total. Wisconsin continued to sterilize inmates throughout the
period for which data was available, albeit in smaller numbers than Michigan.58

Minnesota, which had not passed a sterilization statute until 1925, by 1930
equaled Michigan’s total of 388, and though it fell behind in absolute terms, in per capita
numbers the state topped Michigan by nearly 20 per hundred thousand of general
population, a very aggressive program by eugenicist’s standards. Minnesota, like
Michigan, sterilized over three times as many women as men and similarly over seventy—
ﬁve percent of these sterilization were performed on the feebleminded. Most
sterilizations upon the insane occurred early in the program and the likelihood of
salpingectomy far outweighed that of vasectomy. Since sterilizations on the insane
slowed appreciably in the 19508, though most were still more likely to be upon women,
little could be discerned relative to the agendas of the larger programs (e. g. California’s

policy of increased possibility of parole for mentally ill females). The feebleminded

 

to compulsory sterilization was unusual in the Midwest peaking as it did in the 19508 when most other
Midwest states had begun to abandon such programs; Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual
States. Iowa.

58 Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Wisconsin, Michigan.

230

comprised eighty-two percent of Minnesota’s totals, with epileptics apparently suffering
no such reproductive restraints as were practiced in Michigan.59

Interstate variations abounded throughout the period of active sterilization
programs. Much of the variation had to do with the different time or demographic frames
in which the programs experienced their greatest growth or decline. In effect, programs
whose populations differed signiﬁcantly or that began early or started late during
different lifecycles of the eugenics and patient management debates sometimes reﬂected
this fact accordingly (e.g. policies in North Carolina versus California, two programs
whose heydays occurred at distinctly different times and whose populations were
essentially different).

At other times this was not the case and speciﬁc regional variations exempliﬁed
the differences (e.g. the general reluctance to sterilize white males in the Southern states).
Regional variations sometimes compounded differences in time and demographic frames
and further compounded the problems of comparative analysis by inducing speciﬁcally
local problems into the picture. For example, Mississippi’s recurring ﬁnancial problems
in funding its institutions were compounded by the lack of physicians to carry out its
otherwise aggressive plans.

Problems in accurate reporting and classiﬁcation of operations plague anyone
seeking to discern state agendas, and only vague hints suggest that North Carolina’s
policy of liberally allowing female sterilization under the law’s aegis may have actually
amounted to state funded birth control effort among the rural poor; a situation that the
University of Michigan’s hospital’s HBF responses also hint at though less

straightforwardly. The Kansas statistics, because of the compulsory compliance in

 

’9 Landman. Pg. 89-90; Appendix C: Table of Sterilizations for Individual States. Minnesota.

231

reporting requirements, also suggest that many sterilizations in states with exceptionally
high ratios of female to male sterilization, might also reﬂect this phenomena.

Likewise, underreporting, as evidenced in the U. of M. hospital’s HBF responses
and those of North Carolina’s state hospitals in the Woodson study, indicates that a large
number of operations were never reported. How many sterilizations were performed
remains a mystery, and even more so how many were actually of a compulsory nature. In
a time when birth control methods, particularly for women, were restricted or
unavailable, sterilization statutes may have provided many poor women with a singular
opportunity to gain some control over their reproductive processes.

It is instructive to note that Birthright Inc., the daughter of the New Jersey
Sterilization League (a group dedicated to compulsory sterilization), by the 19708 had
evolved into the Association for Voluntary Sterilization. Margaret Sanger’s advocacy of
sterilization laws held them as beneﬁcial not only in the eugenic sense of precluding the
reproduction of those unable to properly ascertain their abilities to care for children, but
also in the context of women seeking to gain reproductive autonomy.

America’s experience with compulsory sterilization statutes took in a wide range
of variation in keeping with the diversity that epitomized the states that propounded such
agendas. Whatever anyone may think of such laws, the variation at least was in keeping
with America’s most cherished values. Sterilization remained largely within a local
context. In most other nations with such laws, national perspectives tended to
predominate over local preferences. Since responsibility devolved more closely to home
in America, the citizenry could said to be more accountable for these actions than

elsewhere, where federal governments took responsibility for implementing such laws.

232

Chapter Eight: The International Context: Eugenics Promoting Sterilization

While the formulation and implementation of compulsory sterilization laws
within the United States showed a wide range of variation, the diversity found in the
international context was even more pronounced. The reasons for such differences lay in
the wide variety of cultural, political and scientiﬁc belief systems held throughout the
world.

Eugenicists throughout the world often proclaimed their ﬁeld to be a science,
which implied a standard set of beliefs based on an accepted body of knowledge. While
this was hardly the case in the United States, it was even less so overseas. Many
adherents to the “science” of eugenics not only interpreted it as including almost any
program leading directly to an increase in the number of those termed “well-bom,” but
also to programs perceived as beneﬁting society through improvements to the next
generation’s living standards. Thus proposals not directly related to issues of heredity, but
rather to public health, education or even national defense were labeled as eugenically
positive efforts.1

The principal reason for the wide range of programs deemed “eugenically”
beneﬁcial revolved around the question of the malleability of the germ plasm. In the ﬁrst
three decades of the new century, the Lamarckian view, though largely discredited in the
industrialized nations of the West, maintained a large following in those nations with a

decidedly Catholic heritage and in the emerging Soviet Union with its focus on the

 

’ Robbins, Emily. Ex. Sec. Proceeding of the Thirtgace Betterment Conference. (Battle Creek: Race
Betterment Foundation, 1928); Davenport, Charles. Eugenics, Genetics and the Family: Second
International Congress of Eugenics. (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins Co., 1923).

Efforts labeled eugenically beneﬁcial to society included: immunization, immigration restriction, worker
safety, physical ﬁtness education, rural health care, general nutrition, prohibition, beneﬁts of sunlight,
reforms in educational and medical practices.

233

behavioralist construction of the new Soviet man. Though the reasons for adherence to a
neo-Lamarckian interpretation of heredity varied, the single most important point for
most of its supporters was their opposition to the biological determinism inherent in
Mendelian genetics.

For those nations where the majority of educated middle classes accepted the
Mendelian perspective and the determinism inherent in this philosophy, local eugenicists
often found governments and electorates amenable to ideas of social engineering through
selective breeding. These nations tended to be predominately Protestant in faith, rapidly
urbanizing and socially advanced in the promulgation of laws for the care of society’s
dependents. Like the United States, these nations developed extensive legislation for the
education and welfare of children, but also for the care and maintenance of society’s
adult dependents.

The Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark provide
the most startling parallels to the American experience with compulsory sterilization
laws. By the end of the nineteenth century, these nations had undergone profound
transformations in their social, political and economic situations. Rapidly industrializing,
commercializing and urbanizing, they also had undergone deep political transformations
in the political accommodations reached among government, business and the trade union
movements. By the turn of the century, reformist social policy was becoming the order of
the day as Social Democratic political parties came to dominate the political landscape.2

With relatively homogeneous populations, the Scandinavian countries’ experience

with sterilization laws lacked the racial element that in retrospect seemed so elemental in

 

2 Broberg, Gunnar & Roll-Hansen, Nils. Ed. Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in
Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finlaad. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1996) Pg. 1-8

234

the sterilization policies of their neighbor Germany. But like the German and American
experiences with reform of institutional care for society’s wards, the elaboration of public
responsibility resulted not only in a growing number of institutions, but a perception that
the numbers of the dependent population were increasing in a dramatic way. Without race
as a complicating factor in the analysis of why so many people supported or at least
refrained from opposing such policies, the Nordic countries provide insights into the
essentially reformist nature of mainstream eugenics.

Scandinavian eugenics efforts afford a remarkable series of parallels to the
American model. While Scandinavian eugenicists were inﬂuenced by subsequent events
in Germany, the impetus for their programs derived from the American experience. The
ﬁrst eugenic sterilizations performed were in institutions without the beneﬁt of direct
legal sanction. Edwin Hedman, the head of the Bertula institution for the mentally
retarded in Finland carried out vasectomies on his patients as early as 1911. Following
the reasoning of Indiana’s Dr. Sharp, Hedman would elaborate in 1915 that the
operations served not only a eugenic purpose but also reduced the sexuality of the
patients making them more manageable. Shortly thereafter, the head of a Danish
institution for the mentally retarded submitted the ﬁrst formal application for a eugenic
sterilization, which though it was denied, provided an opening for the question in
governmental and medical circles.3

As was the case in the US, prominent physicians and experts in related ﬁelds,
particularly Specialists in the care of the socially dysfunctional, were instrumental in

inﬂuencing the public and government in adopting eugenic measures. In the Sixth Nordic

 

3 Ibid. Pg. 13

235

Conference on the Welfare of the Handicapped in 1912, Dr. Hedman addressed the
conferees on the importance of eugenics and was supported by the Finnish psychiatrist A.
Bjorkrnan who maintained that sterilization provided the only effective prophylactic
against a threatening increase in the number of the mentally retarded. The Finnish
professor Georg von Wendt put forward a resolution appealing for eugenic legislation,
support for eugenic research and commitment to the cause"

Even earlier, a young Danish physician, Bodil Hjort visited several American
insitutions, most notably the Vineland institution where Henry Goddard had done his
pioneering research on the hereditary nature of feeblemindedness. Hjort, affected by her
exposure to the more advanced practices of some American institutions, brought back to
her institution and colleagues a new perspective on the etiology and management of the
mentally retarded.

The importance of these types of international connections in eugenicists’ efforts
appears evident in that articles by and about Goddard subsequently appeared in the
Danish professional journal Nyt Tidsskrift for Abnormvaesenet, and Goddard’s works
ﬁgured prominently in Danish eugenics discussions over the next few decades. New
works in Danish and translations of other eugenics tracts such as August Forel’s The
Sexual Question worked to popularize eugenics throughout the second decade of the
century.5

In this decade, several Danish professors, physicians and politicians became
active promoters of eugenics. Denmark’s leading anthropologist, Soren Hansen attended

the First International Eugenics Conference returning a devoted follower and popularizer

 

“ Ibid. Pg. 19-20
5 Ibid. Pg. 19-23

236

providing numerous lectures and articles for periodicals and daily newspapers. Wilhelm
Johannsan, Denmark’s expert in genetics and a effective critic of positive eugenics,
became increasingly an advocate of negative eugenics and in 1923 joined the Permanent
International Committee on Eugenics. By 1924, he had joined the Danish commission
then considering castration and sterilization legislation.‘5

’ In 1922, the Danes passed their ﬁrst eugenic legislation, a maniage law restricting
legal unions between mentally retarded persons. When the ﬁrst Social Democratic
government took ofﬁce in 1924, K.K. Steinecke the secretary of justice and a strong
advocate for eugenics, arranged for a commission to consider sterilization legislation.
The commission’s report issued in 1926, called for sterilization of the mentally retarded
in institutions and castration for sexual offenders whose sexual appetites seemed so
strong or abnormal as to indicate recidivist tendencies. Like many such bills in the US,
the issue of criminal sexual conduct would ﬁgure prominently in much of the
Scandinavian legislation.7

Political complications unassociated with eugenics or sterilization led to a delay

in passage of a law, but in 1929 the Danish parliament gave ﬁnal approval to the law.

Minor opposition to the law appeared in the 1928 debates on the legislation, but

 

6 Ibid. Pg. 24.26; The Danish pathologist, Oluf Thomsen introduced human genetics into the medical
curriculum and worked with the Rockefeller Foundation to establish research into genetics and eugenics at
the university level. The psychiatrist August Wimmer, initially a skeptic with regard to eugenics, eventually
became a strong adherent and with Thomsen served on the medico-legal council which inﬂuenced not only
the formulation of eugenic legislation, but also engaged in the decision making process regarding
individual sterilizations. The inﬂuence of the Rockefeller Foundation on the development and funding of
eugenics programs throughout the West was substantial, though seemingly indirect.

7 Ibid. Pg. 26-37; Steinecke had originally proposed such a commission in 1920, which had achieved
substantial support from a somewhat unusual source. The parliament had received a petition with 100,000
signatures from the Women’s National Council seeking some permanent means of neutralizing the
perceived increase in the number of sexual offenders. Castration was mentioned as an alternative to
permanent incarceration. The Social Democrat Vilhelm Rasmussen had pr0posed sterilization legislation as
early as 1915, but his eccentric nature and his party’s minority Status in the government prevented any
serious consideration at the time.

237

represented only a very small group within the Conservative Party and was principally
directed against the portions of the law dealing with castration. Similarly to Michigan’s
1929 statute, the law made no distinction between violent sexual offenders and other
types of “sexual deviants.” Among this latter group were homosexuals and exhibitionists,
categories, which would remain in the revised law of 1935 and several of whom would be
sterilized under this legislation in subsequent years.

The 1929 law served as experimental legislation in that it had a sundown of ﬁve
years. Its revision in 1935 was preceded in 1934 by a complex and comprehensive statute
dealing especially with the mentally deﬁcient. Mirroring the expanding nature of such
legislation in the US. and Germany (in terms of responsibility for reporting and who was
subject to such operations), this law promulgated by K.K. Steinecke, who now served as
minister of health and welfare, mandated the commitment of the feebleminded and held
teachers, medical ofﬁcers and other social authorities responsible for reporting cases of
suspected mental deﬁciency. The law covered two indications for sterilization within this
population: an inability to raise and support children and/or the facilitation of the
patient’s release from an institution. The law modiﬁed the prior legislation by allowing
operations on minors, procedures on patients not currently inmates of institutions and by
doing away with consent from mentally retarded patients.8

Upwards of 90% of Danish sterilizations were performed under the aegis of this
law. But in 1935 the original 1929 statute was revised to include the mentally “normal” if

it was in the “interests of society,” and of beneﬁt the applicant. The law continued to

 

8 Ibid. Pg,. 364] Though the law contained no direct references to eugenics, the indications for mandatory
conﬁnement and thus release on condition of sterilization, referred to “a clear danger that they (the
mentally retarded) might have children.” In this sense of the law, all mentally deﬁcient children could be

238

include provisions for compulsory castration in some cases and put responsibility in the
hands of the minister of justice acting on the advice of the medico-legal council. The
latter change reduced the number of people reviewing such cases and effectively put the
decision into the hands of the same people who had reviewed the prior law and
promulgated the revised version. In their (the medico-legal council) review of the earlier
statute, the authors suggested that schizophrenia, certain types of epilepsy and particular
hereditary neurological diseases, such as Huntingtons chorea be included as indications
for sterilization. Though they also would have liked to include hereditary blindness and
deafness in these indications, an awareness of popular disdain prevented their inclusion.
Demonstrating the continuing focus on sexual crime and cost-beneﬁt analysis in taking
eugenic decisions, the council preferred sterilization of psychopaths, alcoholics and
habitual criminals of normal intelligence, particularly in extreme cases of psychopathy
where hypersexuality was indicated “by the existence of several illegitimate children
supported by society.” The inclusion of such socially dysfunctional elements in most
negative eugenic legislation throughout the West seems to have served to engender
greater public support than might otherwise have been the case.9

During the ﬁve years following the passage of the 1929 statute, only 108 people
were sterilized, 90% of whom were mentally deﬁcient and would in the future be covered
under the Mentally Handicapped act of 1934. More than four times as many women as
men were sterilized in this period. With passage of the 1935 statute the number of
sterilized patients rose to 1,380 with nearly two and a half times as many women as men

going under the state‘s knife. This bias continued throughout the laws’ use. During the

 

forcibly conﬁned from the onset of puberty and then sterilized in that it might facilitate their release, all
without their consent.

239

war years, though Denmark was occupied by German forces, collaboration of the
Quisling government with the Nazi occupiers left the Danish government an effectively
free hand in administering its laws up until the ﬁnal year of the war. In this period,
Denmark sterilized an additional 740 patients, 460 of whom were not categorized as
mentally deﬁcient. Through 1950, 57% of sterilizations were performed on indications of
feeblemindedness, the rest fell directly into categorizations of hereditary taint or the other
more nebulous distinction of “being in the interests of society.” Not until 1959 would the
compulsory provisions of the Mentally Handicapped Act of 1934 be revised.10

In formulating and revising their later laws the Danes had examples to follow not
only from the North American states and some of the Swiss cantons where compulsory
sterilization laws existed, but from other Nordic countries. In 1934 Norway passed its
ﬁrst sterilization legislation followed in 1935 by Sweden and Finland. Sweden, among
the Scandinavian nations, demonstrated the most comprehensive eugenics program
particularly in terms of compulsory sterilization.

Sweden’s swift transformation from a rural agrarian economy to an industrialized
urban society transformed a culture governed by traditional Lutheran values into one
dominated by a secularized modern lifestyle. The modernization of Swedish society
focused on economic growth, urbanization, political democratization, increased social
planning and improving standards of living. Social efﬁciency in achieving these goals,

which necessitated increased social complexity and diversity, conspired to bring about a

 

9 Ibid. Pg. 41-43

'0 Ibid. Pg. 58-63; Revision of the compulsory aspects of the law mainly concerned the compulsory
removal of children from their homes and placement in institutions and secondarily the consequent
sterilizations that took place there. Adverse publicity arising from cases of late-developers being released
from institutions subsequent to sterilization and then reclassiﬁed as normal led to some dissatisfaction with
the law. In 1941 an inquiry was held, but not until 1954 would appeal to the regular courts be possible.

240

general sentiment “that society had reached a stage where old solutions and old morals no
longer applied.”11

In 1909, the Swedish Society for Racial Hygiene was founded in Stockholm.
Swedish physicians, anthropologists and geneticists formed the core of the eugenics
movement in Sweden. Unlike the Danish eugenicists who were generally allied with the
International Eugenie Committee, the Swedish society aligned itself with the German
dominated Internationale Gesellschaft fur Rassenhygiene. This relationship demonstrated
a similar concern for racial threats perceived by the Swedes and their German
counterparts. Swedes had long considered themselves a bastion for European and
particularly Lutheran society against the threat from the barbarians of the East. These
beliefs recurred in numerous Swedish writings celebrating their Nordic racial heritage.
Concerns with the problem of emigration and a belief in the racial distinctiveness of the
Sami and Gypsy minorities conspired to evoke a remarkably racialist tone in a relatively
homogeneous population.12

In 1918, Fritiof Lennmalm of the Royal Caroline Institute of Medicine proposed
the foundation of Nobel institute for race biology. By a slim majority the bill failed, but
in 1922 the ﬁrst state institute for race biology was established in Uppsala under the
direction of Herman Lundborg. Lundborg, a psychiatrist by training, had established the
transmission of myoclonus epilepsy as an example of a Mendelian recessive trait through

a historical genealogical analysis of archival materials. Lundborg had solidiﬁed his

 

Criticism of the law even after the horrors of the Nazi regime’s use of the 1933 German statute did not
effectively contribute to the debate on the Danish laws.

“ Ibid. Pg. 77- 81

’2 Ibid. 81-91; In a nation of some six million, a substantial Swedish emigration accounted for nearly one
million people in the decades around the turn of the century. Though the Sami and Gypsy minorities
comprised a very small segment of the population, the Gypsies in particular were ostracized as racial
outcasts and threats to the Swedish race.

241

standing as Sweden’s most dedicated if not eminent eugenicist by this research and his
efforts to promote the science. Lundborg’s postwar studies concentrated on the Sami and
problems associated with miscegenation. Lundborg’s concerns with miscegenation were
shared with some of his American counterparts. He collaborated with S]. Holmes at
Berkeley and with Charles Davenport of the ERO at Cold Springs Harbor in planning to
establish institutes for research and propaganda in Central America and South Africa. To
promote eugenics in Sweden, Lundborg arranged for series of public lectures to be given
from 1922 onwards. His German colleagues ﬁgured prominently in these presentations.
In 1924 Eugen Fischer, director of the Berlin Institute for Racial Hygiene and rector of
the University of Berlin appeared, followed in 1925 by Fritz Lenz, co-author with Ernst
Baur and Fischer of the internationally recognized standard textbook on eugenics.l3

The foundation of Lundborg’s institute coincided with the Social Democratic
psychiatrist Alfred Petren’s introduction of the ﬁrst sterilization bill to parliament.
Though this bill failed passage, discussions related to its passage revealed that a few
sterilizations on eugenic grounds had been performed, the ﬁrst as early as 1906. Some
doctors wishing to keep such decisions a strictly medical matter, claimed that a law was
unnecessary and would actually retard what eugenic progress was being made by
introducing politicians and jurists into the decision making process. In the intervening

thirteen years before passage of Sweden’s ﬁrst sterilization law, two doctors performed

 

‘3 Ibid. Pg. 88—91; The book, Grundriss der menschlichen Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene (Principles
of Human Heredity and Race Hygiene) was considered a standard text and cited by Adolf Hitler as a
foundation of his political/biological philosophy. Lundborg supported the reintegration of German
eugenicists in the international community following the First World War, reﬂecting the generally pro-
German orientation of Swedish academics in this period.

242

and reported over ﬁfty sterilizations for eugenic indications with no legal action taken
against them.14

By 1934, advocates of a sterilization law founded their argument on the ﬁnancial
burdens imposed on society rather than on the direct hereditary beneﬁts of “purifying the
national stock.” Monies saved by preventing the birth of children who would one day
become dependents of the state either through their own defect or that of their parents
could be better spent on social programs beneﬁting the rest of society. This argument
won out in the parliament and passage of the law led to immediate action.15

In the ﬁrst ﬁve years, nearly 3000 people would be sterilized, a number
comparable to Michigan’s total for a 40 year period in a population of roughly the same
size. With the laws revision in 1941, the numbers would climb to over one thousand year,
steadily increasing through the early 19508 when over two thousand sterilizations a year
were performed. In the 40 years of the laws’ operation over 62,000 Swedes would be
sterilized. Over 90% of these sterilizations were performed upon women. Initially, the
vast majority of operations were performed on eugenic indications, in effect on the
mentally retarded, who were the original object of the laws. Yet by the 19503, a clear
reversal in the reasons given for operations had taken place with medical indications

predominating. ‘6

 

“ Ibid. Pg. 97-103

'5 Ibid. Pg. 103-108; By 1934, it had become apparent to many eugenicists that the recessive nature of most
hereditary disease made the elimination of undesirable genetic traits near impossible, or one commentator
put it, “a Sisyphean task.” Measures to accomplish such as task would include sterilizing an enormous of
the otherwise genetically healthy population, a labor unlikely to ﬁnd a sympathetic public.

