Providentia

The Michigan Wildcat

Adolph ("Ad") Wolgast was definitely a champion.

Born in 1888 in Cadillac, Michigan, he was the oldest in a family of seven (two of his younger brothers became championship boxers as well). After distinguishing himself in amateur boxing, Ad turned professional in 1910 and captured the World Lightweight title a year later. The forty-round brawl with Battling Nelson that earned him his title was the stuff of boxing legends as Wolgast did the impossible and survived the bloody fight. Eager sports reporters labeled him "the Michigan Wildcat" as Ad won all but one of his first eight-nine bouts. In one famous bout with Joe Rivers in 1912, Ad and Rivers both knocked each other out. Ad was awarded the fight because he was seen to get up first before they were both counted out (there was some controversy over this decision). He became legendary for his ability to take (and give out) horrendous head punches but Ad Wolgast didn't keep the title long. In a vicious 1912 bout with Willie Ritchie, Ad finally lost his title although his boxing career went on.

The damage that Ad Wolgast took during his boxing career seems incredible. In his one hundred and thirty-five bouts, he sustained numerous injuries include cauliflower ears, numerous broken bones (hands, ribs, and arms), and a disfigured face. His wife, Mildred, threatened to divorce him if he didn't quit the ring and he arranged for plastic surgery to rebuild much of his face (including having his nose injected with paraffin to regain its former shape-the paraffin later leaked out). Milwaukee, Minnesota was a major fight center at the time and, through radio broadcasts of his boxing matches, Ad quickly gained fans across the country. After a brief attempt at retirement in 1916 (and the end of his marriage), the fact that Ad was suffering from "punch drunkenness" (a.k.a. dementia pugilistica) became apparent soon enough.

By the age of thirty, the "Michigan Wildcat" seemed far older than he really was. One Milwaukee reporter said that, "a glance at Wolgast's head is enough to show what he had one through". Hospitalized after a "nervous breakdown", Ad Wolgast was declared mentally incompetent in 1917 by a Milwaukee court. During his competency hearing, two psychiatrists who had assessed him testified that, "there was hardly a chance for him to regain his health". He spent a year in Minnesota hospitals before drifting to California and eventually being placed in the psychopathic ward at California's Stockton State Hospital. As a trained boxer, his involuntary confinement definitely led to problems, including beatings by staff, until a California court ruled that he was legally competent in December, 1918.

Since fighting was all Ad knew, he joined a gym owned by Los Angeles fight promoter, Jack Doyle. Although Ad Wolgast dreamed of a comeback, Doyle (who had assumed unofficial guardianship) simply allowed Wolgast to train with no intention of ever letting him box again. Most of the money that Ad had earned in prizefighting ended up going to his ex-wife so he was left destitute (Doyle gave him free access to the gym). Veteran fighters and boxing fans often dropped by to see Ad train and he reveled in their praise of his fighting skills. He also insisted on being treated like a world champion and often became agitated whenever anyone failed to give him the respect that he felt he deserved.

When his condition gradually deteriorated, Ad Wolgast was readmitted to hospital in 1927. While he remained there for the rest of his life, Ad continued to train in his room.; According to his obituary, that typically involved frequent shadowboxing, bobbing, and uppercuts against imaginary opponents. Ad Wolgast seemed largely unaware of his surroundings except on rare occasions when he would plaintively ask where he was and when he would be allowed to leave. His boxing career may have been long over but it still took two hospital attendants to restrain him whenever he was forced to do something he didn't want to do. By all reports, his "tough guy" reputation and violent temper earned him numerous beatings in hospital but he always recovered quickly enough. He went blind in the final few years of his life.

Adolph Wolgast died on April 14, 1955 of heart complications after having spent more than half of lifetime in hospitals. Although he was elected to the Ring Boxing Hall of Fame in 1958 and the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2000, he islargely remembered today only as an object lesson in the dangers associated with professional boxing. While not as famous as other cases of dementia puglistica including Chris Benoit, Ad Wolgast's sad story highlights the cumulative damage resulting from repeated head injuries in boxing and other professional sports.