'6 Ibid. Pg. 109-1 16; The steady decline in the numbers of patients recorded as mentally retarded probably
shows that those liable to sterilization had already been sterilized in the ﬁrst decade of the laws’ use.
Sterilization of patients in this category continued throughout the next four decades but in declining
numbers. This may also reveal a progressively more cautious attitude toward those late maturing
individuals who might otherwise have been sterilized in an earlier period of the laws’ operation.

243

The medical indications in this latter period usually referred to “exhausted
mothers” or “weak women.” Often times, women seeking abortion or other obstetrical
procedures were granted the sought for procedure on condition of submitting to
sterilization. This brings into focus the question of whether the law was voluntary in a
meaningful sense to those who were legally competent. In the early ﬁfties when medical
rather than eugenic indications began to predominate, one out of four women applying
for an abortion also had a sterilization, on average between 1000-1500 cases a year. Of
all women sterilized in this period, from 60-70% had their sterilizations performed in
conjunction with an abortion. There were some suggestions that some women were using
abortion and sterilization as a means of birth control. Yet, Broberg and Roll-Hansen
maintain that much of the disparity in categorization may be attributable to a
transformation in labeling reﬂecting the supplanting of the eugenic with a sociomedical
discourse. Ultimately, the ﬁgures show that sterilization laws were now being applied to
a new category of people, women in social distress.l7

For the mentally retarded and thus legally incompetent, the law remained
compulsory from beginning to end. The laws did not require their consent though they
did disallow physical force. In cases of outright refusal, applications were forwarded and
upon approval, the patient was impressed with the idea that the operation would be
carried out in any event. The authorities sanctioned this method as it lay within the aegis
of the law, though it would appear to violate the spirit thereof. Taken with the

requirement of sterilization as a condition of parole from reform schools and institutions

 

‘7 Ibid. Pg. 120-124

244

for the mentally retarded, it seems that Sweden’s laws contained a large measure of
compulsion.18

The Swedish sterilization program affected a far larger proportion of population
than any other program currently known. Though the German program sterilized more
people in absolute numbers in a far shorter period of time, Sweden’s continuing
commitment even after the excesses of the German program were revealed at the end of
the Second World War bespeaks an acceptance of policies of intervention in the
reproductive autonomy of individuals incomparable in the history of compulsory
sterilization.

Norway’s experience provides an example of the use of an almost exclusively
voluntary sterilization law, though eugenics formed the basis for its acceptance. In 1922,
the Ministry of Justice set up commission for research into revision of the penal code and
sterilization of the habitual sexual offender ﬁgured prominently in the agenda. The report
of the committee, issued in 1927 contained a detailed review of Laughlin’s Eugenical
Sterilizaftion, which with the propaganda efforts of Norway’s principal eugenicists
became the foundation for a public discussion of a law’s merits. By 1934, the government
had formulated a law allowing for voluntary sterilization upon the request of the
individual or their guardians for “respectable reasons,” which at this time did not include
birth control. The indications were for social or eugenic reasons, in effect, fear of
hereditary defect or inability to care for children corresponded with the laws intent.19

From the law’s passage in 1934, about 100 Norwegians a year would request

sterilization for themselves or for a dependent. Because statistics are not as complete as

 

‘3 lbid. Pg. 118-121
‘9 Ibid. Pg. 151-176

245

for Sweden and Denmark, it is difﬁcult to get a complete picture of the program, but it
appears that at least for the period from 1945 through 1954 less than 40% of sterilizations
were performed for strictly eugenic reasons, in effect, for patients suffering from mental
retardation, insanity and epilepsy. From 80-90% of operations were performed on
women in the period up to 1965, when this ratio decreased as more men sought the
procedure apparently as a means of birth control, legitimated with the law’s modiﬁcation
in 1961.20

With the country’s occupation by Nazi forces in 1942, pressure by German Nazis
upon the government of Vidkun Quisling to adopt a law more in line with German
population policy led to the adoption of a law with compulsory features. The number of
sterilizations increased to around 200 a year during this period, but the effect of the law is
difﬁcult to establish as the postwar ﬁgures from 1945-1954 increased to an annual -
number of 283 even after repeal of the Nazi law in May 1945. The following decade
witnessed even greater numbers of people availing themselves of the law with nearly 700
sterilizations a year being performed. Over 2600 sterilizations were performed on an
annual basis in the ensuing decade with 38% of these being performed on men. It seems
evident that sterilization was increasingly adopted as a means of birth control throughout
the laws Operation as the mentally retarded, insane and epileptic provided a smaller and
smaller proportion of those seeking the procedure.21

Norway’s experience demonstrates a high level of public consensus on the
adoption of such laws with only one dissenting vote cast in parliament. The protections of

the individual’s rights were the strongest of any such laws. Though guardians could apply

 

2° Ibid. Pg. 173-179
2' lbid. Pg. 177-185

246

for their dependent’s sterilization, these dependents were able to veto the procedure if
they had attained or were thought capable of attaining the IQ of a nine year-old.
Excepting the period of operation for the Nazi law, compulsion was never part of the
Norwegian law. In 1977, sterilization became a matter of the doctor-patient relationship
for all mentally competent individuals and the need to apply for permission from the
government for the procedures remained only as a protection for the mentally
incompetent.

Finland provides an example of the most compulsory of sterilization laws enacted
in the Scandinavian countries. In 1934, after several years of public discussions led
largely by the professional classes associated with the care of the mentally ill and
feebleminded, the parliament passed a law which called for the sterilization of individuals
afﬂicted with a broad range of inheritable conditions, social dysfunction and/or criminal
activities. In earlier attempts to form a consensus, such legislative proposals focused
almost exclusively on the inherited or social indications for sterilization, i.e.
predisposition to inherited disorders or inability to properly raise children because of
mental instability, alcoholism, epilepsy or socially inappropriate behavior patterns
(prostitution, promiscuity, illegitimacy).

By 1934, fears of increasing rates of degeneracy (inherited or social indications)
in the general population had been coupled with growing alarm with the rise in criminal
sexual conduct. Ofﬁcial crime statistics for the period between 1927 and 1930 indicated a
70% increase in the incidence of the sexual abuse of children. The Morality Committee
of the Finnish Women’s National Federation submitted a petition calling for immediate

measure to be taken to protect minors; one such protection would be the castration of

247

those convicted of molesting minors. The Social Democratic Working Women’s
Federation also took a favorable attitude to the legislation. Women across the political
spectrum collaborated in supporting the Sterilization Bill in a series of measures intended
to promote the safety of children and young people.22

While in 1923, only 2.95% of the population had received permanent or casual
relief payments, by 1932 the number had more than doubled to 6.18%. Because many on
relief also supported families the actual number calculated to be dependent on public
charity was 9.4%. Coupled with increases in criminal behavior, the growing numbers of
“unﬁt” individuals and the rising cost of poor relief, the bill gained easy passage through
the parliament.23

The Sterilization Act decreed that the feeblerrrinded, insane could be made
incapable of reproduction on either of two grounds: ﬁrst that there was reason to assume
that their disability was hereditarily transmissible, second that the disability made them
incapable of properly caring for children. Sterilization was also prescribed for those
found guilty of a crime or an attempted crime demonstrating an unnatural sexual drive
either in terms of its strength or direction. Petitions for sterilization could be initiated in
institutions and penal establishments by their directors; in cities and towns by municipal
boards of health, police inspectors and public prosecutors; in the countryside by bailiffs,
and police superintendents. Legally competent individuals with similar indications could

apply for voluntary sterilization themselves. The National Board of Health reviewed all

 

22 Ibid. Pg. 229-230; Castration became part of the Sterilization Act of 1935 largely due to the efforts of
women seeking protection for minors. Other relevant legislation provided for more women police and
jaurors.

Ibid. 230-231

248

applications and concerned individuals were allowed a voice in the decision though legal
recourse was constrained compared with many protections offered in most similar laws.24

Even though the compulsory nature of the law and the broad range of indications
for sterilization could have led to a large number of sterilizations, only 500 had been
performed in the ﬁrst eight years of the laws operation. Through 1955, only 1,908 people
had been sterilized under the laws auspices, of whom only 276 were men (14%). Over
seventy-ﬁve percent of sterilizations were of a compulsory nature. Of the total number of
sterilizations, the mentally retarded accounted for over 58%, with slightly over 14%
classiﬁed as schizophrenic, 9% as epileptic and 5% as psychopathic. A eugenic indication
(inherited predisposition) was cited in 61% of the ordered cases and in 68% of personal
applications.25

Implementation of the law differed between the Finnish-speaking majority and the
Swedish-speaking minority by an almost two to one ratio (28% vs. 15%, respectively).
Though both communities had supported the legislation, the Swedish-Finns had were
much more concerned with their declining birth rates and status in the Finnish state.
Historically, they had held the political reins of power and provided the largest proportion
of educated middle classes. That Swedish-speaking Finns still held considerable power
and thus could direct the implementation of the law could explain the disparity in its
application.

Women accounted for 86% of sterilizations, which compares generally with

ﬁgures internationally. Finnish sources attributed this disproportion to the assumption of

an exceptionally strong sexual desire in women as witnessed by the number of

 

2‘ Ibid. Pg. 232-235
25 Ibid. Pg. 234-235

249

illegitimate children born to the sterilized cohort. Of those women sterilized because of a
neuropsychiatric disorder, nearly 13% were pregnant at the time action was ordered.
From the sterilization applications it appears that small, poor communes were the ﬁrst to
take advantage of the legislation reﬂecting an anxiety over the communities’ ability to
bear the costs of caring for the mentally retarded (i.e. segregation vs. sterilization) as well
as increasing costs associated with their progeny. It is also very likely that rural moral
values played a role in the number of applications from these quarters.26

In 1950, new laws were passed regulating sterilization, castration and abortion.
Among the changes brought about by this legislation, general medical indications
certiﬁed by two physicians, allowed sterilization to be much more widely prescribed,
most often as a means of birth control. The number of procedures performed rose to over
a thousand a year in 1951, over two thousand by 1958, over 3,100 by 1960, 4,000 by
1967 and 5,400 in 1969. By 1970, over 56,000 Finns had been sterilized under the laws’
aegis. Only 5,001 of these operations (9%) had been performed for eugenic reasons, with
social indications accounting for another 3,445 operations (6%). The sterilization laws,
originally enacted as a means of subjecting individual reproductive autonomy to the
needs of the state, underwent a transformation to become a method of exercising
individual choice in reproduction as a birth control option.27

The Scandinavian experience with sterilization legislation parallels the American
experience in many ways. Efforts to promulgate legislation most Often arose from middle
class, Protestant reformers, particularly those directly concerned with the care of the

mentally ill and feebleminded. Increasing rates of urbanization and industrialization, and

 

2° Ibid. Pg. 237-244
27 Ibid. 240-248

250

the elaboration of social welfare infrastructures transformed these societies from
primarily agrarian, Protestant dominated rural communities into increasingly complex
metropolitan-centered secular states. Fears of social degeneration founded on statistics
derived from ever more elaborate systems of monitoring the social welfare needs of
society provided the impetus for action. International connections among eugenicists
suppOrted the promulgation and propagandizing of such laws. Eugenicists supporting
sterilization formed a broad amalgam of political and philosophical dimensions often
opposed on any number of other issues. Fundamental concerns regarding the burgeoning
cost of care for societies’ dependents usually coupled with the fear of a rising tide of
crime led to a perceived imminent degeneration of society.

Regional and institutional variation in the application of the laws was substantial
throughout the various state and provincial domains though Scandinavian statutes were
national in operation while US. laws were strictly the province of individual state
governments. Disproportionate numbers of women found themselves the
beneﬁciaries/victims of these laws. Over time, the operation of the laws changed from
one of subsuming individual reproductive autonomy to the perceived needs of society to
a means of exercising that autonomy as a means of birth control.

In other ways the Nordic practice differed in meaningful ways. In only two of
these nations’ statutes was compulsion a primary object of the law (though the
implementation of the Swedish statute certainly had a compulsory edge and the
Norwegian experience was marred by the compulsory nature of the Nazi era statute),
whereas almost all US. laws provided for compulsory sterilization exclusively. In the

US, individual states initiated and carried out programs, which were constrained under

251

the national constitution, whereas Scandinavian laws were national in origination and
orientation.

During the respective periods when initial consideration was given to sterilization
legislation, the US. experienced population growth with massive immigration, causing
fears of degeneration from without (not to say that concerns about degeneration from
within the native-born population were not even more salient), while the Scandinavian
nations had declining birth rates accompanied by increased emigration. In the US. there
was a much greater variation in the proportion of women sterilized in the different states
compared with the Scandinavian percentages and the overall American ﬁgures for female
sterilization were substantially less than those for any Nordic country.

Finally, though questions of race, usually in terms of miscegenation, occasionally
arose in discussions of eugenic sterilization, the actual application of the laws seems to
have been little affected by such concerns. The focus of eugenicists supporting negative
eugenic measures such as sterilization primarily dealt with cleansing their own gene
pools. In the early part of this century, miscegenation in the most widely understood
sense (i.e. the crossing of anthropologically distinct groups; e.g. Negroid, Caucasoid,
Mongoloid), where it was not actually forbidden by law, remained of little concern
because prevalent social mores generally prevented its occurrence.

Yet, miscegenation in contemporary terms reﬂects the racism peculiar to this era.
The contemporary deﬁnition referred to what is now described as ethnicity. Different
races were generally associated with national origins though subcategories within nation
states were certainly recognized as products of different environments. This view of race

as deﬁned by, or rather differentially produced from local environments, held that the

252

several races of mankind evolved so as to be optimized for the environmental
circumstances of their original homelands. Following humoral precepts on the nature of
beneﬁcial and deleterious locales, theories on the relative value of the different races
were equated with the nature of their original homelands. The various “races’” states of
development, as measured on a scale with the industrializing nations in the international
context or against dominant populations within a society, provided support for these
theories. Eugenicists like Laughlin, Riidin and other like-minded racialists assumed that
scientiﬁc/industrial development or academic/social advancement proved the worthiness
of their respective “races” while a lack thereof demonstrated the contrary with regard to
others.

Davenport and many others withheld judgement on the validity of these
assumptions and suggested eugenic immigration policy focus on individual eugenic-
worth, rather than blanket restrictions on particular groups. Though Laughlin prevailed in
his attempts to inﬂuence Congressmen on this issue with the passage of the Immigration
Act of 1924, it turned out to be pyrrhic in its consequences for him and the ERO he
represented. Laughlin’s continuing propagandizing for compulsory sterilization and
immigration restriction based on what increasingly became demonstrably unsound
scientiﬁc data lead to his dismissal from the ERO and its demise in the 19308.28

Vaughan subscribed to a similar though more insidious form of racism. In

 

28 Haller. Pg. 178-181; Perhaps, Henry Fairﬁeld Osborn best summed up the ﬁnal judgement on Laughlin’s
work. Upon the demise of the ERO, when Osborn was offered Eugenical News back issues for the ﬁles of
the American Eugenics Society, he declined. Writing to a friend, he stated "During the years in which Mr.
Laughlin was in charge of the Eugenics Record Ofﬁce, and when Mr. Madison Grant and others with
similar views were on the board of the Eugenics Research Association. the News contained a good deal of
material on race as well as a good deal of material on social-class differences which today would be
considered thoroughly unscientiﬁc. It is my belief," he added, "that this material injured the scientiﬁc
standing of the Record Ofﬁce, and I have very direct evidence to show that it set back the scientiﬁc accept-
ance of eugenics in this country."

253

discussing the deleterious effects of inbreeding in terms of compounding the effects of
negative unit characters, he afﬁrmed a belief in the undesirability of interracial marriages.

The Eurasians of India, the mulattos of our own country,

and the mixed races of South America and neighbouring

islands are unanswerable arguments against race mixtures.

The bad of each side becomes dominant, and the mongrel

whether man or beast, is no credit to the pure blood on

either side of the house.29
Likewise, though in a less strident tone, Kellogg agreed that “Marriage between widely
different races is unadvisable. .. such marriages are not only not conducive to happiness,
but are detrimental to the offspring. It has been proven beyond room for question that
mulattoes are not so long-lived as either blacks or whites.”3o

This form of racism held that each “pure race” possessed qualities optimized for
the particular environment in which it had arose. The often unspoken, but widely
assumed corollary ascribed optimization of some races to less developed, or in
contemporary terms, primitive regions. The insidious logic of this position insinuated that
peoples from “primitive” areas of the globe though optimized for their environments
remained “primitive” in their development; a dubious optimization at best.
Members of the industrialized nations cited their dominance in the sciences,

manufacturing and colonizing other areas of the world as proof of their innate superiority.
True to ancient humoral interpretations on the nature of heredity, they ascribed their

“superiority” to the inﬂuences of their environmental origins. Their convoluted

interpretations of evolution merely provided a “scientiﬁc” basis to substantiate these

 

29 Eugenics: Twelve University Lectures. Pg. 64. This belief derived from humoral precepts and was widely
held. Though anthropologist Franz Boas, among others, pointed out the fallacious nature of such beliefs, it
did little to persuade those inculcated with the received humoral precepts of centuries past.

3° Kellogg, John Harvey. Plain Facts for Old and Young: Emlﬂaing the Natural History and Hygiene of
Organic Life. (Burlington: I.F. Senger & Co., 1891), http://etext.lib.virginiaedu/modeng/modengO.
browse.html, 1995, Pg. 151

254

claims.3 1 What exactly constituted a pure race was left indeterminate in such discussions.
Necessarily so, as none of the industrializing “races” could boast such purity without
subsuming many different ethnicities under broad categorizations, such as Aryan.

Was eugenics essentially a racist dogma seeking scientiﬁc validation through the
purported truth of evolutionary theory? In its least noxious form, eugenics was
exclusionary on an individual basis, irrespective of race. But underlying most
eugenicist’s beliefs was a core of racial distinction and discrimination, a legacy of
humoral interpretations of race. Eugenicists around the world tried to broaden their base

of support around the world by focusing their attentions on members of their own

 

31 Greenwood, Davydd. The Taming of Evolution: The Persistence of Nonevolutionary Views in the
Study of Humans. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984) Pg. 73-102. Greenwood details the extended
history of such European perceptions and the perverse interpretations of history and science to which they
led. In its most fallacious form, historical interpretations of past advanced civilizations were contrived to
include a core of Northern European originators, or “carriers” of civilization. In these interpretations, the
carriers were eventually subsumed or “mongrelized” through interbreeding with the native populations over
which they ruled, explaining the decline of these ancient civilizations. The most pernicious outgrowth of
this rendering of world history is found in Hitler’s Mein Kampf; Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf. (Boston,
Houghton Mifﬂin Co., 1943) Pg. 284-296, “Everything we admire on this earth today -- science and art,
technology and inventions- is only the creative product of a few peoples and originally perhaps of one
race ...... If we were to divide mankind into three groups, the founders of culture, the bearers of culture, the
destroyers of culture, only the Aryan could be considered as the representative of the ﬁrst group. From him
originate the foundations and walls of all human creation, and only the outward form and color are de-
termined by the changing u'aits of character of the various peoples.” Though I intend in no way to insinuate
that Dr. Vaughan could be associated with Nazi ideals, I think it is important to show the correlation in
perspectives among mainstream eugenicists and one branch of their intellectual descendants, the Nazis.
Hitler provides as his proof of Aryan superiority and the degeneration associated with “race mixing” a
frighteningly similar example to that of Dr. Vaughan. Hitler declares that history shows “with terrifying
clarity that in every mingling of Aryan blood with that of lower peoples the result was the end of the
cultured people. North America, whose population consists in by far the largest part of Germanic elements
who mixed but little with the lower colored peoples, shows a different humanity and culture from Central
and South America, where the predominantly Latin immigrants often mixed with the aborigines on a large
scale. By this one example, we can clearly and distinctly recognize the effect of racial mixture. The
Germanic inhabitant of the American continent, who has remained racially pure and unmixed, rose to be
master of the continent; he will remain the master as long as he does not fall a victim to deﬁlement of the
blood. The result of all racial crossing is therefore in brief always the following: (a) Lowering of the level
of the higher race; (b) Physical and intellectual regression and hence the beginning of a slowly but surely
progressing sickness.” Mein Karnpf. Pg. 288; This correlation in such beliefs among physicians is further
evidenced by German physicians comprising the largest faction in the Nazi Party, 45 percent. Lifton,

Robert. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. (New York: Basic Books,
1986) Pg. 34.

255

“races,” leaving each “race” to look after its own so to speak. For the sake of a united
front in eugenics, the improvement of the “human race” remained parochial in terms of
individual races’ eugenic self improvement and catholic in its pronouncements on who
constituted the degenerate classes in every race. Yet, most all agreed that the mixing of
their “pure” strains was inadvisable.

In Germany, these concerns became the basis in Adolf Hitler’s mind for the
implementation of “the biological state.” German eugenics, or Rassenhygiene as the
German version was known, started without the racial/ethnic bias that would eventually
lead to the all too well known consequences of the Second World War.

Alfred Ploetz, originator of the term Rassenhygiene, and Wilhelm Schallmayer,
authors of seminal German texts on the subject, like many early German eugenicists
came to their hereditarian perspectives through their medical practice in psychiatric
hospitals. Both men eschewed the volkisch bias concerning a singular Nordic superiority
though they did believe that Caucasian “races” had demonstrated their inherent
preeminence through their contemporary dominance in the 19th century world of colonial

expansion and industrialization.”

 

32 Adams, Mark. The Wellbom Science: Eugenics in Germany. France, Brazil and Russia. (new York:
Oxford University Press, 1990) Pg. 11-21; Ploetz , a conﬁrmed socialist, originally studied economics in an
effort to ﬁnd answer to the soziale F rage (the question of how society was to deal with the consequences of
unbridled economic liberalism and the industrialization process). His experiences in American utopian
communities led him to the belief that the “plans we wish to execute would be destroyed as a result of the
low quality of human beings ...... For this reason I must direct my efforts not merely toward preserving the
race but also toward improving it. " Ploetz intended the term Rassenhygiene to be more inclusive a term
than Galton’s eugenics, concerning itself with not only the genetic improvement of the human race, but
optimization of population size also. Ploetz’s feeling’s regarding the term “race” demonstrated the all too
common belief in Caucasian superiority though initially it lacked the anti-Semitic overtones that would
come to dominate the Nazi eugenics of the 19305. Ploetz suggested that interbreeding of the Aryan and
Jewish races would be both socially and biologically advantageous, citing the signiﬁcant role of Jews in the
intellectual history of humanity placing them on the same level as Aryans in terms of their cultural
capacity. In later life, he apparently revised these views; Weiss, Sheila Faith. _lia_ce Hygiene and National
Efﬁciency: The Eugenics of Wilhem Schallmayer. (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1987) Pg.
7-14, 92-104, 126-140 Schallmayer’s Vererbung und Auslese im Lebenslaufder Volker (Heredity and

256

Before the publication of Verebung und Auslese in 1903, Ploetz and Schallmayer
had essentially comprised the leadership of the German eugenics movement. The
popularity of Schallmayer’s publication led to the founding of the ﬁrst journal dedicated
to eugenics anywhere in the world, and within another two years, the foundation of the
world’s ﬁrst professional eugenics organization, the Gesellschaftﬁlr Rassenhygiene.
This organization restricted its membership to only those white individuals, who were
“ethically, intellectually and physically ﬁt” and from whom “economic prosperity could
be expected.”33

In the Wilhelmine period the Gesellschaft, sought international recognition as the
Internationale Gesellschaftfur Rassenhygiene. an organization representing eugenics
world wide. In 1910, the Gesellschaft’s individual chapters throughout Germany were
subordinated to the Deutsche Gesellschaft, itself a kind of national subdivision of the
Internationale organization. Because of the proliferation of national eugenic societies
throughout the US. and Europe, which chose to remain outside of the Internationale
organization, the Deutsche Gesellschaft gradually superceded the international

organization in the control and philosophical orientation of German eugenics. Combined

 

Selection in the Life Process of Nations) developed the concept of the rational management of population
though it failed to spell out exactly what measures the state should take in the realm of negative eugenics.
Schallmayer maintained too little was known regarding the laws of heredity to take direct action though he
did believe marriage restrictions for the insane, feebleminded, chronic alcoholics and other defectives were
in the best interest of the state.

33 Adams. Pg. 22-23; The Archivfur Rassen- and Gesellschafts-Biologie sought to attract a wide variety of
articles bearing on the “optimal preservation and development of the race.” These articles fell within ﬁve
basic categories: 1. Technical articles by leading biologists dealing with genetics and evolution (e.g.
Weisamann, Correns, Tschermak), 2. Entries concerning degenerative phenomena such as alcoholism,
insanity, venereal disease and homosexuality, 3. Articles dealing with the dysgenic effects of social
institutions and practices (e.g. medicine and welfare with regards of the preservation of the unﬁt), 4.
Studies pertaining to the desirability of population increase, 5. Medley of anthropological contributions,
often racialist though not racial in character, from eminent anthropologists such as Franz Boas. Though
most contributors were eugenicists, not all were and some were distinctly opposed to the concept.

257

with the effects of the First World War on German nationalism, this process culminated
in the ofﬁcial supplanting of the international organization in 1916.

The membership of both the German and international societies reﬂected the
socio-economic backgrounds of the founders, i.e. the Bildungsburger (educated middle
classes) predominated. Similarly to other nations which would eventually enact
sterilization laws, medical professionals made up the largest single occupational group in
the German eugenics societies, comprising 33% of the membership. The next largest
group was composed of civil servants and teachers. These three groups made up over half
of the membership in the Wilhelrrrine period, which nonetheless included members from
virtually all political parties and religious faiths.”

The professionalization of German scientiﬁc medicine led the way for parallel
trends in the United States, though it was conditioned by Germany’s early acceptance of
a national health care policy. The scientiﬁc basis of German medicine improved the
position of physicians both in terms of status and ﬁnancial remuneration though the latter
was restricted by the nature of a national health system. Similarly to the situation in the
U.S., German physicians of various medical disciplines either adopted the new scientiﬁc
regimen or found themselves increasingly marginalized in their practice. The centralized
nature of German health care contributed to this process by restricting government
ﬁnanced health care reimbursement to those practitioners who adhered to the new

paradigm.35

 

3“ Adams. Pg. 21-29;

35 Weindling. Paul. Health Rya_ce and German Politics Between National Uniﬁcation and Nazism: 1870—
1245. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) Pg. 18, 217, 296, 457, 571; Proctor, Robert. Racial
Hygiene: Medicine Under the Nazis. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988) Pg. 66-70, That the
elimination of competing medical sects had not been thoroughly accomplished is testiﬁed to by the Nazis
ability to persuade allopaths to join Nazi organizations in return for the virtual suppression of competing

258

Prior to the outbreak of war in 1914, the Gesellschafts’ focus, like societies in the
US. and Britain, remained on cost beneﬁt analyses of the expense of maintaining the
“army of the unﬁt,” and researching causes behind a perceived national degeneration.
Explorations in the latter area, resembling the “Jukes” and “Kallikak” style studies
conducted in the US. were paralleled in such famous efforts as the Swiss “Family Zero”
investigation. The psychiatrist and prominent eugenicist, Ernst Rudin, like Laughlin
concentrated on demonstrating Mendelian inheritance patterns for a variety of mental
illnesses, while Germany’s only prominent female eugenicist, Agnes Bluhm, paralleled
the work of Kellogg in trying to prove the link between dysgenic behaviors (e. g. alcohol
use and decreased breast feeding) and the degenerative consequences for future
generations.

With the staggering casualty lists resulting from the conduct of a two-front war
mounting precipitously, Ploetz’s original concern for population size became increasingly
important to German eugenicists. Moderates and liberal eugenicists such as Schallmayer
and Alfred Grotjahn expounded on the primacy of population growth. By 1915,
Schallmayer asserted that reversing population decline had become “a matter of survival
for the German nation.”36 This increased focus on population policy had attendant
consequences for German eugenics in the post war period.

With the decreasing hegemony of Western European nations following the war,
many German eugenicists saw the so-called anti-baby and anti-motherhood propaganda

of the feminists and neo-Malthusians as direct threats to the continued supremacy of

 

sects. Upwards of 45% of all doctors joined the Nazi party according to Michael Kater’s estimates, but
subsequent research by Lilienthal indicate that well over half had joined the party by 1945..
36 Adams. Pg. 26; Proctor. Pg. l9;Weind1ing. Pg. 370-373

259

Western culture. Reﬂecting these fears, a distinctively pro-motherhood, anti-feminist
attitude became more prevalent in mainstream German eugenics throughout the
Wilhelmine period only to be further exacerbated by postwar conditions.37

The end of the war and the conditions of the Versailles peace treaty led to an
increasingly national focus in German eugenics. Though German race hygienists
maintained relationships with their American and European contemporaries, the locus of
their concerns centered on the “life and death” economic and geopolitical struggle with
their western European and Russian enemies. Reparations, inﬂation, unstable governance
and as geneticist, Erwin Baur put it, foreign domination by people “culturally beneath
them,” led Germans of many political persuasions to consider eugenics a matter of more
than intellectual interest. The Gesellschaft’s membership continued to grow in this period
as more of the Bildungsburgertum came to see the costs associated with the policies'of
the welfare state as “too high an insurance premium against Bolshevism.”38

The expansion in the Gesellschaft’s membership and propagandizing the
eugenicist’s cause was paralleled by substantial institutional growth. Before 1920,

Germany possessed no institutional center for race hygiene and universities offered few

courses. Yet, by 1932, with American aid the situation had drastically changed with over

 

37 Adams. Pg. 27-28; Following the Japanese defeat of Russian ﬂeets in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5,
Emperor Wilhelm II, concerned with the dramatic increase in China’s population and potential military
power, coined the term the “Yellow Peril” to refer to Asia’s threat to Western hegemony. Closer to home,
at the First International Eugenics Conference in 1912, Ploetz expounded on the biological and political
threats posed by increased population growth in the Slavic nations. Schallmayer, Ploetz, Gruber (head of
the Gesellschaft), Lenz and many other German eugenicists believed Russia would come out of the war
relatively unscathed, and since in their opinion. Russia was not part of West, it would remain the primary
biological and political threat to Germany. Lenz’s concern for the war’s depletion of the Reich’s “racial
capital” led to his publication in the Archiv- of proposals to reverse the qualitative and quantitative
declines, proposals of interest to his American counterparts as evidenced by their translation and
publication in Popenoe’s Journal of Heredity.

8 Adams. Pg.37; Kuhl, Stefan. The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism and German National
Socialism. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) Pg. 13-26; Weindling. Pg. 399-430

260

forty lecture courses in the subject offered at various universities, most in the faculties of
medicine. American interest in the growth of German eugenics was primarily manifested
in the form of Rockefeller Foundation grants to establish and aid the Kaiser Wilhelm
Institutes (KWI). The Munich KWI Research Institute for Psychiatry was established in
1924 with Rockefeller aid, while in 1927 additional funds were granted to found Berlin’s
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Riidin and
Fischer, both internationally pronrinent medical scientists and eugenicists, headed both
organizations. The Berlin and Munich institutes became focal points for two different
brands of race hygiene with Berlin’s nonracist interpretation gaining prominence.39

As the movement became more mainstream academically as the result of
inﬂuential nonracists in the Berlin chapter, such as Alfred Grotjahn and Hermann
Muckerman, it increased in popularity with the Bildungsburgertum. Ironically, the
diminished inﬂuence within the movement of the racialist eugenics so prominent among
members of the Munich chapter, coincided with the rise of Nazi political strength.

The depression begun in 1929 not only led to increased cost to the social welfare
system through inﬂation and unemployment, but also led to increases in criminal activity
throughout the Reich. These concerns led liberals such as Muckerrnann and Artur
Osterrnan to join other race hygienists in calling for a more rational social welfare system
which would include sterilization. Muckerman suggested that the ﬁnancial burden of
caring for the institutionalized mental defectives, some 185 million marks a year, was
barely enough to keep healthy individuals from starving. His solution was to make a

clear differentiation between what could be afforded within the entire welfare system,

 

’9 Kuhl. Pg. 20-21, 59-60; Weindling. Pg. 430-439; Adams. Pg. 36

261

with “the means available. . .ﬁrst apportioned for preventative care, and only then given
out to people who cannot be brought back to work and life.” Similarly, the costs
associated with criminal activity, and the defective germ plasm which many thought
responsible for it, could be decreased if the reproduction of such unﬁt elements were
decreased.40

Calls for action on a sterilization bill from eugenicists across the political
spectrum coincided with a need to demonstrate action in reducing the welfare budget to
cause the Prussian upper house to approve a resolution to ofﬁcially recognize and
popularize eugenics in every way possible and to immediately decrease the funds
allocated for the maintenance of defectives to “a level that can be supported by a
completely impoverished people?"1

Within six months, the Prussian Health Council had adopted several eugenic
proposals, among them a draft for a sterilization law. The Prussian law permitted the
voluntary sterilization of several classes of hereditary defectives, but also required proof
that said defective traits were actually of a hereditary nature. This latter provision might
have effectively neutralized the potency of the law in that many of the categories of
particular concern to race hygienists, such as perceived hereditary tendencies towards
alcoholism, promiscuity and criminal activity to name only a few, had little empirical

evidence to back them up. Nevertheless, the majority of eugenicists, liberal, moderate and

conservative, believed sufﬁcient anecdotal evidence existed to allow for these kinds of

 

4" Adams. Pg. 37-38; Weindling. Pg. 453. 455. 483
4‘ Adams. Pg. 39

262

sterilizations considering the nation’s pressing need to reduce institutional and public
welfare expenses.42

Most physicians and even the Protestant aid societies responded positively to the
Prussian bill, with most opposition coming from the Catholic church following the line
laid down in the1930 papal encyclical “Casti Conubi.” Because of the ensuing political
chaos following the deposition of the Prussian government by the Reich in July 1932 and
the Nazi “seizure of power” in January 1933, both support and opposition to the bill
became academic. National Socialism, as Bavarian Cabinet Minister Hans Schemm
declared, was nothing but “applied biology.” Within six months of the Nazi takeover, a
new bill based on the original Prussian law (with particular regards to legal protections),
but now incorporating mandatory sterilization was promulgated and passed within
another six weeks.

The Nazi era law allowed for the compulsory sterilization of anyone suffering
from any of several genetic diseases, including feeblemindedness, schizophrenia, manic-
depressive insanity, genetic epilepsy, Huntington’s chorea, genetic blindness or deafness
and severe alcoholism. The law established regional genetic health courts to review

applications and a superior court to review cases on appeal. Though seventeen hundred

genetic health courts were originally envisioned, by 1934, only 181 such courts had been

 

’2 Adams. Pg. 39—40; Weindling. Pg. 389-393; Not all German physicians had felt the need to wait for the
government to extend the aegis of the law to eugenic sterilization. Dr. Gustav (Gerhart) Boeters publicized
the sixty-three sterilizations he had performed and encouraged other physicians to do the same. Though he
lost his position as a district health ofﬁcer because of these procedures, his appeals were publicized in
several leading medical journals insuring continuing discussions on the legal and moral imperatives of such
actions.

263

established, usually as adjuncts to the civil courts. They were presided over by a lawyer
and two doctors, one an expert on genetic pathology.43

The law required physicians to report all cases of genetic illness known to them,
excepting women over 45, under pain of ﬁne. Because of conﬁdentiality concerns, the
sterilization requests and the operation of the health courts were kept secret even from the
patients. In their ﬁrst year of operation, genetic health courts received over 84,000
sterilization requests, almost equally divided between men and women. Overall, over
ninety percent of requests were granted, but variation existed as to the efﬁciency with
which different regional courts acted. In all cases, patients ordered to be sterilized had the
right of appeal, which about 4% of the total number took advantage of, yet throughout the
Nazi period only 3% of appealed decisions were reversed. Apparently, most who refused
the procedure obtained segregation in concentration camps as an alternative.44

Most of those sterilized in the law’s ﬁrst years of operation fell into three
categories with feeblemindedness being the leading indication for the procedure followed
by schizophrenia and hereditary epilepsy. Early estimates of the number of people
sterilized in the Nazi period ranged from 300,000-350,000, but actual number was
probably closer to 400,000. Tubal ligations or vasectomies accounted for most of the
operations, though about 12% patients underwent sterilization by X-ray, effectively
castrating the individual. Only ﬁve percent of sterilizations were conducted after the war
began 1939. While some have suggested that the slowdown in sterilization resulted from

the fact that few people remained in Germany who fell under the criteria of the law,

 

‘3 Proctor. Pg. 100-105
4“ Proctor. Pg. 106- 107

264

Proctor and others have suggested the more likely possibility that with the advent of the
euthanasia policy, such individuals were killed rather than sterilized.45

Though the law speciﬁcally forbade racial discrimination in its implementation, at
least one large case of mass sterilization occurred in violation of the law. In 1937, under
secret orders from Hitler, the 500 or so Rheinlandbastarde (offspring of black French
occupation troops and native Germans), were rounded up and sterilized in a joint
Gestapo/health court operation organized by among others, the Munich race hygienists,
Fritz Lenz and Ernst Riidin. Because the operations were in violation of the sterilization
law, the procedures were deemed voluntary though some measure of compulsion was
evident in obtaining the permission of the parents. 46

Because of the secrecy involved and the extra-judicial nature of this case, it might
be supposed that execution of the law remained within the legal parameters (i.e.
nonracial) set forth in the statute. Unfortunately, the truth of this matter cannot at this

time be ascertained. The law was never modiﬁed to include Jewish ancestry as an

 

’5 Proctor. Pg. 105-117, 120-122; German laws protecting the conﬁdentiality of patient medical records
prevent a more accurate breakdown and categorization of the numbers of those sterilized. Of particular
interest would be the numbers of women sterilized as a comparison with other countries with active
sterilization programs. The Nazi focus on women as the progenitors of the race may have ameliorated the
general propensity for their sterilization in that many cases, the disparity between the numbers of men and
women sterilized seems to have arisen from women’s desire to use sterilization as means of birth control.
The Nazi government’s policies in this regard would have operated to counteract such disparities. Nazis
enforced suict antiabortion laws inherited from the Weimar period and added additional penalties for
abortions other than to save the life of the mother. By 1937, doctors performing such procedures were
subject to 10 years imprisonment and loss of civil rights. By 1939, unauthorized abortion was declared
treason against the “bodily ﬁuit” of the Volk and in some cases was punishable by death; Weindling. Pg.
533-534

’6 Proctor. Pg. 112-115; The German preoccupation with miscegenation was clearly evidenced in this case,
though Nazi authorities were at pains to persuade some of their non-Aryan trading partners that such
instances had nothing to do with them. In particular, complaints to the foreign ofﬁce from India, Japan,
China and some Latin American countries resulted in attempts to explain that such actions and particularly
the racial laws (e.g. Nuremberg Laws) were speciﬁcally directed against the Jews, who in Nazi racial
theory were the result of a crossing between Aﬁican and Oriental stocks. By 1935, in an effort to neutralize
the bad press in such countries, the Nuremberg Laws had been rewritten replacing the term non-Aryan with
Jewish. By the middle of the war, Germans were to even to avoid use of the term anti-Semitic for fear of
offending their allies in the Middle East (e. g. Iraqi). Weindling. Pg. 386-389, 530

265

indication for sterilization, though it was speciﬁcally cited in numerous other statutes
meant to “protect” the Volk from the perils of miscegenation.

Whether the supporters of compulsory sterilization in Germany directly
contributed to the subsequent horrors (e.g. euthanasia, concenu'ation camps, genocidal
killings on the Eastern front) is arguable. That Germany’s particular brand of eugenics
with its focus on national efﬁciency (i.e. eugenic population policy), as elucidated by
Ploetz and Schallmayer, ultimately led to these outrages in time of race war seem
undeniable. That the Second World War, a war to the death according to Nazi philosophy
was a race war followed logically from the theories of those eugenicists who promoted
the ideal of Aryan supremacy. The particular circumstances facing Germany in the period
following the First World War promoted a vision of a world wide contest for resources
and markets, which the Nazis successfully exploited to bring about the realization of the
“biological state.”

In comparison with other nations with similar laws, Germany’s radical program of
sterilization was often eyed enviously. In 1935, Norway’s leading racial hygienist, Alfred
Mjoen stated, “German scientists are today making world history?"7 The publisher of the
American Journal of Heredity, Paul Popenoe, defended the German statute, stating it
was, “the product of many years of consideration by the best specialists in Germany.” In
1933, Leon Whitney, secretary of the American Eugenics Society, stated that Hitler’s
sterilization policy demonstrated the Fuhrer’s great courage and statesmanship, though
he harbored some doubts as to the ability of the government to fully implement the full

measure of the statute. “Sterilization and race betterment are. . .becoming compelling

 

’7 Proctor. Pg. x

266

ideas among all the enlightened nations,” he continued. The Eugenical News, edited by in
the 1930s by Laughlin, Davenport and Roswell Johnson provided generally favorable
coverage on the German statute though they also condemned German racial policy."8
Laughlin continued to support Nazi eugenic policies throughout his tenure with
the ERO. He was so impressed by Nazi propaganda methods that he purchased a copy of
Erbkrank a-lereditary Defective) from the Nazi Racial Political Ofﬁce to show at the
Carnegie Institution in Washington. Laughlin raised funds for an edited English language
version entitled Eugenics in Germany to be circulated to churches, clubs, universities and
high schools. Laughlin’s support of German eugenics did not go unrecognized by his
German compatriots, who on the 550th anniversary of the founding of the University of
Heidelberg awarded him, along with the psychiatrist and supporter of compulsory
euthanasia for mental defectives, Foster Kennedy, honorary doctorates of science.”
In the period initially following the introduction of the German statute, American
physicians were kept informed of Germany’s progress in eugenics through generally
favorable coverage in the Journal of the American Medical Association and in the British
Lancet. Though these joumal’s coverage became increasingly antagonistic towards
German eugenic policy, many physicians continued to voice admiration for the
sterilization statute as it was speciﬁcally directed to eugenic considerations and contained

no language sanctioning sterilization on ethnic or racial grounds. For this reason, the law

gained nearly unanimous support among the American eugenics community.50

 

’8 Kuhl. 44-63; Dickinson Papers. (Association for Voluntary Sterilization Collection, University of
Minnesota Social Welfare History Archive), “Eugenics Head Hails Hitler: Whitney Calls Sterilization Law
Work of Statesman.” New York Tribune, 12-28-1933.

‘9 Kuhl. Pg. 48-52, 86-88; Proctor. Pg. 99-101

5° Kuhl. Pg. 51; Dickinson Papers. (Association for Voluntary Sterilization Collection, University of
Minnesota Social Welfare History Archive) JAMA, Vol. 102, 5-5-1934; Coverage in New York

267

Eugenics movements, in which sterilization ﬁgured prominently, displayed a rich
network of interdisciplinary contacts between proponents across national boundaries. By
pointing out these transnational professional connections, eugenicists’ reinforced their
claims to the scientiﬁc validity of their movements. Popular concerns regarding the
“burgeoning” numbers of the unﬁt and criminal elements led to popular calls for action,
which eugenicists suggested could be accomplished through policies of negative selection
(i.e. segregation and/or sterilization). The worldwide economic depression of the 19303
provided some European nations with an urgent economic reason to implement the
radical solution of sterilization.

Germany, the nation arguably suffering the most horrendous effects of the
depression in conjunction with the conditions imposed by the Versailles Treaty,
proceeded to impose the most radical program of all. Yet the basis for the Nazi law had
emerged from the Weimar era, and the Sterilization Law itself, remained a product of that
period though its implementation can largely be laid at the feet of the Nazis. Whether
other nations with sterilization laws, faced with the same difﬁculties as Germany would
have resorted to the kind of logic that led to euthanasia and the Holocaust is impossible to
determine.