The dangers involved in professional boxing were clear enough even in Ad Wolgast's day but the lure of fame and fortune seemed attractive enough for eager boxers to take the risk. Ad's lifetime earnings were estimated at more than $200,000 (a hefty amount even in 1915 dollars) although most of that eventually went to his ex-wife. He certainly had countless fans across the country, while his fame lasted. Even when he recognized how badly he had been hurt by boxing, Ad's attempts at retirement were always brief. In one famous 1916 interview, Ad told reporters, "You just can't quit after all.&They say a criminal is drawn back irresistibly to the scene of the crime. Well, so is a fighter drawn back to the old rings, the old crowds, and the old excitement. Why not let the old ex-champs have their little pipedreams?"

In the end, Adolph Wolgast paid the price for his dream.

Saving Civilization (Part 3)

Continued from Part Two

With the outbreak of the war, Lothrop Stoddard began working as a foreign correspondent in Nazi Germany. Although he was definitely not a Nazi supporter, his racist credentials helped him to get interviews with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels which were later published in Time magazine.Through his newspaper articles and a book that he released in 1940, Stoddard tried his best to distance himself from the Nazis. The Holocaust still lay in the future but news reports about Aktion T4 and similar excesses placed him in an awkward position. In trying to defend his own ideas while denouncing the Nazis for pursuing similar goals, all that he could say was that, while the Nazi ideals were justified, their methods were too severe.

By the end of World War II, the rest of the world was stunned to discover just how far the Nazis had been willing to go to support their ideology. Revelations surrounding Aktion T4, the Holocaust, and the vicious persecution directed against Jews, Roma, and other racial groups in the name of racial purity robbed the eugenics movement of what little support it had. It probably didn't help that testimony from the Nuremberg War trials showed the powerful influence of Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard on the early Nazi movement. During his trial, Karl Brandt particularly cited American racist theorists as an inspiration for the Nazi euthanasia program and as proof that the Nazis were hardly unique in their beliefs. Brandt's defense wasn't very effective (he was executed) but the Nazi connection conferred a stigma on the eugenics movement that it never lost.

Lothrop Stoddard's popularity didn't survive the Nazi association. By the time of his death in 1950, he was largely forgotten. Oher eugenicists managed to adapt to the new era by changing their message to escape Stoddard's fate. While never really abandoning his eugenicist leanings, Paul Popenue is largely remembered today as the father of marriage counseling. His warnings about the decline of masculinity and the need to assert traditional roles in marriage are still quoted in conservative circles though. Despite die-hards like Carleton Coon, the use of racial theories in social sciences were largely abandoned (with some high-profile exceptions). Most of the researchers who had been known for racial studies in previous decades either retired or shifted to other fields of research entirely. Advocates of hereditarian theories of human intelligence still managed to carve out a niche for themselves (controversies notwithstanding).;

That's not to say that the laws that the eugenicists and scientific racists  helped foster weren't still in place, though. The last of the anti-miscegenation laws in the United States weren't repealed until 1967 following the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court ruling (South Carolina and Alabama didn't formally remove anti-miscegenation language from their constitutions until much later). Involuntary sterilization laws remained in force for numerous countries around the world including Sweden, Japan,Switzerland, India, and many Warsaw Pact nations. While the eugenics argument had been discredited, other rationalizations for sterilization were typically adopted (which usually focused on "protecting" patients regarded as mentally disabled). In the U.S., involuntary sterilization continued in some states until the 1980s while in Canada, cases of sterilization continued as recently as 1972. Despite a few high profile compensation cases, the identity of most involuntarily sterilized patients remains unknown.

While the eugenics movement (and scientific racism in general) seem unlikely to regain its former popularity, the debate surrounding the role of heredity and environmental factors in human traits seems unlikely to go away. Controversies have a way of springing up as new books are released for popular consumption. There are also organizations such as the Pioneer Fund that continue to support research into racial differences in intelligence despite widespread condemnation by mainstream scientists. The complex ethical issues surrounding eugenics may well become more heated as genetic screening techniques become more widely available and key markers for "undesirable" traits are identified. Only time can tell what new controversies genetic engineering will bring in future.

As a postscript to this series, there have been a number of articles of late that have attempted to invoke the specter of eugenics and Nazism in discrediting Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. The crux of the argument seems to be that Darwin's theory had a heavy influence on Nazi philosophy and can be held personally responsible for the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes. Whatever role that biologists payed in the early eugenics movement, it's hard to dismiss the fact that scientists were also the most vocal critics of the eugenics movement from the very beginning. In the meantime, even church leaders in some countries supported various eugenics policies over the years. There is enough blame to go around for every political or ideological group and nobody has a valid reason to be smug.