What is evident though is the similarities that existed between the nations
implementing eugenic sterilization. All of the nations contained Protestant majorities,
which were becoming increasingly secularized. Technocratic rationalism dominated

discussions on the problems of population, both in terms of quality and quantity.

 

newspapers was also generally favorable in the years immediately following enactment of the statute.
“Nazis to Start Sterilization of 400,000 Jan 1: 1,700 Eugenie Courts Will Curb Defectives at ‘Triﬂing’ Cost
of $5,180,000.”New York Tribune 12-20-1933; “Sterilization Law is Termed Humane: Author Says
German Statute Extends ‘Neighborly Love’ to Future Generations.” New York Times 1-22-1934.

268

Regional variation in implementation occurred for a variety of reasons ranging from
religious/moral resistance to inefﬁcient medical infrastructures. Leaders in the eugenics
movements represented people from all virtually all political persuasions, with the
unifying dynamic of reform ﬁguring most prominently. Physicians, biologists,
anthropologists, and institutional health care providers gave scientiﬁc/technocratic
support to the laws, but reformers seeking diverse goals from birth control reform to
inmates’ rights also argued for sterilization.

Concerns for both population decrease and increase provided arguments for
sterilization laws. The linkage between the two disparate problems seems to be a societal
fear of being swamped by the unﬁt/undesirable, whether they were categorized as an
internal (the indigenous unﬁt or “others”) or an external (foreign adulteration or
domination) problem. Ultimately, these perspectives reﬂect a concern over the
distribution of resources and political power in society. The connection between the
Protestant “work ethic” and the valuation or devaluation of human life seems to be of
particular import here. The next chapter deals with societies with active eugenic
movements, which lacking certain articles of the Protestant value system managed to

avoid the Mendelian logic of negative selection.

269

Chapter Nine: The International Context: Eugenics Without Sterilization

An examination of those countries with eugenics movements that either failed to
advocate compulsory sterilization, or met with substantial opposition to such measures,
demonstrates the types of religious, political and philosophical impediments that could
constrain eugenic practice to positive education efforts and restricted negative measures.

Many nations with active eugenics societies never proceeded down the road to
compulsory sterilization. A philosophy based on Lamarckian genetics, and Catholic
opposition throughout many of these countries prevented any serious consideration of
such laws. In the Soviet Union, political and ideological conﬂict, demographic implosion
and a resurgent Larnarckian genetics prevented the adoption of sterilization. In these
countries, negative eugenics if implemented at all, usually took the form of immigration
resuictions, matrimonial impediments and paradoxically the denial of beneﬁts allowed to
more valued members of society. In Britain the perceived effete nature of eugenicists
(almost exclusively the upper and upper middle class), and some members’ associations
with socialism combined with a dearth of population to make negative eugenic measures
a cause without any substantial support in governmental or lay circles.

France provided one of the earliest and most ﬂourishing eugenics movements in a
Catholic, secular, industrializing country. It perhaps came closest to any country with a
Catholic majority to implementing compulsory sterilization. French eugenicists provided
the most enduring and transmissible form of a Catholic-sensitive eugenics in the science
of peuriculture. Essentially, a pro-natalist philosophy which focused on improving the
care of children, it was strongly inﬂuenced by Lamarckian theories on the inheritance of

acquired characteristics. Therefore, social welfare programs promoting improved

270

 

 

 

environments and health care were central to the philosophy. On the darker side,
peuriculture 's emphasis on positive selection as opposed to the elimination of negative
traits often supported distinctively racial and class biases.

In 1912, the French Eugenics Society was established with a membership, like
those of other indusuializing nations, largely composed of physicians and reform minded
individuals from a variety of political persuasions. Yet from these beginnings, there was
clearly a difference in the philosophical outlook of French eugenicists and their
counterparts in Britain, America and Germany. In a far higher proportion than virtually
anywhere else in Western Europe, members of the French society adhered to a neo-
Larnarckian view of inheritance.

The Larnarckian concept of the malleability of the germ plasm possessed the
prospect for positive change through manipulation of the environment rather than the
more harsh Mendelian interpretation of change through selection only. In regards to
negative eugenics, the positive corollary of this perspective in French society was that,
such a view with its focus on social uplift rather than on intrusion into the reproductive
autonomy of its citizens was far more amenable to the Catholic church than the Anglo-
Saxon or Nordic varieties with their focus on the preventing the propagation of
degenerate traits.

French statisticians had noted by the time of the Franco-Prussian War that the
country was experiencing a profound demographic change. Decreasing birth rates
combined with statistics showing a general decrease in the health of the population led
many to believe that the nation was succumbing to a number of social perils, particularly

increased rates of TB, syphilis and alcoholism. Neo-Lamarckian genetics combined with

271

improvements in environment (i.e. advances in personal and public hygiene, social
welfare programs to foster social progress) and efforts to increase the birth rate held out
the hope that both the quality and quantity of population could be enhanced without the
need for the negative eugenic measures proposed in other nations.

The principal thrust of prewar French eugenics as related to reproduction
concentrated on peuriculture, deﬁned by its chief proponent, “as knowledge relative to
the reproduction, the conservation and the amelioration of the human species.”1 This
focus on a pro-natalist eugenics reﬂected the dominant characteristics of the physicians
most active in the movement, obstetricians. Coinciding with French fears relative to
population decrease and eschewing those elements most distasteful to the French public
(e. g. interference in reproductive autonomy), French eugenics enjoyed a greater
popularity than would have been possible if it had espoused a Mendelian vision of racial
improvement.2

The staggering losses (1.3 million dead) incurred by the French republic during
the First World War along with the succession of a new generation of eugenicists caused
a profound change in the course of French eugenics in the postwar period. With emphasis
on positive eugenics and pronatalism predominating, virtually all traces of negative
eugenics disappeared from the French discourse. Discussions centered on social hygiene,

a vague concept most easily deﬁned as efforts to combat the social plagues of TB,

 

’ Adams, Mark. The Wellbom Science. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) Pg. 70-72; Schneider,
William. Quality and Quantity: Tie Quest for Biolog'cal Rwraﬁon in Twentieth Century France.
(Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1990) Pg. 11-45, 55-59

2 Adams. Pg. 73-75, Physicians and physiologists comprised the largest group of French eugenicists though
some anthropologists also joined the society. The latter group, particularly the criminal anthropologists,
tended to a more sanguinary attitude towards racial improvement and from these quarters arose a muted
call for negative eugenics (i.e. elimination of undesirables through marriage and immigration restrictions,
and sterilization). Schneider. Pg. 84-113

272

alcoholism and venereal disease. Because social hygiene was already the province of
several other organizations, the French society faced a crisis of identiﬁcation by the mid-
twenties.3

The French Eugenics Society underwent a reorientation seeking to ﬁnd common
ground with various social hygiene organizations, and failing that expanded its
connection with the anthropologist wing of the movement. The Papacy’s issuance of
“Conubis Casti” in 1930 and its blanket condemnation of eugenics led many in the
movement to discard their attempts at seeking a eugenics amenable to the Catholic
church, and thus allowed for discussions of measures previously thought incompatible
with a mainstream French eugenics. Increasing crime rates, immigration of laborers and
refugees from French colonies (often viewed as incompatible races) and continued
concerns regarding social plagues led to a growing anxiety about the dysgenic elements
in the French population. 4

Reﬂecting the break with pronatalists aligned with the church, French eugenicists
proceeded to advocate radically new methods to combat the dysgenic elements in French
society. Calls for the liberalization of access to contraception were coupled with

immigration and marriage restrictions as negative eugenic measures now acceptable

within the French discourse on eugenics. The rift between the moderate pro-natalist

 

3 Adams. Pg. 76-79, In addition, several of the French society’s founding membership had died in the
intervening years leaving a smaller membership searching for direction. Membership had declined to such
an extent that dues alone could no longer ﬁnance the publication of the society’s journal. Reﬂecting a
diminished connection with the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, the society had its articles published in the
Revue anthropologigue. Typifying this new conjunction the society merged with the eugenics section of the
French national committee of the International Institute of Anthropology. This union led to the
reemergence of a still muted but persistent call for negative eugenic measures thoroughly at odds with
papal encyclical, “Conubis Casti.”

Adams. Pg. 84-86, So strong were French concerns regarding the intermarriage of the French with the
incompatible races of their colonies that a full blown immigration restriction program was advocated;
Schneider. Pg. 146—170

273

eugenicists, who had previously hoped for cooperation with the church, and the new
generation of eugenicists harboring no such illusions believed the times warranted an
open discussion of sterilization.5

The onset of the Great Depression with its attendant unemployment and economic
decline exacerbated fears regarding the dysgenic effects upon the populace. In a neo-
Lamarckian eugenics, increases in poverty and the consequent degradation of the social
environment resulted in a more rapid biological decline. French eugenicists began
speaking of the problem of overpopulation, too many people chasing after too few
resources. In addition, new statistics showing that the decline in the French birthrate had
leveled off at a point higher than that of their British and German competitors, undercut
the pro-natalist position while reinforcing that of those calling for the implementation of
negative eugenic measures. Likewise, the French public became more amenable to
negative eugenics as a means of dealing with society’s social ills.

A growing acceptance of Mendelian genetics among French eugenicists in the
thirties led to a fundamental change in perspective concerning negative eugenic
measures. The French Right, especially concerned with the ﬁnancial costs associated
with the economic downturn, became ever more attentive to eugenicists advocating
radicals ways (e.g. immigration restriction and sterilization) of dealing with dysgenic
elements in the populace. Paradoxically, the French Left, principally concerned with the
social costs of the Depression, sought an alignment with those eugenicists advocating a

more moderate eugenics (e. g. liberal access to birth control, family planning and

 

fAdams. Pg. 85—87; Schneider. Pg. 150-155

274

abortion) as a means of reducing the social burden incurred by these same dysgenic
elements, consequently allowing for expanded social welfare improvements.6

That some French eugenicists, with their neo-Lamarckian perspective, adopted a
pro-sterilization platform demonstrates that an acceptance of Mendelian inheritance was
not essential to accepting negative eugenics. Yet, increased openness to Mendelian
genetics, initially adopted as a support for immigration restriction, acted to reinforce the
pro-sterilization position and thus tends to corroborate the link with negative measures.

The French experience with eugenics demonstrates an increasing acceptance
among the secular public promoted by changing economic and social conditions,
particularly deteriorating ones. In this sense, the history of French eugenics demonstrates
a variation on efforts by other industrialized Western societies to rationalize the causes
behind a perceived decline in modern society in accord with scientiﬁc principles. That
endeavors to apply these principles to population policy increased in times of economic
adversity, reﬂects a fundamental linkage concerning perspectives on resource
availability, its control and human reproduction.

That French advocates of compulsory sterilization were unable to bring their
plans to fruition in the 19305 reﬂects the fact that the political middle ground, largely
Catholic in orientation, presented an insurmountable obstacle to their goal. Nevertheless,
increasing secularization of the populace in post-World War II France eventually led to
the adoption of most of the proposals ﬁrst put forward by the country’s moderate
eugenicists. Other Catholic countries, even less secular in their orientation, provide

confu'mation of the reluctance to allow governmental intrusion into the realm of human

 

6 Adams. Pg. 92-102; Schneider. Pg. 170-208

275

reproduction. Yet, profound social dislocations in the form of more radical social and
political movements (leading towards increased secularization) demonstrate the
possibility of exceptional change in attitudes towards the rationalization of reproductive
issues in pursuit of social goals.

In largely Catholic Latin America, negative eugenics in the form of compulsory
sterilization experienced only one success. In July of 1932, the fanatically anticlerical
governor of the Mexican state of Veracruz, Adalberto Tejeda, authorized a sterilization
law providing for sterilization in “clear cases of idiocy, for the degenerate mad,” the
“incurably ill” and “delinquents.” It is unclear whether any sterilizations were actually
performed as the governor was removed shortly afterward.7

A more moderate form of negative eugenics developed in Latin American
countries in the form of “matrimonial eugenics.” Biotypology, analogous to Pearson’s
biometrics, worked as a foundation for Latin American eugenicists to discriminate, often
on racial grounds, between the more and less valued human stocks. African and Native
American ancestries were generally equated with lesser valued human stock, though
Argentina’s eugenicists also demonstrated a distinct aversion to the inﬂux of Semitic and
Slavic immigrants. Immigration restrictions provided one means of dealing with less than
acceptable aliens, but the primary focus was on education through community health
services and in some cases the development of prenuptial tests or certiﬁcates for
marriage. The latter method resulted in a direct form of eugenic proscription, in some

countries producing “legally binding rules of a negative kind.”8

 

7 Stepan, Nancy. The Hour of Eugenics: Race Gender and Nation in Latin America. (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1991) Pg. 128, 130-133, 201
8 Ibid. Pg. 114120.122-124

 

276

In Brazil, eugenics was essentially an upper class interest that was highly
concerned with the race question. Brazil’s population, perhaps more than anywhere else
in the Western hemisphere, was the product of crossings among the black, white and
indigenous populations. Anthropologists and eugenicists had often used the Brazilian
population as an example of the deleterious nature of such crossings and the concomitant
degeneracy of the white race when situated in tropical climates.9

In the 1920s Brazilian eugenicists developed a thesis of a “whitening” of the
Brazilian populace by means of white immigration and the “natural decline” of the black
and indigenous peoples. In this thesis, crushing poverty and associated low fertility/high
infant mortality rates would eventually lead to a decimation of these peoples so that by
2012, the black population would have disappeared and mulattos would constitute only
3% of the population. Declines in white immigration threatened realization of this
scheme and an increasing shift from Larnarckian to Mendelian genetics led many
Brazilian eugenicists to question the concept of a blending heredity essential to the
thesis.10

With the shift towards Mendelian genetics, came a new effort to deﬁne the
Brazilian race in more positive terms as a hybridization of the country’s different racial
antecedents. Efforts shifted towards countering the racial characterizations of European
and American eugenicists of Brazil as an example of degeneracy in action. Thus, the
racialist rhetoric of earlier Brazilian eugenicists dwindled as the focus again shifted

towards a more pronatalist stance in keeping with the rest of Latin America.11

 

9Adams. Pg. 112-115. 199
'0 Ibid. 126-130
” Ibid. Pg. 134-139, 140-144

277

Such negative eugenic measures complemented those positive eugenic steps (e. g.
marriage allowances, child allowances for the poor and education in the skills of
motherhood) to foster the reproduction of particular types. In the sense that the less
valued in these societies were excluded from such positive measures, these also
constituted a means of implementing a more innocuously-appearing policy of negative
eugenics. Efforts to improve social welfare provided the primary means for “racial
improvement” in these countries as their development along these lines was decades
behind that of their industrialized counterparts in the West. Infant mortality and
morbidity, associated with crushing poverty, accounted for the most pressing concerns
regarding degeneracy. The tendency among eugenicists in nations with Catholic
majorities to adhere to a brand of neo-Lamarckian genetics combined with the general
public’s abhorrence for intrusions into issues of reproductive autonomy precluded any
serious attempts to enact sterilization legislation.12

Eugenics in Russia and subsequently the Soviet Union provide a particularly
interesting case as to why ideology and institutional connections ﬁgure so prominently
into how science develops. Following the mid 19th century reforms of Czar Alexander,
science in Russian blossomed as the economy grew and more people had the resources to
travel abroad to study. Most Russians pursuing post-graduate studies in the biological
sciences journeyed to Western Europe universities where they received a decidedly

Mendelian perspective on heredity.

 

’2 Stepan. Pg. 171-182; The rejection of Pan-Americanism in Latin American eugenics provides an insight
into these countries rejection of mainstream eugenics in the Protestant nations of the West. Pan-American
variety, in particular, was seen as a means of forcing U.S. style eugenics upon South and Central American
neighbors.

278

Two Russian zoologists, Nikolai Kol’tsov and Iurii Aleksandovich Filipchenko,
returned from their studies to found genetics departments in their respective cities of
Moscow and St. Petersburg before the outbreak of the Great War. Due to their
relationships with people and institutions funding the growth of science in Russia, they
found themselves in a position to popularize new scientiﬁc discoveries in genetics,
particularly those from Germany and the United States.13

Kol’tsov had been politically active in liberal politics before the war, and his
contacts following the Revolution allowed him to maintain his positions in Soviet
academics, while Filipchenko through dint of hard work persevered as one of the few
Russian scientists who was widely recognized as a leading researcher and popularizer.
Following Galton’s lead, the two promoted eugenics as a kind of “civic religion,” which
suitably promoted to the masses, would lead to the creation, through conscious work by
many generations, of a human being of a higher type, a powerful ruler of nature and
creator of life?14

In 1920, the two men began organizing eugenics department within their research
establishments. Because of Filipchenko’s connections with the Russian Academy of
Sciences in Petrograd and Kol’tsov’s with universities in Moscow, the men decided to
keep their institutional connections separate for the time being. For both, eugenics

provided a means of setting up interdisciplinary research organizations beholden to two

rather different institutional groups. The Russian Academy of Sciences demanded of

 

‘3 Adams. Pg. 159-162
1’ Adams. Pg. 162

279

 

_ u..- *5; “'3‘-

Filipchenko a rather narrow research focus into genetics while the Comrrrissariat for
Public Health, which funded much of Kol’tsov’s research allowed for a greater breadth.15
Together they founded the Russian Eugenics Society, which not open to the
public allowed only professional membership, most of whom were biologists, physicians,
psychiatrists or health ofﬁcials. The society began publishing a journal in 1922 and
sought contacts in those countries most active in promoting eugenics (i.e. U.S., Germany
and the Scandinavian nations). Kol’tsov wrote to Davenport, among several prominent
Western eugenicists, to report on developments in Russia and to solicit Western
publications. Prompted by the new scientiﬁc discoveries popularized in the society’s
journal, Russkii Evgenicheskii Zhumal, eugenics societies began springing up in larger
cities throughout the Soviet Union.16
These organizations’ memberships, like the national eugenics society, were '
comprised largely of biologists, physicians (particularly psychiatrists and psychologists)
and health ofﬁcials who saw in eugenics a way to advance social relationships through
scientiﬁc/technocratic means. Though eugenics promised a way of launching a “state
religion” which promised a philosophy for building the new rational/technocratic state
they envisioned, it also was a means of bringing together diverse ﬁelds of research under
a banner of general human improvement. Like elsewhere, but for somewhat different
reasons, eugenics provided a catchall for those programs which sought to promote

themselves as beneﬁcial to mankind. In the Soviet Union, the focus of this

propagandizing needed to be in keeping with the principles of the revolution.17

 

’5 Adams. Pg. 164-167
‘6 Ibid. Pg. 166—169
‘7 Adams. Pg. 169-174

280

The need to position Russian eugenics within the political construction evolving
in the new Soviet Union became more apparent throughout the 1920s. Kol’tsov’s leftist
background had served him well in the immediate postwar period, but as the new state
began deﬁning itself and its priorities, class background became increasingly important
and both Filipchenko and Kol’tsov’s abilities to put their case for funding eugenics to
various authorities became increasingly undermined by their backgrounds as part of the
bourgeoisie. Fortunately, many of their students had proper proletarian or suitably
Marxist backgrounds, and thus they began to take the lead in promoting eugenics as a
“socially responsible” science.

Alexsandr Serebrovsky and M.V. Volotskoi represented this new generation of
politically well connected eugenicist/researchers. Both men realized that for eugenics to
be seen of any value to the Soviet state, it had to possess the potential for practical
application. There were essentially three alternatives in this vein, negative eugenics to
reduce the numbers of the unﬁt, Lamarckian attempts to induce positive genetic change,
and positive eugenic selections.

Volotskoi following Western eugenicists across the political spectrum chose to
support a policy of negative selection. Unfortunately, his timing could hardly have been
worse as the Soviet Union was experiencing an extraordinary population decrease. This
was hardly the time to promote efforts that might decrease population further even in the

name of quality.18

 

‘8 Adams. Pg. 175-176: Gorbunov reported in 1922 that between 1917 andl920 the populations of Moscow
and Petrograd had decreased by 50% and 71% respectively. This was not solely due to immigration either.
In 1910, Moscow’s births had exceeded deaths by 101 per 10,000; yet ten years later deaths exceed births
by 243. Petrograd’s numbers were even worse going from 37 births over deaths per 10,000 in 1910 to 484
deaths over births in 1920. Comparable ﬁgures from the provinces substantiated a nationwide demographic
meltdown.

281

Because Mendelian genetics had little to offer in the way of improving the human
gene pool outside of either negative or positive selection measures, some Marxist
eugenicists found neo-Lamarckian genetics to be particularly appealing as it held out the
hope of directly inﬂuencing heredity. Paul Kammerer, the Viennese biologist and
proponent of Larnarckian eugenics who had so inﬂuenced Dr. Kellogg, enjoyed great
popularity in the USSR throughout the mid-20$. Several of his books were translated into
Russian and a ﬁlm was made to lionize his efforts as a great scientist viliﬁed in the West
because of his Communist sympathies. Coming to the realization that the negative
eugenics option had been foreclosed by the demographic peril, Volotskoi adopted
Kammerer’s call for a new socialist eugenics based on Lamarckism in his 1925 book,
Class Interest and Modern Eugenics. He was joined in his efforts by Solomon Levit, a
physician prominent in Marxist biomedical circles, who wrote several articles promoting
the idea of a socialist, Larnarckian eugenics. After the revelation of Kammerer’s fraud
and his subsequent suicide, Lamarckian genetics had seemingly been thoroughly
reputed.19

This left only positive eugenics as a means of improving the genetic future for
Soviet citizens. Serebrovsky, a Mendelian eugenicist, sought to disentangle the science of
genetics from the ideological constraints imposed on it by eugenicists seeking an
ideological justiﬁcation for the science within Marxist philosophy. He coined the term
anthrogenetika as a way of distinguishing objective scientiﬁc research into genetics from

the social construct of eugenics. In so doing he severed Western eugenics’ bourgeois

 

19 Adams. Pg. 176-179, Many neo-Lamarckian eugenicists took heart in 1927 when the American
geneticist, J .H. Muller demonstrated that x-rays could induce genetic changes, albeit most were either
deleterious or lethal. This ﬁnding had the merit that it disproved the theory of an immutable germ plasm,
and held out the promise of modifying genes within the constraint of Mendelian genetics.

282

associations from the science and defended it against charges of being
counterrevolutionary by proposing a proletarian eugenics as distinct from the Western
variety but of practical use. Levit was one of his ﬁrst and most important converts.

Through their respective contacts with biologists and physicians, the men set
about popularizing anthropogenetics among the Marxist scientiﬁc community. They
believed that a Soviet eugenics based on anthropogenetics could provide a means not
only of improving the gene pool, but also of securing funds for a broad range of genetic
research from a tightly strapped Soviet government. Muller’s work demonstrated that
genetic manipulation was possible, but that the induction of positive changes lay in the
distant future. With this in mind their eugenics began to focus on positive selection
measures.20

In 1928, when the party solicited comments and discussions of the ﬁrst Five-Year
Plan, Serebrosky submitted an article calling for the implementation of biological
selection measures as means of “cleansing our own population of various forms of
hereditary ailments...” such that it should probably “be possible to fulﬁll the Five-Year
Plan in two-and-a-half years.” He suggested that the artiﬁcial insemination methods
pioneered by Il’ia Ivanov, who Serebrovsky had met through his contacts in zoological
research institutions, provided a means of utilizing the tremendous sperm producing
capabilities of men to produce a new race of gifted individuals within a relatively short

span of time.21

 

2° Adams. Pg. 179-182

2’ Adams. Pg. 180; 181, Serebrovsky asserted that, “with the current state of artiﬁcial insemination
technology, one talented and valuable producer could have up to a 1000 children. . .In these conditions,
human selection would make gigantic leaps forward. And various women and communes would then be
proud. . .of their successes and achievements in this most undoubtedly most astonishing ﬁeld-the production
of new forms of human beings.”

283

Just as Soviet eugenicists seemed to have a concrete proposal for beneﬁting the
nation, the Soviet eugenics movement ended in 1930. Serebrovsky’s proposal occurred
just as the velekii perelom, or the Great Break, marked the beginning of Stalin’s
domination of the state’s ideological, cultural and institutional organs. A renewed focus
on the proletarian credentials of the nation’s standard bearers in all ﬁelds led to the
dismissal of Kol'tsov, Filipchenko, Serebrovsky and many other eugenicists from their
teaching responsibilities and research institutions. As part of the break with the bourgeois
technocratic tradition associated with Fordism, Taylorism, municipal government and
scientiﬁc management so popular in the West, Soviet ofﬁcials sought to have experts “on
tap” rather than “on top.” Suspicious that technocrats social agendas might well be
subversive to the political order led to a rejection of their programs and attempts to create
new cadres of “Red specialists” whose political allegiances could be counted on.22

Proscription of theoretical links between the social and biological doomed Soviet
eugenics, and such sins were summed up by the term biolgizirovat, to biologize. The
eugenicists were castigated as being guilty of bourgeois, fascist or Menshevising
idealisms, and their institutional frameworks disassembled. Yet academic and
philosophical connections continued among these like-minded scientists. They recruited
new students with suitable proletarian backgrounds, who often served as institutional
front men for the discredited eugenicists. What emerged from the ashes of Soviet
eugenics was a medical genetics championed by Solomon Levit, who had managed to

keep his credentials as a Red specialist, and a chastened Serebrovsky, who had managed

 

22 Adams. Pg. 183- 185

284

to reestablish his credentials as a valuable Marxist scientist through his work in poultry
and animal breeding.23

By 1934, the institutional disruptions associated with the Great Break were
generally at an end and Kol’tsov, Volotskoi, Levit, Serebrovsky, Agol, Ivanov and others
were able to establish new institutional bases for their genetic researches. In 1932,
following Levit and Agol’s period of study in his laboratory, The American Nobel
Laureate J .H. Muller received an invitation to visit the Soviet Union. His interest in and
sympathy for the Revolution had ﬁrst led him to visit the Soviet Union in 1922, when he
had met most of Russia’s leading eugenicists. Upon his return he became active in
Levit’s institute and a consultant for Kol’tsov’s. He wrote extensively for Soviet journals
and sought opportunities to popularize the idea of socialist eugenics.24

The “Soviet Experiment” in the forced collectivization of agriculture during the
Great Break impressed Muller with the fact that Stalin was a man who knew how to get
things done. In 1936, after the warm reception of his book, Out of the Night: A
Biologist ’s View of the Future, Muller took the opportunity of sending a copy to Stalin, in
which he expounded on the book’s chapter on the possibility of using artiﬁcial
insemination to breed a “population to become of the innate quality of such men as
Lenin, Newton, Leonardo, Pasteur, Beethoven, Omar Khayyam, Pushkin, Sun Yat
Sen. . .or even to possess their varied faculties combined.”25 Stalin had the Laureate’s

book translated into Russian and apparently found it profoundly disturbing.

 

23 Adams. Pg. 188-189, Serebrovsky, using Rockefeller grants, had managed to place Levit and geneticist,
Izrail Agol, in Muller’s Texas laboratory during the Great Break, thus keeping them largely out of the way
of ideological attack on those guilty of “Menshevising idealism.”

2“ Adams. Pg. 193-195

25 Adams. Pg. 194-195m Muller’s note explained that. “it is quite possible by means of the technique of
artiﬁcial insemination. . .to use for such purposes the reproductive material of the most transcendently

285

 

T.D. Lysenko, who possessed unimpeachable party afﬁliations, had by this time
begun to resurrect a Larnarckian genetics, which was much more amenable to the
political ideology current in government circles. Muller compounded his error with Stalin
by attacking Lysenko’s genetics as unscientiﬁc and claiming that Lamarckism played
into the hands of fascists by suggesting that the proletariat was hereditarily inferior due to
their eons of oppression. Lysenko and his compatriots took up the challenge and insisted
that genetics, eugenics and fascism constituted an ideology of bourgeois superiority.
Meanwhile, Stalin had been reading translations of Muller’s correspondence and not
liking what he read, events proceeded anon. Hearing that he might be arrested, Muller’s
friends arranged for his exit by the quickest possible route, that of a volunteer in the
International Brigade. Several of Muller’s friends in the Russian genetics community
were shot as “enemies of the people” and the institutions they headed were either
disbanded or incorporated into other institutions.26

By resurrecting Serebrovsky’s artiﬁcial insemination scheme, Muller allowed the
Lysenkoists to tar Soviet genetics with the brush of fascist eugenics. From 1940-1965,
the Soviet government gave Lysenko strong support and his theories on genetics came to
dominate ofﬁcial policy and rhetoric. For nearly twenty years, genetics suffered under
Lysenko’s tutelage only to reemerge in the 1960’s as medical genetics, eugenics and

genetics. This is due to the fact that genetics is a science with practical uses and that

 

superior individuals, of the one in 50,000 or one in 100,000, since this technique makes possible a
multiplication of more than 50,000 times.

26 Adams. Pg. 195-197, Agol, Levit and the translator of Muller’s book were all shot as “enemies of the
people.” Muller’s patron, Vavilov, his friend Serebrovsky, his student, Levit and colleague Kol’stov were
all compromised by his actions, which dealt a serious blow to Soviet genetics and allowed the rise of
Lysenkoism.

286

eugenics is a social construct for discussing how this knowledge can be practically
applied.

For the study of eugenics and compulsory sterilization, Britain provides the most
interesting case of a country with an active eugenics movement that produced no
sterilization law. The homeland of eugenics founder, Sir Francis Galton, produced a
movement that promoted a broad discussion, yet little action. In so many ways. Britain
resembled the Western European nations that did adopt negative eugenics. It possessed
one of the most industrialized economies in the West and indeed the origins of
industrialization itself are generally associated with this nation. Likewise, the birthplace
of modern secular government is most often traced to Britain. A majority Protestant
population, frankly concerned with the demographic changes occurring since the mid-19tln
century, argued interminably over the causes of population decrease and the perceived
degeneration associated with it. Like their compatriots in Germany, the US. and the
Scandinavian countries, British eugenicists abetted a wide range of beliefs spanning the
political/ideological spectrum.

Britain’s Eugenics Education Society provided the main impetus for the eugenics
movement in Britain and though its membership included many eminent men and
women, its success lay principally in promoting a discussion of topics or eugenic interest
rather than in actions. The society was founded in 1907 as an outgrowth of the
Sociological Society and the Moral Education League, and reached a peak membership
six years later, declining signiﬁcantly in subsequent years. It has been often characterized
as an example of “middle class radicalism,” with a focus on ﬁnding scientiﬁc support for

moral arguments. The membership differed in signiﬁcant ways from that of eugenic

287

societies in comparable nations (i.e. those nations enacting or considering sterilization
legislation).27

Unlike eugenics societies in the US. the Scandinavian countries and Germany,
physicians made up only about twenty-ﬁve percent of the membership. Social workers
and those associated with institutional care were particularly underrepresented in
comparison to societies elsewhere. While the politics of the membership varied, it
certainly could not be characterized as conservative in the Tory sense of the word and if
anything was more liberal than not. Members included two prime ministers, many of
Britain’s most eminent acaderrrics and liberal lights, and a smattering of individuals
interested primarily in moral uplift.28

By 1920, the society had taken on more the character of a learned society, than a
group geared towards social/political action. The relative dearth of physicians and those
associated with care of the institutionalized reveals the most problematic point in regards
to originating calls for legislation. In other countries with sterilization statutes,
physicians, social workers and superintendents of institutions provided a motive force for
the implementation of such legislation. In Britain, physicians eschewed sterilization even
on a voluntary basis as probably illegal though no statute speciﬁcally forbid it. Most
often cited was the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, which forbade any action

causing grievous bodily harm. Reluctant to perform the surgery on volunteers, British

 

27 Farral, Lyndsay. The Origin and Growth of the English Eugenics Movement: 1865-1925. (New York:
Garland Publishing Co., 1985) Pg. 205-207; Soloway, Richard. Demography and Degeneration: Eugenics
and the Declining Birthrate in Twentieth-Century Britain. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1990) Pg. 31-38, 63-72

28 Farral. Pg. 213-238, Politicians in the society included Prime Ministers Neville Chamberlain and AJ.
Balfour, Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks, Minister of Labor Arthur Maitland, Baron Moutland
liberal MP. and Justice of Appeal. In Farral’s survey of the membership (approximately 10% of the
membership), only two social workers were identiﬁed and they were not professionally trained but rather
voluntary philanthropists with interests in temperance and mental illness.

288

doctors were even less likely to attempt such measures on those considered legally
beyond making a competent decision by virtue of mental incompetence, in effect the
mentally defective. There is no evidence of an English physician acting on his own
medical recognizance to sterilize a patient as in the case of Sharpe in Indiana, or as in
similar cases in Germany and Scandinavia.29

The greatest success claimed by the society was passage of the Mental Deﬁciency
Act of 1913. The law recognized mental deﬁciency as a social deﬁciency primarily
characterized as an inability to care for oneself and provided support for some outside of
institutional settings. The law did not provide for mandatory segregation and no mention
of sterilization was made. This was hardly a eugenics statute. In 1931 and 1932, two bills
were introduced into Parliament allowing for the practice of voluntary sterilization and

neither received anything other than back bench debate. In short, the Eugenics Education

Society achieved little in terms of a legislative agenda, if indeed it ever had one.30
Though the Eugenics Education Society may have debated the merits of
compulsory sterilization, it never took any serious action in this regard at most opting for
the legalization of voluntary sterilization. The society seems to have been more interested
in ﬁnding a scientiﬁc basis for their moral arguments and proselytizing the public
accordingly. The economic consequences of the Depression did give impetus to calls for
voluntary sterilization as a means of reducing expenditures, but never did this reach the

level of public consensus seen in countries with such legislation.

 

29 Kevles. Pg. 115

3° Kevles. Pg. 115, 173; Soloway. Pg. 107, 203; Farral. Pg. 238-247, The Eugenics Education Society also
acted to inﬂuence the administration of the lnebriates Act in 1908, which amounted to little more than
sending a deputation to the Home Secretary. While members helped draft versions of the Mental
Deﬁciency Act and the voluntary sterilization bills, the former amounted to virtually no action in terms of
what the law provided for and the latter never had any chance of passage.

289

The generally liberal cast of the societies’ membership probably goes furthest in
explaining their reluctance to advocate such radical measures. The liberality epitomized
by most was one respecting the liberty of the individual versus the leftist technocratic
version common among “liberal reformer” eugenicists common in other countries. Why
this was true among the British more so than those in other countries is beyond the scope
of this survey. Certainly, the Protestant work-ethic (often cited as a motivator among
middle class proponents of eugenic action on Scandinavia, Germany and the US.) was
strong in Britain as elsewhere, but concerns over class based legislation, as eugenics was
often characterized as advocating, put a damper on efforts to do much other than discuss
its possible merits. Because the eugenics movement in Britain remained a province of the
middle and upper middle classes, it remained an effete organization, relatively
undedicated to political action. As the society’s name implied, education in eugenics was
the primary focus, with a particular emphasis on advocating increasing the birth rate of
the most valuable classes, the professional middle classes. Outside of merely calling on
the member of this class to reproduce in greater numbers, the society limited itself to
occasional efforts to secure tax relief or other economic incentives for the expansion of
this class.31

While much has been written on the inﬂuence of British eugenicists on the actions
of eugenicists in other countries, more research needs to be done on the failure of
eugenics to achieve a broad base among various classes in Britain. To some degree, it
may be explained by the varying perceptions of what constituted the middle classes and

the working classes in different industrializing nations. The distribution of political power

 

3’ Soloway. Pg. 63-93

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among the classes, and their allegiances reﬂected perceived self-identities among their
membership that were consistent among industrialized Western nations. The middle
classes in the U.S., Scandinavia and Germany identiﬁed themselves as broad categories
that often included members, which in Britain would have identiﬁed themselves as
working class. This broadened deﬁnition of the middle class and an identity of common
values may have made political action more desirable and feasible in these nations than in
Great Britain.

Britain’s relative demographic homogeneity and isolation also provoked less
feeling of imminent peril to the nation than that perceived elsewhere. The nation did not
face the demographic challenges (massive immigration (U .S.) and emigration
(Scandinavia), and related fears of internal demographic change) and the perceived
military threats related to demography (e. g. Germany’s fear of her continental neighbors)
that other Western nations experienced. Britain’s far ﬂung empire required every man her
counU'y could offer and thus eugenics to have been successful would have needed to
focus on positive measures of population increase to have gained serious consideration in
the halls of government. Other questions regarding the desirability of eugenic measures
in the commonwealths, unfortunately, remain largely undocumented. Though Canada is
known to have passed some eugenic sterilization legislation, the nature of the laws have
yet to be researched.

Opposition from the Catholic church is the most evident linkage among these
countries in abstaining from the use of compulsory sterilization. All the countries
reviewed with large Catholic majorities tended towards a eugenics with a deﬁnite

pronatalist sentiment. Peuriculture, or the fostering of positive eugenics through prenatal

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care and genetic counseling, found a receptive audience among Latin American countries
in particular. Efforts in the realm of negative CU 'rnics were generally restricted to
marriage bans and immigration restriction. In this sense, negative eugenics took on a
more racialist cast.

In Argentina, efforts were made to restrict the immigration of some “undesirable
European elements,” who were seen as possibly swamping the racial balance that had
been achieved among Spanish and Northern European types. Similarly to the situation in
the U.S., concern with nriscegenation between whites and Indian peoples, barely rose
above the level of academic discussion because it so little affected the dominant white
population.

In Brazil where the results of crossings among the black, white and indigenous
populations contributed signiﬁcantly to the racial makeup of the whole population, the
concept of racial identity was very important. As the whitening thesis grew in popularity
through the 1920s, efforts were made to encourage the immigration of whites to Brazil.
With the failure to achieve the level of immigration believed necessary and the advent of
Mendelian genetics in Brazilian science, eugenicists began to redeﬁne discussions of the
population in more positive terms as a beneﬁcial hybridization, resulting in a redeﬁnition
of their national eugenics in terms of a pronatalist strategy.

Demographic perceptions played an important role in deﬁning eugenics methods
in these countries. A downturn in Brazilian immigration contributed to the abandonment
of the whitening thesis, while in Argentina a steadily growing native-born population and
an inﬂux of Slavic and Semitic immigrants raised fears of polluting the “white” gene pool

and thus led to calls for immigration restriction. What emerges from this analysis is that

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perceptions of a nation’s demographic character were of fundamental importance in
considering whether or not negative eugenic measures might be undertaken. In both
France and the Soviet Union, changing perceptions of demography either opened up or
foreclosed such possibilities. France in the 19305 experienced a leveling off the
population decline she had been undergoing and thus reconsidered negative measures,
while the Soviet Union contrary to contemporary German propaganda had been enduring
a population implosion following the fall of the empire making negative population
selections unrealistic.

Increasing secularization also contributed to more open attitudes towards negative
eugenics as was seen in both France and Russia. With the issuance of the Conubis Casti,
many French eugenicists gave up on accommodating the Catholic church and began
considering solutions to social ills previously not thought amenable to the public. In
Vera Cruz, a radical anti-clericist government moved quickly to pass a sterilization law.
Yet, these secular attempts also reﬂected political conﬂicts wherein the church was seen
to have sided with the wrong side.

In Russia, the dissolution/control of the Orthodox church was a political necessity
in the minds of Soviet leaders, which would have seemed to open the way to the
introduction of eugenic policies. Internal political machinations within the political
factions seeking control over institutional science, of which Russian eugenicists were not
completely aware, took precedence over their rational arguments and spelled an end to
two distinctly different attempts to promote eugenic measures. The American Nobel
laureate, H.J. Muller’s attempts to persuade Stalin of the efﬁcacy of positive eugenics

happened to be coincident with Soviet castigation of all things reeking of German

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fascism, which at the time meant positive eugenics. Muller’s exceptionally poor tinting
gave Lysenko the opening to promote his brand of Lamarckian genetics as a speciﬁcally
“Soviet genetics,” and allowed he and his cronies to ensconce themselves in driver’s seat
of the Soviet sciences for years.

The failure of those eugenicists who sought to use negative eugenics to ﬁght the
degenerate elements in their populations was primarily one of neglecting to persuade the
public of value of their goals. In the Catholic countries of Latin America, the Catholic
church probably presented an insurmountable obstacle. In the Soviet Union, the
communist regime had become similarly an impediment, but alternatively could have
been a primary impetus for the accomplishment of eugenic programs if it had chosen to
do so. This last point is problematic in that the Soviet ofﬁcials, though having subjugated
the church and itslikely opposition to things eugenic, might not have dared to further
ostracize public sentiment (at that time Still sympathetic to the church) in the tenuous
years following their accession to power.

Failure to inﬂuence the public also was due to the fact that the middle classes had
not yet begun to constitute a majority in any of these countries, and in the West the
educated middle classes were the principal supporters of such policies. Due to its higher
proportion of middle class citizens, France provides an example to support this thesis,
wherein public sentiment for negative measures gained the most ground, even after the
Catholic church made clear its absolute opposition.

Britain with its large middle class population shows a similar pattern. Yet,
because of its distinct class structure, with many in what would be classiﬁed as the

middle classes in other Western nations deﬁning themselves as working class, eugenicists

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defaulted on expanding the audience for their views. British eugenicists came primarily
from the upper and upper middle classes and eschewed propagandizing the people they
most needed to join their cause. Eugenicists snobbish attitudes and a demographic
situation in which England needed every hand to help run its empire meant that negative
eugenic schemes had a poor chance of gaining adherents in the very classes of concern to
eugenicists.

In one sense, Britain’s relatively homogeneous population and diverse class
structure prevented a focus on race seen elsewhere, but made more obvious the class
distinctions evident in most eugenic thought, but often obscured within the race/class
conundrum (i.e. the confusion in some societies of re , llist and . Tass deﬁnitions). In
another sense, British eugenicists’ concentration on the maintenance of the upper classes
prevented their focus on subjugating (to eugenic control) the workers so desperately
needed to support their way of life and instead promoted an emphasis on education.

The large numbers of Britain’s upper class liberals sympathetic to eugenics
reﬂects the reformist ethic shown in many eugenic movements, but the darker class
aspects of their vision seems apparent in some of their utopian formulas (e. g. Aldous
Huxley and HG. Wells). In the end they deigned to educate the lower classes and largely
succeeded in these efforts to inculcate their eugenic values. Ideally, this is the solution

most eugenicists would have ascribed to, the hereditary recognizance of citizens.

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Chapter Ten: Conclusions:

“But look here doctor, wouldn ’t this nucleus of survivors be so grief
stricken and anguished that, well, they would envy the dead and not want to
go on living. ”

“No sir, when they go down into the mine everyone will still be alive -
there would be no shocking memories and the prevailing emotion will be one
of nostalgia for those left behind - combined with a spirit of bold curiosity

for the adventure ahead.”-Dr. Strangelove: Or How I learned to Stop Worrying, aad
Love the Bomb.

Eugenics represents simply a new appellation for a very ancient means of dealing
with a fundamental Malthusian dilemma facing most species at one time or another. That
humans have faced the dilemma of too many mouths and too few resources seems self
evident, but historical records also provide ample evidence. That much of the selection
process of who should survive was dictated by an understanding of hereditary
relationships is also well documented. Most biologists would not ﬁnd this surprising even
without the historical documentation.

Yet, starvation was not what faced the modern educated middle classes. Their
redeﬁnition of themselves as a threatened group depended upon a devaluation of those
outside the group as lives, at least, not worth propagating at a cost to themselves. From
the idea of applying a Protestant, middle class identity as a measure of hereditary ﬁtness,
eugenicists extrapolated a theory of social degeneration, which threatened their class
interest in progress, if not their continued existence as a group.

Plato provides us with the ﬁrst overt eugenical thesis for making positive and
negative selections within a population, and it is certainly as meretricious an example as
was adopted some twenty-three centuries later. The Greeks also provide us with many

examples of their understanding of heredity, albeit some of it very confused with

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dalliances between gods and mortals, but nonetheless reﬂecting an understanding far
beyond merely “like begets like.” Most ancient societies (and primitive ones today, e. g.
Amazonian Yanarnamo) display an essential understanding of the nature of biological
parenthood as opposed to the foster model.

The codiﬁcation of traditions and laws, while often displaying a tendency of the
rulers to enshrine their special rights, more often reﬂects the societies’ demands for
upholding the basic rights of its members, primary among these the rights associated with
the breeding couple, in effect, the monogamous relationship. Intrusion into the sanctity of
the reproductive function has usually been eschewed in the interests of group harmony.
Human societies from time irnmemorial have practiced infanticide, but generally within
the family unit, which is understandable when one considers that throughout most of
mankind’s existence, the tribe comprised an extended family group uniﬁed by their
genetic relationship.

Barring for the moment consideration of the Four Horsemen, infanticide,
particularly that of females, remained until the nineteenth century, the most available
means of adjusting population to available resources. The practice of abortion through the
use of poisons and primitive curettage techniques was exceptionally dangerous
throughout most of human history. Infanticide often occurred not because of an imminent
fear of starvation, but because of a human calculation of the relative costs. Unwed
mothers with an unwanted pregnancy faced an issue with real social and ﬁnancial costs to
themselves and their unborn children (e.g. bastardy leading to social ostracism

concomitantly precluding ﬁnding an acceptable mate).

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Similarly, though starvation was not imminent, eugenicists thought their way of
life threatened by the cost associated with their society’s propagation of unwanted
children. In the 19’h and 20th centuries, middle class eugenicists’ class identity depended
upon a highly complex social structure whose progress, if not existence seemed
threatened by the multiplication of “hordes of the unﬁt.” In these terms, they perceived
social degeneration as directly effecting the continued existence of their class (i.e.
themselves and their progeny).

As human societies progressed to more complex levels of organization, legal
codes generally preserved the primacy of biological relationships. Yet, social complexity
mirrored an ever more complex net of genetic relationships as societies became more
diverse. These more complex relationships allowed for these larger and more genetically
diverse social groups to promulgate new ways of understanding the groups’ identity.
Progressively, group identity came to embody a deﬁnition based less on close genetic
relationships of family than identities based on nation origin, social class and the more
open genetic relationship of a “people” or “race.”

In the nineteenth century, with the rapid pace of advance in the empirical sciences
as means of understanding the world, a new rationalization of social relationships took
place. In the industrializing societies of the West, scientiﬁc research gained primacy as a
means of analyzing virtually everything in the physical world. The beneﬁts from this
methodology outstripped all previous means of potentially improving the human
condition. New ideas for the organization of society, which provided for a more equitable
distribution of societies’ wealth ﬂourished, yet even these utopian visions often promoted

a perspective darkly tinged with a hereditarian bias.

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These biases were fueled by an evolving understanding of heredity, principally
associated with a new explanation of speciation, Darwin’s theory of evolution. His theory
of successive adaptations leading to speciation through a selection of the most “ﬁt” in the
competition for resources led to an array of self serving analyses of the merits of different
human populations. A cursory analysis of societies demonstrated the contemporary
primacy of Western technology and social organization, the use of which had also
allowed them to exercise a political and military inﬂuence often disproportionate to their
numbers.

In Hitler’s eugenic philosophy of race the threat social degeneracy posed to the
German peOple manifested itself not only internally, but also externally in the form of
hostile neighboring countries competing for resources. For Hitler and many eugenicists
with a racialist bent, social degeneration of their “culture-bearing” societies (from causes
within or without) would lead to a failure to advance in the global competition and
consequently threatened civilization itself. That Germany’s ﬁrst eugenicists, Ploetz and
Schallmayer saw the same threat in nationalist terms devoid of racial connotations shows
that this perception was not simply a product of German racialist thought but related to a
real situation on the ground. Their advanced scientiﬁc medical training merely provided
them a new way to analyze geopolitical realities facing their nation.

The increase in biological knowledge was most pronounced in its practical
aspects by advances in public health and medical practice. The increasing survival rates
for invasive surgeries, particularly thoracic surgery, allowed for new interventions in
human reproduction. Both of the principal methods used to sterilize humans,

salpingectomy and vasectomy appeared at the turn of the century. The advent of these

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new means of intervening in human reproduction was not alone enough to lead to
programs of compulsory sterilization, but it allowed a new deﬁnition of potential progeny
as the “other,” which threatened the group’s interest.

Concomitantly with advances in medical practice was the increased status of
practitioners of the new “scientiﬁc medicine.” As physicians’ ability to successfully
explain and intervene in disease processes increased, a tendency to medicalize or
biologicize social problems developed simultaneously. This pattern emerged because the
ﬁrst and most efﬁcacious interventions occurred in the realm of improvements in
preventative public health policies, such as sewage removal, provision of clean water
supplies and quarantines.

The process was aided by the fact that in the as yet relatively undiversiﬁed ﬁelds
of biology, many of the most notable researchers had acquired medical degrees as a
foundation for their studies. Medical practice not only provided a means of subsidizing
their research, but also conferred a measure of status to their research as a recognized
practitioner of science. Like Sinclair Lewis’ Arrowsmith, Vaughan, Kellogg, Koch,
Ehrlich, Ploetz and Schallmayer epitomized the physician researcher.

The rationalization and standardization of medical training, certiﬁcation and
practice was advanced not only by physicians but other parties similarly interested in the
rationalization of medical services. Philanthropists, largely technocrats drawn from the
world of industry and merchandizing, had already realized the beneﬁts of rationalization
in their own endeavors and sought to impose these arrangements in the delivery of
medical services. The increased status and remuneration these changes would provide

physicians made them willing allies in these efforts.

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The professional middle classes, most of whose expertise was based on
technological knowledge in their respective ﬁelds shared an outlook based on the
primacy of science as means of understanding the world. The sheer volume scientiﬁc
scholarship prevented individuals from commanding a complete range of knowledge,
thus specialists were depended upon to provide the necessary expertise in their ﬁelds.

. Because research in biology proceeded along so many diverse fronts, the
elaboration of various specialties in biology was developing, but recognition of these
ﬁelds of study remained problematic as to their speciﬁc range of expertise and to their
practical utility. This problem of organization and recognition contributed to physicians’
status as the authorities on biological issues.

The efﬁcacy of scientiﬁc research by physicians from the psychiatric to the
surgical allowed them to present a public face of expertise across the range of human
experience. The infant social sciences, which might have counterbalanced the tendency to
“biologicize” social relationships, had as yet to achieve much in the way of practical
knowledge or public recognition.

Physicians, but especially physician-researchers played a major role in fostering
public interest in eugenics as a scientiﬁc means of dealing with the perceived degeneracy
facing society. Particularly in the U.S., Scandinavia and Germany, physicians were
instrumental in persuading both public and government to adopt negative eugenic
measures like compulsory sterilization. In Michigan, Drs. Victor Clarence Vaughan and
John Harvey Kellogg represented the polarity in the evolving American medical system
of practice and in their approach to genetics, yet both men supported sterilization of the

“unﬁt.” Both physicians had imminent reputations both nationally and internationally.

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Vaughan particularly epitomized the research doctor, working in his lab at the
University of Michigan medical school, writing medical texts, lecturing, serving on AMA
committees seeking to unify educational and practice standards while maintaining only a
small private practice. The focus of his writings and teaching was directed towards other
professionals. Like Kellogg and many of the new breed of scientiﬁcally trained
physicians, he had traveled extensively in Europe to further his medical education. He
had studied with Koch and read German medical research journals to keep up with the
latest developments overseas. Vaughan was a devoted Mendelian from early in the
century, as were most of the newly trained physicians.

Kellogg also studied in Europe, but as a surgeon and active practitioner, his main
concerns were with the development of his surgical technique and general therapeutics.
As medical director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, he popularized his medical
philosophy to the public through Adventist and sanitarium publications, such as Good
Health. His research, conducted at the sanitarium, centered on what he referred to as
euthenics, the improvement of personal health habits. This focus reﬂected his
Larnarckian perspective on heredity and his Adventist perspective on the value of self-
help. Kellogg believed that the germ plasm could be improved through each generations’
adoption of healthier habits of living and through limited improvements in public health
policy.

Though neither man did eugenic research, they both closely followed
developments here and abroad and reached similar conclusions for slightly different
reasons. Both believed that degeneracy among the American population was on the rise,

though they disagreed somewhat on the cause. Vaughan held that the increase was

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principally due to differential birth rates between the better and lesser breeds while
Kellogg thought that abuse of the body through lifestyle choices, poor diet, lack of proper
rest and exercise and toxic substances contributed signiﬁcantly. Both held those public
measures to aid the unﬁt, and concomitantly to foster their breeding, only added to the
problem, though Kellogg felt more of a moral obligation to help those in need.

Both men, in slightly different ways, agreed that modern lifestyles fostered
degeneration. Vaughan asserted that the lack of a proper commitment to middle class
principles of devotion to family and certain moral virtues (e.g. aversion to greed and
proﬂigate lifestyles) led to decreased commitment to family and thus the lower birth rate
of the middle class.

Kellogg focused more on the direct physical effects of debilitating lifestyles and
considered these the primary culprits in the swelling tide of degeneracy, though he also
was shaken by the statistics on the numbers of the unﬁt being born. For Kellogg, this
meant that the increase in negative lifestyles was already being reﬂected in a burgeoning
number births of the hereditarily defective.

The 1910 US. Census Report statistics concerning the institutionalized, whether
in poor houses, hospitals for the insane, training schools for the feeblenrinded or
penitentiaries revealed a far higher prevalence of degeneracy within the population than
had previously been thought possible. As far as most people interested in eugenic
measures were concerned, the jury was in on the magnitude and direction of the problem.
The only question remaining was what actions needed to be taken, and how long would it

take to implement corrective measures.

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For Kellogg the situation called for both positive and negative measures, while for
Vaughan the focus should be on negative measures. Both asserted that education was
necessary, primarily directed at the better elements, though Kellogg still held out hope
that some could be redeemed through euthenics.

While neither of these men were particularly concerned with the “immigration”
problem, other eugenicists like Harry Laughlin were staggered by the revelations
contained in the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstracts. Their ﬁgures indicated that a
disproportionate amount of degenerate behavior was associated with the foreign-born.
That most of the foreign born with social dysfunction problems had come from Ireland.
was confounded by their emphasis on Southern and Eastern Europeans as the groups
most threatening to the nation’s future. These latest arrivals were so culturally dissimilar
from the native born that many in the middle class wondered whether they were at all
assimilable (i.e. a humoral perspective on ethnic political character), while others
considered these late arrivals a direct threat to the socio/political systems and the nation’s
germ plasm itself.

When immigration restriction legislation was being promulgated at the federal
level in the 19205, immigration was not a major issue for Michigan’s eugenicists. The
native born population was still largely rural and thus unthreatened by job competition
from foreign laborers, while the growing industries in the cities needed the inﬂux of
workers. Michigan’s eugenicists prime concern was with the degeneration they perceived
among the native born population.

Vaughan like most eugenicists the world over espoused a racialist philosophy,

which held that races differed in their adaptations to their original environments. This

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form of racialism reﬂected not so much racism as it is currently understood, but rather
concepts of ethnicity with all their cultural accoutrements bound up as hereditary
adaptations. In this sense, the old humoral understandings of racial differences had been
merely repackaged in Darwinian terms. Vaughan, like most Anglo-Saxon and Western
European eugenicists, presumed that within the hierarchy of racial types that their races
had displayed a superiority self evident in their contemporary technological and political
dominance throughout the world. They explained the contemporary success of their
forbears as something peculiar to the environmental circumstances their ancestors had
adapted to, and further conforming to the old humoral ideas of race, asserted that
“mixing” of the races generally led to a degenerate type of offspring.

In humoral thinking this arose as a consequence of blending very different
humoral types resulting in unbalanced constitutions in the progeny. This perspective
could only be supported in Darwinian terms by characterizing vague character and
cultural traits as hereditary types. Support for such views, was generally anecdotal though
some rather dubious studies were occasionally cited.

Because of the social stigma associated with rrriscegenation, eugenicists generally
spoke of race in academic terms, as it was not something they felt impinged signiﬁcantly
on their race. In the U.S., concerns regarding competition between the whites and blacks
was muted from the white side by the fact that the African-American percentage of the
population had steadily decreased since the end of the Civil War. In the ﬁrst decades of
the century, Cooperationists, such as, Booker T. Washington who had attended Kellogg’s
Race Betterment Foundation conference, sought white assistance in their goals of

attaining educational and economic equality. Thus, they were unlikely to oppose the

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white middle class Northerners whose primary eugenic concern was with degeneration
within their own race. Perhaps the most ironic illustration was the cooperation and mutual
support provided by some representatives of Amerindian tribes, Virginia’s Anglo-Saxon
Clubs and Marcus Garvey’s United Negro Improvement Association.

Race was generally not an important factor in most state’s sterilization efforts
because institutions for the African-American population were generally under funded or
virtually non-existent. In those institutions, where signiﬁcant numbers of African-
American patients were operated upon, most physicians carrying out the procedures were
white but the black ancillary staff (nursing and aid) generally was in accord with the
policies. A question of how powerful the white doctor’s authority and prestige was in
inﬂuencing the staff might be compared to the situation in the Tuskegee Experiment with
those physician’s enlistment of nurse Eunice Rivers to further their plans. In general
though, racial discrimination in this sense was basically lacking for what one might refer
to as “benign neglect.”

Sterilization programs among states in the US. differed in many different ways.
One way of viewing the differences is in terms of when the states enacted and
implemented their agendas. To some degree the timing reﬂected the legal climate with
many states waiting for the judicial picture to become clearer with ongoing court cases
throughout the states and ﬁnally at the federal level. The upsurge in such legislation
following the US. Supreme Court’s Buck v. Bell case being the most pertinent example.

As the judicial situation evolved and more states adopted such measures, medical

knowledge regarding the most appropriate candidates for such actions also changed

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leading to some states choosing at various times to concentrate on the insane, criminal,
feeblerrrinded, alcoholic, epileptic or some combination of the above.

The dissemination of medical knowledge also varied over time and place and thus
states with such legislation differed not only as to when the laws were enacted, but also in
regards to the contemporary state of knowledge of medical practitioners advocating the
laws. In many Southern states, institutions of higher education had still not recovered
from the effects of the Civil War, and thus physicians whose information was
considerably out of date guided many Southern legislatures enacting laws in the 19305.

States leading the way in negative eugenic measures generally had highly
respected allopathic medical schools, which had adopted curricula in keeping with the
new “scientiﬁc” practice of medicine. In Michigan, the University of Michigan provided
Vaughan and other supporters of eugenics a world renowned venue from which to
espouse their medical philosophies. Other eugenics supporters at the universities also
provided a kind of multidisciplinary support by representing various faculties with
similar interests in these measures.

State and local medical societies were instrumental in providing a united and
respected front for such measures. States with impressive medical schools also had well-
organized medical societies linked to the American Medical Association, which provided
even greater prestige for their cause. In the absence of countervailing pressures (e. g.
signiﬁcant religious opposition), these states were most often able to enact and carry out
such legislation. Vaughan as a leader of the AMA, and Kellogg by dint of his reputation
as a surgeon, popular medical publicist, and director of a highly respected sanitarium

brought enormous prestige to their endeavors.

307

The organization and provision of institutional care was also a prime factor in
determining which states would be most successful in implementing such policies. In
states where institutional care was well developed and under state control, such programs
proceeded rapidly. Thus those Northern states with rapidly developing social
infrastructure programs were prime candidates for early promotion of such programs in
that their bureaucracies were most likely to ascertain and “solve” the problem ﬁrst.
Kellogg and Vaughan, with their service on various state health boards and committees,
had developed important contacts within state government and thus were in positions to
foster the adoption of such legislation.

Kellogg’s Race Betterment Foundation provided a conspicuous platform for
espousing eugenics within the state, particularly as it drew its membership from a broad
cross section of political, educational and scientiﬁc elites. The RBF conferences garnered
support from business and government leaders from across the nation, not to mention
researchers from a variety of scientiﬁc endeavors sometimes only marginally connected
to eugenics.

Often regional variations also reﬂected political realities in the state legislatures.
Those states that ﬁrst enacted such laws generally had strong Republican majorities. This
was not so much a representation of conservatism within the states as a holdover from the
post Civil War political reality in most states. Indeed, in many states the Republicans had
remained the party of progress. This was certainly the case in Michigan until the 1932
election.

Political realities made themselves evident in various ways in the different states.

In Indiana, where Dr. Harry Sharpe had performed the ﬁrst vasectomy and proceeded to

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embark on a program of mass sterilization without the aegis of legislation, the state’s
governor put an effective end to such practices by refusing to accept the legislature’s
somewhat tardy imprimatur for Dr. Sharpe’s practice. Governor William Sproul of
Pennsylvania likewise, acted to halt his legislature’s efforts to enact such a program. In
Michigan, the governors showed no such reluctance in accepting a series of laws.

Dr. Sharpe’s case is particularly interesting, in that he reﬂects a tendency in many
countries that would adopt sterilization legislation. In the Scandinavian countries and
Germany, there were often those physicians, usually serving as provincial or institutional
medical authorities who took upon' themselves the onus of instigating such procedures
without the protection of the law. In some cases they would eventually be prevented from
continuing their practices, but in any event they provided impetus for their supporters to
enact legislation.

Perhaps the most signal reason why states with similar patterns of development
failed to adopt such laws was the presence of signiﬁcant Catholic constituencies in the
electorate. While eugenics is often categorized as an Anglo-Saxon Protestant reformist or
progressive phenomenon, the emphasis should be placed ﬁrst upon the Protestant aspect.
States with large populations of Nordic descent such as Minnesota and Wisconsin were
just as apt to pass such laws, while Eastern states like Massachusetts, New York and New
Jersey found the religious opposition insurmountable. Connecticut, Delaware and Maine
with predominately Protestant populations prove the rule by being virtually the only
states in the Northeast to adopt sterilization legislation.

Interestingly this pattern was also exhibited in the international arena. Those

European countries adopting such programs were principally Protestant nations with

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insigniﬁcant religious opposition. The Scandinavian nations of Norway, Denmark,
Sweden and Finland all adopted sterilization at approximately the same time, and were
joined by such other Lutheran nations such as Estonia and Iceland. Other countries with
strong Protestant traditions like Czechoslovakia and Holland seriously considered such
laws, but failed to enact them. Unfortunately, insufﬁcient source material is available on
why the outcome was different in the latter states. That compulsory sterilization laws
appeared almost exclusively in nations with dominant Protestant majorities seems to
indicate the inﬂuence the Protestant work ethic’s tendency to devalue unproductive
members of society had on the adoption of such policies.

Liberal democratic regimes, usually represented by Social-Democratic parties,
introduced such laws with virtually no opposition. Like the situation in Michigan,
physicians, particularly from prominent research institutions, provided an important-
lobbying effort in the parliaments and among the general population. They were joined
by academics from a wide range of ﬁelds, individuals associated with institutional care,
and those especially concerned with a perceived rise in crime.

They differed from Michigan and similar industrializing, progressive states in the
U.S., in that all were experiencing declines in birth rate and signiﬁcant emigration. Their
concerns regarding degeneration focused on the declining birth rates among the better
classes, and concomitantly a perceived increase in the socially dysfunctional elements
due to the public’s support of them through social welfare programs. Perceptions of
changing demographics were important determinants in opting for negative measures and
in who was to be described as the principle problem group. Generally, decreasing

population led to an internal focus while increasing population led to the deﬁning of both

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internal and external threats. Sometimes the external threats were simply immigrants
competing against the native-born for resources, but as was the case in Germany, the
threat was manifested in entire national and racial groups.

During the Weimar period, calls for a German sterilization statute generally cited
the same reasons as those in the US. and Scandinavia. The Prussian upper house had
formulated a bill before the demise of its government to the Nazis, which would become
the basis for the Nazi law. Signiﬁcantly, it was a North German state that ﬁrst
promulgated such a law, reﬂecting the demographics of religious afﬁliation within
Germany. Strong Catholic opposition in the southern provinces could have been
expected. This would have reﬂected the situation in Switzerland where only a few Swiss
cantons had such legislation; the largely Catholic French- and Italian-speaking
populations precluding the adoption of a national statute. Like the U.S., the federal
system of government allowed some cantons to enact such legislation irrespective of a
national consensus.

Thus, Germany would seem to provide an exception to this rule, but the
opposition was effectively steam-rollered by the Nazi regime implementing a nationwide
program. The German program was of enormous size and proceeded rapidly to sterilize
somewhere between 300,000-400,000 people in less than a decade. Some historians have
tied the decrease in the number of sterilizations by the end of the 19305 to the beginning
of the euthanasia program and there is no doubt some truth in this, but equally obviously
the German program was approaching the accomplishment of its goals.

The vigorous support of some American eugenicists and the example set by state

policies in the US. directly inﬂuenced the adoption of laws in European nations, most

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particularly in Germany. Many American advocates of compulsory sterilization pointed
favorably to Germany’s achievements in the ﬁeld as an example of what could be
accomplished. After 1933, the Scandinavian countries principally looked to Germany for
their example, many Nordic eugenicists rejecting the American example.

The timing of the adoption of their laws is signiﬁcant in that they enacted their
legislation as the effects of the Depression were being felt and as a measure to prevent the
collapse of social welfare spending. The public had been prepared by years of
propagandizing by eugenics advocates, and their governments sought measures that
would allay the public’s fears of degeneration, while providing a means of immediately
relieving some of he costs of segregated institutionalization. The added beneﬁt was that
even if current budgets were not substantially relieved, at least the government could be
seen as implementing measures with potential and permanent beneﬁts.

Concerns regarding the expense of providing care for the socially dysfunctional
ﬁgured prominently in all discussions of negative eugenic measures. In many US. states,
such laws were not passed until well into the Depression, yet the picture is often hard to
discern as the Buck v. Bell case of 1927 provided a legal green light to those states that
had considered such laws, but were waiting for judicial clarity. Since many state
legislatures convened only biannually there was a ﬂood of such legislation passed in the
subsequent odd years after the Supreme Court’s decision. Michigan’s most
comprehensive law passed in 1929, but before the long-term effects of the Depression
had been felt.

Likewise, the reasons behind the escalation in the implementation of Michigan’s

new law afford little means of discriminating whether the prime motivation was the

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impetus of budgetary savings to the state or merely the fact that the new law allowed a
broader categorization of patients subject to the statute. There is little doubt both were
signiﬁcant.

Regional variation in implementing the US. laws occurred in sometimes ironic
ways. In many states that adopted such ordinances as a means of reducing institutional
costs early on, the laws were employed more prodigiously during the Depression than
before, while in other states the opposite occurred. Some Southern states, such as
Mississippi, found themselves in such desperate ﬁnancial straits that they were unable to
ﬁnance the costs of operations.

Regional variations occurred at almost every level throughout those states and
nations utilizing such laws. In the Scandinavian countries, the threat of degeneration was
perceived mainly in the cities and the legal infrastructures for carrying out the provisions
of the law were far more developed there. As with Hitler’s eugenics, the rural peasant
classes were also celebrated in Scandinavian eugenics as the basis of the countries’ “good
stock.” Thus most sterilization requests emanated from the cities, and rural provinces and
districts accounted for a smaller proportion of the operations.

In the U.S., the federal system of government allowed states the right to enact
such laws, subject only to review of the laws’ constitutionality (e.g. most generally in
relation to the 14th Amendment). Yet even within states, differences in how the laws
operated were evident from county to county. This diversity reﬂected to some degree
where state institutions were located, but also reﬂected how local judges, and directors of

institutions and welfare programs decided to use the laws.

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In Michigan, the largest number of sterilizations were performed in Lapeer county
where the state’s largest home and training center for the feebleminded was located. After
passage of the 1929 law, which now allowed for the sterilization of the insane, the
Kalamazoo State Hospital for the Insane started sterilizing patients in what one observer
called a “promiscuous” manner. While the reasons behind these institutions’ policies
seem evident, they become less so when compared with other state institutions caring for
similar categories of patients, but with much lower proportional numbers of such
operations. In Kent county, one probate judge active in the eugenics movement almost
single-handedly instigated a program of sterilizing the county’s dysgenic elements, while
another probate judge in Genessee county with a similar demographics was unsure of the
law’s use and even its legality.

In Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan’s hospital performed numerous
sterilizations though even an approximate number can not be ascertained because the
categorization of such operations changed over time. When the hospital was approached
by the Human Betterment Foundation in an effort to glean ﬁgures for their
propagandizing the beneﬁts of compulsory sterilization statutes, the administrative staff
ﬁrst provided some rather unusual numbers. Upon subsequent requests, the hospital
declined to reveal further information on such operations, as it might constitute a breach
of patient conﬁdentiality. In effect, the operations were now being classiﬁed under
medical indications rather than as procedures carried out under the aegis of the law.

It was ironic that the organization that sought to promote compulsory sterilization
by demonstrating to the uninitiated what beneﬁts accrued from such legislation brought

about the ﬁrst real threat to utilization of the statutes. In the HBF’s zeal to correlate

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evidence of the state’s success, they inadvertently brought about the ﬁrst realization that
nobody was apparently monitoring the law’s application. The Univeristy of Michigan
hospital referred the HBF requests on the operation of the law to various state agencies
and probate judges with a truly bizarre range of responses. The state welfare department
maintained no statewide ﬁgures and institutions seemed answerable only to the state’s
Hospital Comrrrission and the Board of Corrections and Charities, who were strangely
unresponsive. Judges in Kent and Genessee counties provided astoundingly different
views on the how the law could and was used. Nevertheless, the operations proceeded
albeit with more supervision.

Again, a single individual in a position of power could radically inﬂuence the use
of such laws. In Michigan, one warden of the state reformatory in Ionia arranged for the
castration of over twenty inmates as did the director of the institution for the
feebleminded in Lapeer. Similar situations arose in some Scandinavian countries where
sex offenders were also sterilized as a means of reducing their sex drives.

A primary motivation in the requests to sterilize institutionalized male patients
focused on attempts to make them more manageable. Dr. Sharpe had put this forward as
the reason for his operations at the Jefferson Reformatory in Indiana and many
institutional authorities followed his lead. Over time belief in the efﬁcacy of this
treatment waxed and waned, often varying with the type of patient being considered.
Sometimes the insane were singled out and at other times the feebleminded.

In California, this perspective had faded by the time it became increasingly
popular elsewhere largely due to Paul Popenoe’s book promoting California’s experience

with the policy. Physicians in the American South and some Scandinavian countries were

315

still advocating sterilization of the insane and feebleminded as a means of managing their
patients’ sex drives long after many California institutions had abandoned such policies.
In any event, these indications hardly constituted a eugenic argument for sterilization,
though eugenicists advocating compulsory sterilization were generally loathe to condemn
such practices as they generally sanctioned the sterilization of such patients for their own
reasons (i.e. mental dysfunction as eugenic indication). Sterilization at the Kalamazoo
State Hospital followed this pattern until state authorities began to question the hospital
director’s policies.

The sterilization of women followed the same pattern in the vast majority of
jurisdictions having sterilization laws. Internationally, female sterilizations accounted for
more than 65% of the totals and in some areas far more than that. Michigan’s female
patient population was sterilized at a rate approximately three times greater than that for
men. In Scandinavia, the proportions were even higher ranging from 80 to over 90
percent.

Within the US. these totals proportions varied greatly with some states sterilizing
men twice as frequently as women and others nearly equal proportions were attained.
Why these variations occurred remains unclear as not enough research into various state
programs has as yet been published in the secondary sources.

Some reasons for the general disproportion can be advanced though. Differences
in the inheritance and severity of genetic dysfunction between men and women explain
some of the problem. Because of the extra genetic information contained on women’s
second “x” chromosome the severity of genetic disease is often substantially mediated.

For example, muscular dystrophy is almost exclusively a male disease with females in the

316

line serving as carriers of the defect. Similarly, among those afﬂicted with Down’s
syndrome, the severity of the males dysfunction is usually much more pronounced.

Therefore, women would be much more likely to be offered parole and many
operations were performed as a condition for release from the institutions. Another
reason given for female sterilization was a medical indication. This often served as a
means of birth control in an age when abortion was generally illegal and other forms of
birth control were unavailable. This could be ascertained from some of the records in
Michigan’s archives and most certainly was the case in many operations done in
Scandinavia.

The conjunction of birth control and sterilization in eugenics movements was
evident throughout many nations. In the U.S., birth control advocate, Margaret Sanger,
supported both mandatory sterilization for eugenic reasons and as a matter of personal
choice. The transformation of the New Jersey League for Sterilization from an.
organization dedicated to the passage of a compulsory sterilization law into one
advocating the adoption of a voluntary sterilization bill only secondarily dedicated to
allowing operations on the institutionalized is the most pertinent example.

More insidious were those procedures performed for medical indications, such as
post partum depression, and tired or weak mother syndrome. The large number of such
cases in Scandinavian records may explain the disproportionate number of women
sterilized in these countries. While evidence for these types of operations exist in
Michigan’s limited selection of records, it is difﬁcult to determine how prevalent such

practices were.

317

In some cases, doctors made such decisions under rather questionable
circumstances in the operating room when conducting other procedures. The surgeon’s
decisions could often go unquestioned in a time when rapid pathological tests were
unavailable. Whether an organ or tissue was malignant was a judgement call often left to
the surgeons’ discretion as subsequent operations in the pre-antibiotic age greatly
increased the risks to a patient.

Almost anyone involved in the surgical/obstetrics and pathology ﬁelds through
the 19605 knew of such sometimes questionable cases. In the medical jargon of the time,
such patients were sometimes referred to as FLPs, the “Funny Looking Parents” of FLKs,
“Funny Looking Kids.” This cavalier attitude within the medical profession serves to
demonstrate the degree to which a hereditarian bias existed among some in the
professions.

The Second World War is often cited as an example of the slippery slope to which
negative eugenics leads. Indeed, Hitler’s programs for the eradication of “lives not worth
living.” “useless eaters,” and “subhuman types,” which were complemented by programs
to “rescue” Aryan children from isolated enclaves within his newly extended Reich all
qualify his regime’s efforts as a full-ﬂedged racist version of eugenic selection. Yet, the
continuing prevalence and in some cases increases in the number of sterilizations
performed following the war demonstrate that many people failed to make that
connection with their own programs.

Sterilization in Scandinavia increased following the war as it did in some states in
the US. In Michigan, as in other states there was a noticeable increase following a dip

during the war. This reﬂects the fact that many physicians were drawn into the service

318

and were thus seeking to clear up a backlog of cases upon their return. In some states, the
war did effectively spell the demise of a state program for rather ironic reasons. States
with small physician populations in the South often lost the only surgeon available to
carry out their procedures putting the programs in a limbo from which they only
marginally recovered.

Generally the 19505 witnessed a nationwide reduction in the number of
sterilizations performed, but in some states (e. g. North Carolina and Virginia) programs
only began to reach their highest levels of implementation following the war. The
decrease in California’s use of sterilization marked the most signiﬁcant point in the
decrease in nationwide use of such laws throughout this period, but other states continued
with their policies. Michigan continued to sterilize patients in ever decreasing numbers
throughout the following decades, but such operations ceased in the 19705.

By that time, sterilization as a personal choice for birth control purposes became
the focus for advocates. New coalitions formed to advocate the legalization of abortion
and wider availability of birth control for many of the same reasons as had been put forth
before for compulsory sterilization. A higher moral ground could be claimed in that
protection of all mothers (from the horrors of backroom abortions) and their personal
choices formed the basis for these calls.

The efﬁcacy of new technological advances in birth control, the pill and IUDs,
also contributed to making sterilization less onerous as just a more permanent means of
birth control. Eugenics lost most of its compulsory aspects, in part, because public

awareness had changed and coercion was no longer required. Parents and guardians could

319

more often be persuaded to volunteer afﬂicted offspring for operations as releasing them
from the burden of unwanted pregnancies.

This formula played into contemporary efforts to mainstream the institutionalized
and allowed for an easier transition in regards to both public fears regarding the
promiscuity of those paroled and the personal fears of their guardians for their ability to
suitably adjust to their new situation.

Through a similar evolution, eugenics was transformed into genetic counseling.
Planned Parenthood centers in a sense became the eugenics strongholds of the latter
decades of the 20th century. In that they provide their services to a wide population and
represent a relative triumph of education in eugenic matters, the fondest dreams of earlier
eugenicists would have been realized.

The early eugenicists recognized a problem that the available data indicated was
severe and imnrinent. They chose to respond with a forceful program to meet a perceived
threat that is easily dismissed today. This does little justice to peOple who for the most
part were well-meaning even though they lacked the ethical standards we assume to be so
self-evident today. It is easy to forget the dimensions of the problems they thought they
faced, and we would do well to remember that most of their exhortations were not for
immediate improvements that would beneﬁt themselves but for their descendants.
Technological improvements, advances in the sciences and the further elaboration of
codes of medical ethics have provided us with a measure of perspective unavailable to
them.

Sterilization was a new technology at the beginning of the 20’h century and

seemed to provide a means of accomplishing their goals with a relative minimum of

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deleterious consequences to those affected. Their cavalier attitude in regards to those
unfortunately labeled as socially inadequate, as they were so often characterized,
represented a general perspective of the times. That many of those most involved with
advocating and carrying out such policies were intimately involved in the care of the
afﬂicted should make us pause before passing judgement on whether or not their actions
were motivated by what they viewed as a higher calling.

Virtually any judgement human beings make is justiﬁed on numerous levels. The
economic beneﬁts that might be seen to accrue from the savings sterilization could
provide is often cited as evidence of selﬁsh self interest, it could also be construed as a
valuable utilitarian argument for persuading those unresponsive to pleas for the
consideration of the eugenic future of generations yet to be born. This is particularly true
when one considers that most eugenicists were fully aware that most of the beneﬁts of
their proposals, monetary and genetic, would not be realized for generations.

The study of eugenics shows us a how technology and scientiﬁc knowledge
changes over time interacting with social perspectives to provide for evolving public
policies and transforming viewpoints. Our current codes of medical ethics have much to
do with the mistakes made in the past, but judging these individuals by contemporary
standards seems to be the only reasonable was to adjudge their actions. By contemporary
standards, they generally showed a ﬁrm commitment to protecting the interests of
patients with statutes formulated accordingly.

It is convenient to label eugenics as a pseudo-science whose time has fortunately
passed, but I would argue that eugenics is still with us in many forms. Amniocentesis as a

means of detecting birth defects has little relevance without its conjunction with a

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eugenic choice to abort the fetus. How will this practice be adjudged in twenty years or
less when gene therapies exist to correct such defects?

Gross anatomical defects that today can be corrected with rrricrosurgical
techniques, often in the intrauterine environment, already prevent many of the unborn
from being discarded. Yet, in our zeal to save many of the severely deformed, the
associated costs of some medical interventions threaten to bankrupt medical budgets. We
like so many generations before us generally choose to sacriﬁce those to whom we have
the least connections; today that is the unborn.

If there is a continuum of reproduction from spermatozoa and oocytes through to
reproductive adults, in a sense all we have done is to substitute the death of one group
over another. Eugenicists sacriﬁced the reproductive cells of those they perceived as
dysgenic, we with more technological certainty sacriﬁce presumptively defective fetuses.
Less to our moral credit, we also justify the extinction of the conceived and yet unborn as
a matter of personal choice while condemning those early eugenicists for intervening in
the reproductive autonomy of people (e. g. feeblenrinded) who to this day are generally
sterilized on the personal ﬁat of their guardians.

Some medical ethicists, such as Peter Singer of Princeton have gone so far as to
suggest that parents as a matter of personal choice be able to dispatch their offspring up
to a month after birth. Dr. Singer, a vocal advocate of animal rights developed his
philosophy from his concern over man’s impact on the environment and our threat to the
world’s other species. Indeed, the burgeoning numbers of human beings are causing
enormous damage to the habitats of our fellow travelers on this planet. While Singer’s

suggestions may seem outlandish, his concerns are not misplaced.

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India and China have found it necessary to curtail the reproductive rights of their
people in a eugenics that in some measure reﬂects the German deﬁnition of eugenics,
Rassenhygiene. a eugenics where the optimization of population ﬁgures prominently into
the equation of national efﬁciency. In both countries, restrictions on the number of births
has led to a focus, for those who can afford it, to eugenic choices in the selection of what
fetuses will be taken to term. With the growing availability of genetic testing these kinds
of decisions will become progressively more eugenic in every sense of the word. The
spread of these perspectives can only be expected to increase as the human population
goes from six billion to ten billion in the next twenty years.

While today we are limited to negative measures in the exclusion of those of the
unborn found to be defective, in the very near future we will be able to exclude on a
qualitative basis that will be equivalent to a positive eugenics. Selection for only those
children that will meet higher and higher criteria will be commonplace, as they will need
these advantages to compete against others similarly selected. Ever costlier medical
technologies will inevitably lead to tighter medical resources, which will make
governmental and private health programs focus on insuring that prospective parents take
advantage of these methodologies as a means of containing long-term costs.

Gene therapies for the insertion of certain traits will become available and we will
avail ourselves of them, because to not do so will amount to handicapping our children.
The methods will come in under the radar screens of many, because the technology
develops as efforts to cure genetic diseases (e. g. current attempts at insertion of

functional dystrophin genes in muscular dystrophy patients).

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Some of the eugenicists’ worst fears have also been realized in the form of
increased rates of illegitimacy and single parent households and the concomitant
sufferings of children raised without the beneﬁt of two parent families. Promiscuity has
led to increased rates in the transmission of venereal disease and related sterility and birth
defects. Our misuse of antibiotics leading to ever more resistant strains merely
compounds the problem of high rates of infection and increasing levels of virulence,
morbidity and mortality.

Many of their suspicions about the hereditary nature of predispositions to various
afﬂictions from manic depression to alcoholism have been borne out by modern genetics,
albeit not in the precise manner the earlier eugenicists described. The emerging
technologies mentioned above will make many of the eugenicists’ most dire protections
superﬂuous to those who take advantage of these technologies. The world envisioned in
John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar is a much more likely than that of Aldous Huxley’s
Brave New World.

Kellogg and Vaughan were dedicated physicians who spent their lives promoting
medical education and advancing public and private health care. They put their own lives
at risk in these pursuits. In his selﬂess desire to care for his sanitarium patients, Kellogg
seldom slept more than ﬁve hours a night, and added to his load by his quest to discover
the nature of environmental toxins and promote his theories to the public. Vaughan
similarly fought for advances in medical knowledge risking his own life in the jungle to
ﬁnd the cause of yellow fever, emerging as the only survivor of the medical team sent

forth. Their eugenics philosophies and efforts were as a piece of these works.

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Bibliographical Essay

The ﬁrst historical treatment of eugenic sterilization in America was Dr. Harry
Laughlin’s Eugenical Sterilization in the United Sta_t§, (Chicago: Chicago Psychopathic
Laboratory, 1922). Laughlin was the head of the Eugenics Record Ofﬁce and an
inﬂuential advocate for eugenic interpretations and solutions for a variety of perceived
social problems. In Congressional hearings, he was called as an expert on eugenic issues
relative to immigration restriction and was inﬂuential in promoting a scheme of national
origins epitomized in the 1924 immigration legislation. In 1927, he was called as an
expert witness in the era’s most important eugenics judicial decision, Virginia’s Buck v.
Bell case. The resulting US. Supreme Court decision sanctioning the compulsory
sterilization of a variety of people categorized as dysgenic opened the doors for the
enactment of such legislation throughout the nation.

Laughlin’s E_ugenical Sterilization proved instrumental in bringing this to pass.
The book was an examination of the judicial decisions regarding such legislation
throughout the country, and a compendium of data on the effectiveness of the measures.
In so far as his research of legal precedents and issues inﬂuencing the operation of such
laws, Laughlin proved remarkably objective. His analysis often noted the importance of
individual decision-makers within political and institutional infrastructures. From
superintendents of institutions, through social workers, to governors, many outside the
courts had the power to impact the laws’ operations. To counteract deﬁciencies in the
various states’ laws which had resulted in a rather haphazard implementation of the

eugenicists’ agenda of compulsory sterilization, Laughlin provided a succinct “model

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law” formulated from previous legal precedents and encapsulating his rather broad range
of eugenic categories.

His text provides the best review of the related legal decisions and provides an
accurate historical overview of the sterilization programs extant. The Virginia
sterilization statute was founded upon principles laid down in Laughlin’s book. The
Supreme Court’s decision and the lack of serious challenges to it, meant that Laughlin’s
u'eatise fairly encompassed the legal history of eugenics for decades before and after in
that the enactment of most subsequent state legislation was guided by Laughlin’s “model
law.”

Paul Popenoe’s study, Sterilizatiorﬂnd Hu_m_an Betterment. (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1929) arose from collaboration with eugenics advocates in
California’s institutional infrastructure. Popenoe was a founder of the southern California
chapter of the American Eugenics Society and editor of the inﬂuential Journal of
Heredity. At the behest of the state authorities, he undertook a sociological analysis of
California’s efforts in eugenic sterilization, the nations’ then most extensive program in
terms of duration and size. The text provides accurate assessments of the categories and
numbers of patients involved in the state’s program and many insights into the
contemporary discussion of medical, philosophical and institutional issues related to
sterilization legislation. Popenoe’s estimates on the cost savings accrued to the state
through its policies restricting the propagation of dysgenic elements pose the most
questionable parts of the work colored as they were by contemporary theories on

inheritance.

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In 1930, Popenoe with E]. Gosney, a retired businessman and philanthropist with
an interest in eugenics, published Sterilization for Hum_an Betterment: A Summary of
Results of 6,000 Operations in California, 1909-1929. (New York: The Macmillan
Company, 1930). Based on Poponoe’s study, which was aided by the active cooperation
of California’s institutions, the book’s theme was essentially on the beneﬁts derived from
such a program.

The Gosney-Popenoe collaboration continued in the establishment of the Human
Betterment Foundation, which in its efforts to propagandize for such programs, became
the most important national clearinghouse for statistical information on various eugenic
sterilization programs throughout the nation. With the foundation’s demise in 1942, other
organizations, such as the New Jersey League for Sexual Sterilization and subsequently
the related Birthright organization inherited the foundation’s task of collating the effects
of legislation throughout the states. The statistics compiled by such groups constitute the
most comprehensive data sets available on compulsory sterilization in this nation. These
records catalogued in the Social Welfare History Archive of the University of Minnesota
remain the most authoritative statistical compilations extant.

The Journal of Heredity, while providing little historical analysis on the
development of eugenic thought or policy, informed both laymen and professionals of
contemporary genetic research. Popenoe, though an advocate of compulsory sterilization,
proved an objective editor of the joumal’s scientiﬁc content, and generally minimized the
inclusion of his own eugenic agenda within its pages. For the historian, the journal
provides a demonstration of the contemporary association of studies of eugenics and

genetics.

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Jacob Landman, a lawyer and critic of eugenic sterilization was awarded a
doctorate for his study of sterilization, which resulted in the 1932 publication of @132
Sterilization: The History of the Human Sterilization Movement. (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1932). Landman compiled statistical data on virtually every state
program and those legal decisions subsequent to Laughlin’s study. While he was
particularly critical of some of the dubious classiﬁcations used to justify sterilization
cases, Landman acceded to the eugenic value of such laws in particular cases. In
retrospect this would prove particularly ironic for the Jewish Landman, when in 1936, he
penned an article for the Survey Graphic supporting the German sterilization law as
eugenic and not directed against non-Aryans.

For the historical study of eugenic sterilization programs, these authors provide
the most authoritative and objective compilations on the facts regarding the actual
practice and organization of sterilization programs in the United States. The range of
contemporary works related to eugenic philosophy is as disparate as the authors’ agendas.
Texts on evolution, social science, medicine, genetics, agriculture to name but a few,
often carried on a eugenic discourse, often complimented by the public pronouncements
of various professional and lay advocates of eugenics or measure nominally related.

More directly political in its tone and less substantial in providing documentation
for its claims, was Walter Galligan’s The Sterilizzﬂm of the Unﬁt. (London: T. Werner
Laurie Ltd., 1929). Directed towards and English audience, Galligan’s text provided a
comprehensive elucidation of contemporary arguments for compulsory sterilization

legislation.

328

Moya Woodson’s Sterilization in North Carolina: A Sociological and
Psychological Study (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1950)
presents perhaps the most complete study of the process of a compulsory sterilization
program produced since the 19305. Though Woodson’s project dealt only with the North
Carolina experience, the level of cooperation she received from authorities in the state
gave her unprecedented access to the individuals responsible for carrying out such
policies. Her systematic survey encompassed a wide range of variation in actual practice,
which had remained largely anecdotal in other treatments on eugenic practices.

Mark Haller’s ligenics: Heredita_ri_an Attittges in AmericaaThougat. (New
Brunswick: Rutgers, University Press, 1963) provided the ﬁrst modern American
intellectual history of eugenics in the United States. Haller’s research material comprised
not only the professional journals of American and English eugenicists, but also the
important texts and documents of leading eugenicists and founders such as Sir Francis
Galton, Charles Davenport of the ERO and Charles Fairﬁeld Osborn of the American
Eugenics Society.

Much of Haller’s work was inspired and informed by Richard Hofstadter’s m
Darwinism in American ThoJugﬂ. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955) though the work
discusses eugenics principally in terms of an intellectual product, and was not directly
concerned with, the history of eugenic policy per se.

Haller surveyed the journals and Proceedings from groups as diverse as Eugenics
Review, a product of Great Britain’s Eugenics Education Society to the Proceedings of
the National Conference on Charities and Corrections, later the National Council of

Social Work. Haller also collected a plethora of eugenic pronouncements made in a

329

 

variety of public venues by the diverse range of critics and advocates of eugenic
philosophy or policy.

Haller’s text provides the ﬁrst cohesive history on the American eugenics
movement and its principal advocates and critics. While the book provides only a general
breakdown of the demographic realities of American sterilization programs, it does
demonstrate the evolution of American attitudes toward eugenic philosophy, and the
broad array of agendas that claimed an intellectual afﬁliation.

Much of the writing, which would become the sociobiology debate was prompted
by ED. Wilson’s 1975 publication of Sociobiology. Wilson, an evolutionary biologist,
promoted sociobiology as a new ﬁeld of study, which demanded the active inclusion of
sociology, the social sciences, and the humanities in evolutionary theory. The book
provoked new interest and debate over questions of evolutionary biology and its
relevance to social behavior and collaterally to the development of social policy. It was
often criticized for its apparent message of "biological destiny," and thus construed as an
implicit afﬁrmation of eugenic philosophy.

While the history of the sociobiology debates of the last two and a half decades is
beyond the context of this review, and the such texts often only tangentially relate to the
history of applied eugenics, it must be noted that in particular regards to intellectual
history, these works have been instrumental in constructing a modern discourse on
eugenics. The ongoing debate provided a valuable impetus to the study of eugenics as a
means of demonstrating past misuses of scientiﬁc information.

In the debates less subtle iterations, the Holocaust often stood in symbolically as

the ultimate result of eugenic philosophy and policy gone awry, and protagonists’ socio-

330

 

political concerns colored their interpretations of eugenics accordingly. A consensus
existed on one side of the debate regarding a general condemnation of the practical
results of eugenics policy, i.e. the forced sterilization of those labeled socially
dysfunctional in the US. and the application of even more extreme measures in the Nazi
state. Inasmuch as the latter example was morally indefensible to most of the debate’s
participants, the historical focus on eugenics revolved around the intellectual constructs
which supported the philosophy and its practical applications to social issues.

Daniel Kevles’ In the Name of Egugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Hung
Heredity. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985) further developed the analysis
of the intellectual history of eugenic thought focusing more sharply on the philosophical
connections between eugenicists in England, Germany and the United States. Kevles
surveyed an even broader range of primary sources than Haller, but the general restriction
to English and American materials, precluded the extensive comparisons to European
programs and discourses which would inform much of the later work on the intellectual
history of eugenics.

Professors Haller and Kevles were instrumental in establishing the primary source
materials in the study of eugenics and its intellectual relationships in the English speaking
world. Kevles study of the importance of the English eugenics movement on both
American and German contemporaries established many of the intellectual connections
between participants in the three countries.

Both authors explicitly stated the continuing importance of eugenic thought and
their fears of the potential abuse of contemporary ﬁndings in the ﬁeld of genetics as a

reason for their studies. While the results of the German experience with eugenic policies

33]

of the Nazi period punctuate the fears of most who study eugenics, these authors’ efforts

to contextualize their studies in terms of the potential future abuse of genetic information
sometimes led them to color their characterizations of eugenicists and their philosophies

in terms of knowledge unavailable to the eugenicists they studied.

These biases aside, these two authors identiﬁed the canon of English language
source material on the subject and developed intellectual constructs for future historical
analyses. Drawing on source materials in the sciences and popular journals magazine and
eugenic exhibitions, these studies revealed the philosophical and political diversity of
eugenics proponents and their relations to the popular eugenics philosophies and agendas
of their contemporaries.

Though a full disquisition on works related to the sociobiology debate is beyond
the scope of this review, the importance of the debate to prompting and inﬂuencing
historical research in the ﬁeld necessitates mention of those texts, which touched more
directly on the history of eugenics.

Robert Bannister’s Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Aaglo-America_n
Social Thought. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979) like Hofstader’s work
focused less on the practical efforts of eugenicists than on the intellectual constructs
inherent in Social Darwinism. Bannister’s source material while broad, lacked the
breadth of research Kevles brought together in his work both in terms of its relation to the
intellectual history of eugenics and the practical results of the legislation. This is
understandable in that eugenics was not the primary subject of Bannister’s study.

Hamilton Cravens’ The Triumph of Evolution: The Heredity-Environment

Controversy, 1900-1941. (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1988) focused on

332

 

the intellectual arguments predominant in the supposedly dichotomous nature-nurture
controversy. Cravens work showed that eugenic arguments regarding the relative
importance of hereditary versus environmental factors were never so dichotomous as
some of those debating the merits of sociobiology might prefer.

Troy Duster’s Backdoor to Eugenics. (New York: Routledge, 1990) and a

 

compilation of essays by Robert Lewontin, Steven Rose and Leon Karrrin titled My;
Our Genes: BiologLIdeologLapd Human Nature. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984)
added little factual information on the history of eugenics though they were long on
sociopolitical interpretations related to the sociobiology debate.

As the title indicates, Carl Degler’s In Search of Hlﬂan Nature: The DeclinaaLd
Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thougat. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991) focused once again on the intellectual constructs developed to support or
oppose a behavioral or deternrinist view of human nature and as such eugenic arguments
on the nature of hereditary determinism ﬁgure prominently. Degler extended Kevles
investigation with particular emphasis on the American experience. Degler elucidated a
cyclical waxing and waning of Darwinism (differentiated from Social Darwinism by its
relation to speciﬁc evolutionary selection pressures as opposed to the theoretical results
of evolutionary change expressed by Herbert Spencer and others) throughout the
American discourse on human nature and its relationship to social policy. Though Degler
identiﬁed an impulse to “establish a social order in which innate and immutable forces of
biology played no role in accounting for the behavior of social groups” as the most

important impetus away from biological interpretations of human nature, he concluded

333

 

that evolutionary biology had and would continue to provide valuable insights in to these
questions.

Richard Soloway’s Birth Control and the Population Question in England, 1877-
_lﬂ. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982) and Demoggrphy gig
Degeneration. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990) though focusing
on the eugenic discourse in England also provided insights into the American experience
as it was perceived by English protagonists and conversely how the English discourse
inﬂuenced American eugenic thought.

The 19905 witnessed a profusion of works in English on eugenics movements
throughout the world, which not only expanded the comparative aspects of the
historiography in terms of the experiences in different social settings, but also expanded
the range of historical issues in a more systematic manner. Questions on the importance
of perceptions of race and gender in understanding eugenic thought and practice began to
take a more prominent position in the discourse, yet much of historiography continued to
focus on the intellectual history of eugenics.

The principal reasons behind this were the perceived continuing relevance of the
historical debate on eugenics to the ongoing debate over sociobiology and evolutionary
biology, but most importantly because of access to source materials. Demographic data
on the practical effects of eugenic policy remain largely unavailable either because of
restrictions on access imposed by governmental agencies or because of the dearth of
information originally collected.

Among those works dealing more speciﬁcally with questions of race and gender

were Edward Larson’s Sex Race and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South. (Baltimore:

 

334

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), Diane Paul’s Controlling Human Heredity: 1865
to the Present. (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1995), David J. Smith’s Ih_e
Eugenic Assault on America: Scenes in Red, White and Black. (Fairfax: George Mason
University Press, 1993) and Nancy Gallagher’s Breeding Better Vermonters: The
Eugenics of the Green Mountain State. (Hanover: University Press of New England,
1999).

Larson’s book portrays the regional differences in eugenic thought and practice
evident in the Deep South, and adds a good deal of information on the practical political
and institutional realities of implementing programs of eugenic sterilization in these
locales. Larson’s depiction of local social mores and the sociology of knowledge and
their effects on implementation on such programs makes this one of the most important
recent publications on the practice of compulsory sterilization.

Diane Paul’s work while nuanced by an attendance to issues of race and gender in
eugenic philosophy and practice remained little more than an overview of eugenics cast
in the particular light of the sociobiology debate.

Gallagher’s Breediagletter Vermonters examined the inﬂuence of zoology
professor Henry Perkin’s eugenics efforts and how the state’s eugenics movement,
effectively unable to successfully promote a sterilization program, eventually opted for
inﬂuencing progressive programs in child welfare, mental health and rural development
with a decided dose of their eugenic agendas. In that, compulsory sterilization was a dead
letter in Vermont the study further shows “the inherent adaptability of eugenic theory and

methods to parochial social justice.”

335

Smith’s work was also heavily inﬂuenced by the sociobiology debate as
evidenced by his rather overstated connection between eugenics and the Holocaust. That
said, Smith provides an interesting account of the racial theories promoted by some
proponents of eugenics in Virginia. The unusual alliance of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of
America with Marcus Garvey’s UNIA, not to mention different Indian groups provides a
remarkable insight into the motivations of some players in the Virginia discourse on
eugenic policy. Much of the work deals with the contemporary question of racial identity,
particularly in regards to legal delineation between African Americans, Amerindians and
whites and their descendants. While the documentation on the efforts of individuals to
use eugenic arguments to further their racial agendas is solid, these individuals were often
marginal in regards to the ongoing debate and certainly to the actual practice of
compulsory sterilization in Virginia.

Stefan Kiihl’s The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American lgcism, a_r_r_d Germﬂ
National Socialism. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994) was based on extensive
research into archival sources documenting the professional and lay connections between
American and German eugenicists. While the new documentation does show American
eugenicists often racialist slant and the support this gave to Nazi efforts, the radical
implications purported shown have more to do with the ongoing sociobiology debate than
with major gaps in the prior historiography. Most of the connections drawn were known
of anecdotally, but the author has at least put to rest some lingering questions on who
supported what in Nazi eugenics policies. Unfortunately, the author’s determination to
cast eugenics as a pseudoscience largely dependent upon racial assumptions fails to

account for the wide variety of eugenics supporters who did not ﬁt this description.

336

Sheila Weiss’ Race Hygiene and National Efﬁciency: The Eugnics of Wilhelm
Schallmayer. (Berkely: University of California Press, 1987) traced the developing
eugenic philosophy of Germany’s most eminent eugenicists and demonstrated some of
the philosophical and political connections to Nazi eugenic philosophy, yet also displayed
some of the problems associated with tracing pre-Nazi era eugenics directly to Nazi
eugenics and the Holocaust itself.

The most exhaustive treatment related to these questions was Paul Weindling’s
Health, Race and Politics Between National Uniﬁcation and Nazism. 1870-1945.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). While this work speciﬁcally deals with
the development of German health policy during national uniﬁcation, eugenics policy
loomed prominently in such policy discussions and Weindling’s research provides a
wealth of information regarding not only German eugenics but international inﬂuences
upon its development as well.

Supplemental information on the Nazi period and relationships to the American
eugenics movement can also be found in Jay Lifton’s The Ngi Doctors: Medical Killing
and the Psychology of Genocide. (New York: Basic Books, 1986), Arthur Caplan’s
compliations of essays, The Sociobiolrgy Debate: Readings on the Ethigland Scientiﬁc
Issues Concerning Sociobiology. (New York: Harper and Row, 1978) and ﬂag
Medicine Went bird: Bioethics and the Holoca_us_t. (T otowa: Human Press, 1992). Ample
primary sources in English are available in the Noakes and Pridham’s compilations
Nazism: 1919-1945: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts: Foreign Policy,
War and Racial Extermination. (New York: Schoken Books, 1988) and Nazism: 1919-

1945: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts: State Economy and Society

337

1933-1939. (Exeter: University of Exeter Press 1995). Ian Kershaws’ The Nazi
Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation. (New York: Routledge,
Chapman and Hall, 1989) demonstrates the amazing complexity of the Nazi regime and
the concomitant problems associated with assigning responsibility to a variety of
historical actors.

Other important work on the relationship between science, medicine and social
policy in Nazi era eugenics includes Michael Kater’s Doctors Under Hitler. (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1989) and Robert Proctor’s Racial Hygiene:
Medicine Under the Nazis. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988). Both works
provide essentially intellectual history ﬂavored with a broad range of anecdotal and
archival evidence on the practice of Nazi eugenics. Proctor’s The Nazi War on aner.
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) while essentially a sociological and
intellectual history of German Health efforts in the Nazi era also reveals parallels to the
somewhat eccentric interests of some prominent American eugenicists, most notably
John Harvey Kellogg.

Broadening the interpretive historiography, particularly in terms of comparative
social and political history, were a series of recent books on eugenics outside the US.
Germany and Great Britain. Mark Adams collection of essays The Wellbom Science:
@genics in Germam, France, Brazil and Russia. (New York: Oxford University Press,
1990) provided a much-needed exposition on eugenics movements in other societies. The
work while ground breaking suffers from the various authors’ different focuses and

interpretative frameworks. Most of the work information still falls into the realm of

338

intellectual history though sociological interpretations ﬁgure prominently in at least three
of the essays.

Nancy Stepan’s The Hour of Eugenics:_Race Gender and Nation in Lang
5m. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991) further expands the interpretive
framework of eugenics intellectual history with the addition of her study of eugenics in
Latin America. While eugenic sterilization was never seriously contemplated in Latin
America, Stepan’s work demonstrates the “inherent adaptability” of eugenics to a variety
of parochial social policies and the distinctive eugenics characteristic of countries with
large Catholic electorates and a relatively less developed secular tradition. Her treatment
of the issues of identity in terms of race and gender provide new insights into the uses of
eugenics.

Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen’s Eaggricsﬂ and the Welfare Stag
Sterilization Policy in DenmagQweden, Norway and Finland. (East Lansing: Michigan
State University Press, 1996) provides a compilation of monographs on Scandinavian
eugenics following the framework established in prior intellectual histories on the
subject. But due to the greater availability of source material related to actual practice of
sterilization the authors also produced works with a much broader characterization of
practice than has been available in many previous texts on eugenics. The inclusion of
Scandinavian eugenics in the corpus has shown the distinct similarities between nations
enacting such legislation in terms of the often interconnected intellectual development of
eugenic philosophies and the underlying social values which support such actions. These
studies lend greater credence to the assumption that eugenic sterilization occurred

principally in rapidly industrializing countries where Protestantism was largely giving

339

way to secular progressivism in efforts to deal with emerging problems associated with
urbanization and modernization.

Martin Pernick’s The Black Storka: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective Babies
in American Medicine and Motion Pictures Since 1915. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996) took a new tack in the study of eugenics with his focus on the portrayal of
eugenic concerns in the media. Pernick’s intellectual history is expanded to focus on the
medical “deaths” of defective children and the probable connections to eugenic
philosophy.

Perhaps the most popular and oft cited of recent works is Philip Reilly’s Ih_e_
§l_r_rgi_cal Solation: A History of Involuntary Steriliztion in the United Stag. (Baltimore:
John Hopkins University Press, 1991). Reilly, a medical doctor, while doing some
historical research largely derived his information from secondary sources to produce a
work speciﬁcally dealing with compulsory eugenic sterilization. While the book provides
a broad overview of the practice of eugenic sterilization throughout the U.S., the work
lacks a certain academic rigor. Reilly lack of primary resources has led to the
perpetuation of some of the historical myths associated with compulsory sterilization and
the author has gone as far as to create some anew. Reilly’s unwarranted castigation of Dr.
Frank Lydston as an advocate of eugenic euthanasia being a case in point, which
unfortunately Martin Pernick has included in his own work.

For the study of the two principal characters dealt with in my thesis, beyond the
primary sources of their own authorship, I found Richard Schwarz’s John Harvey
KellogLMD. (Nashville: Southern Publishing Association, 1970) and Horace

Davenport’s Victor Vaughan: Statesman and Scientist. (Ann Arbor: Historical Center for

340

the Health Sciences, University of Michigan, 1996) to be invaluable sources. The
University of Michigan’s Taubman Medical library and Bentley Historical Center
contain the vast majority of primary source materials left by Drs. Kellogg and Vaughan.
The proliﬁc publication records of these two University of Michigan medical school
students provide a wide range of insights into the intellectual and experimental constructs
of contemporary medical thought and the practical applications these doctors derived
from them over time. Because these two men were the most prominent Michigan
physicians of their day, both in terms of their public roles as medical educators and as
representatives in professional and governmental bodies, their publications and private
materials offer the best sources on contemporary medical issues in Michigan, particularly
as regards eugenics.

At this point, I must note Andrew Michael’s John Harvey Kellogg and Victor
Clarence Vaughn in the Ejarly Michiggl’ablic Health Movement: Diverging Views on
Disease and Rag Betterment. "Senior Thesis", (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1990). I
was directed to Dr. Michaels’ work when I ﬁrst began my project and found his study of
enormous help in tracking source materials. The author’s insights into the public health
policies of Drs. Kellogg and Vaughan demonstrate the evolution of their medical thinking
and their ability to assimilate what were at the time revolutionary changes in the body of
factual medical knowledge.

The evolution of the scientiﬁc practice of medicine was not only coeval with that
of eugenics, but the scientiﬁc validation of eugenic theories and the practical applications
arising from them was also dependent upon the pronouncements of physicians,

particularly as regards public and governmental attitudes. Thus an understanding of

341

eugenics requires a grounding in the changes occurring to bring about modern biomedical
education and practice as regards eugenics. An excellent source for contemporary
medical history are the series of volumes of Feilding Garrison’s History of Medicine.
Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders, 1966), revised and reissued throughout the ﬁrst half of the
century. Though Garrison’s works demonstrate the “Great Man” perspective of historical
analysis, they also provide a changing view on how contemporary physicians saw the
development of their profession.

The 19805 and 19905 saw the publication of a number of ﬁne volumes on the
evolution of modern American medical practice. William Rothstein’s American
Physicians in the 19’h Cw: From Sects to Science. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1985) shows how American medicine evolved as a competition
between medical sects utilizing an array of therapeutic treatments from those few
reasonably efﬁcacious to the truly dangerous practices of heroic therapy. Patient
dissatisfaction and physician competition led somewhat haphazardly to biomedicine and
Rothstein’s work shows interaction of these forces admirably.

Richard Brown’s Roclgfeller Medicine Men: Medicine & Capiialism in America.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) shows how corporate interests worked
with inﬂuential physicians to radically change the landscape of medical education and
practice in ﬁrst half of the century.

Rosemary Stevens’ In Sickness gd in Wealth: American Hospitals in the
Twentieth Century. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) and American
Medicine and the Public Interest: A l-Iisotry of Specialization. (Berkeley: University of

California Press, 1998) contribute insights into the opportunities provided by increased

342

institutional building and how these hospitals, sanatoriums and clinics facilitated the
development of medical specialties. Specialization and institution building gave
physicians opportunity to research and platforms from which to validate their views on
health topics. Paul Starr’s The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of
a Sovereign Profession and the Makgrgaof a Vast Industry. (New York: Basic Books,
1982) further develops Brown’s thesis on the importance of corporate capital in the
development of American medical science, education and practice and lends support to
the conclusions of Steven’s thesis on the ties between specialization and institution
building.

Roy Porter’s The Greatest Beneﬁt to Mgkind: A Medical History of Humaaity.
(New York: W.W. Norton Co., 1997) provides a view of the longue duree of medical
practice and as such furnishes a comprehensive historical view of medical which aids in
perceiving the inherent conservatism in most medical practice.

Charles Rosenberg’s The Cholera Yaars: The United States in 1832, 1849 aad
L866, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) and No Other Gods: On Science a_n_d
American Soaial Thraglat. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997) show the
evolution of medicine and public health policy in the middle part of the nineteenth
century and also provide a view of how the practice of scientiﬁc research came into
prominence as a means of validating medical practice.

This thesis extends previous works on eugenics by providing an insight into the
public and private pronouncements of two eminent physicians who spoke often and

forcefully on the subject. These two men’s positions of authority in government and in

343

professional circles reveals the contemporary professional zeitgeist regarding eugenic
thought and practice.

Because this study also includes previously unavailable archival research on the
demographics of eugenic sterilization it helps establish the particular distribution of
patient types within Michigan’s program. The data on actual practice has been sadly
lacking since the production of Moya Woodson’s North Carolina study over ﬁfty years
ago. As such, this thesis provides a demographic study that aids in the comparative
analysis of eugenic practice not found in most intellectual histories on the subject. It is to
be hoped that government restrictions on source availability will relax as the affected
population decease and that a greater historical understanding will thus be possible for

this important and topical subject.

344

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