Gunman Howard Unruh dies at 88

It has been six decades since Howard Unruh's shocking mass murder but surviving family members of his victims still remember the terror of that day on September 6, 1949 when Unruh's rampage claimed thirteen lives.  Many of those family members expressed satisfaction on learning that the 88-year old Unruh died yesterday at a Trenton N.J. nursing home following a long illness.  Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and confined to the New Jersey Hospital for the Insane (later the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital)  after the rampage, Howard Unruh had been a model patient who lived for decades without incident.

Howard Unruh had been a returning veteran of World War Two who had become alienated in his civilian life in Camden, New Jersey.  Deeply affected by his wartime experiences, he lived in an apartment building with his mother.  Despite being a war hero, he remained unemployed and seemed to have little to do with his time except look at the medals and other war memorabilia decorating his bedroom walls and care for his considerable collection of firearms. He also maintained a target range that he set up in the basement of his apartment building which didn't prevent him from getting into trouble with his neighbours.The spectacle of a grown man being financially supported by his mother who worked at a local factory made him the target of considerable teasing as a "mama's boy".  In his diaries, he kept careful note of every personal grievance (real or imagined). When the diaries were later examined, it was found that he had written the word "retal" (short for retaliate) next to the name of every neighbour whom he had thought deserving of special consideration.

On September 6, 1949, Howard came home from a local movie theatre to find that the new gate that he had built onto the front of the apartment building had been stolen.  That was the apparent trigger that led to his rampage.  After dressing up in his best suit and arming himself with a German luger and thirty-three rounds of ammunition, Unruh went hunting for those he felt had wronged him.  In the twelve-minute rampage that followed, Howard shot at over twenty-six people, killing thirteen and wounding a number of others.Most of the victims were from his list but many others were apparently just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hearing the approaching sirens, he returned to his mother's apartment and prepared to make a final standoff.  After being wounded, he was convinced to turn himself in. He was eventually charged with thirteen counts of murder and three counts of "atrocious assault and battery" According to the two psychiatrists who examined him before his trial, Unruh stated that "I'm no psycho. I'd have killed a thousand if I had bullets enough".

Although he was found mentally fit to stand trial, Unruh was sent to a psychiatric hospital to serve his life sentence.  Other returning veterans had committed acts of violence following the end of the war but Howard Unruh certainly stood out as the first spree killer in U.S. history. 

For more information.

Saving Civilization (Part 2)

Continued from Part 1

While not implicitly racist in itself, eugenics certainly played a role in "racial purity" policies. Although laws banning interracial marriage (i.e., miscegenation) date back to the 18th century in North America, both in French and British colonies, the eugenics movement helped give new impetus to preventing racial mixing in the United States. When Madison Grant published his highly influential The Passing of the Great Race in 1916, he railed against the changing "stock" of immigrants to the U.S. and the decline of the "Nordic" race that had made the country great.  As a dedicated eugenicist (who, like Galton never had children of his own), Grant pushed for stronger restrictions on immigration laws and despaired of the prospect of racial mixing which would undermine "Nordic purity". In addition to immigration controls, sterilization of the unfit, and anti-miscegenation laws, Grant also advocated placing inferior races in separate "ghettos" where they could be controlled more thoroughly.

Grant's influence almost certainly played a role in attempts to include an anti-miscegenation clause into the U.S. constitution during that same period (leading to the "one drop of blood rule" for defining race). Between 1913 and 1948, thirty states enacted laws enforcing racial purity while the Immigration Act of 1924 enacted a quota system to exclude Asians and other "inferior" racial groups from immigrating to the U.S. Grant also helped draft racial purity legislation in several states. While Madison Grant was strongly opposed by a coalition of social scientists led by Franz Boas, his work was widely read around the world and helped inspire the growing Nazi movement in Germany (Adolf Hitler personally praised Grant's book as his "bible").

For all his influence, Madison Grant never had great popular appeal and his work was quickly overshadowed by the 1930s. Another prominent name in scientific racism was Charles B. Davenport. As director of the Eugenics Record office at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Davenport became famous for his reporting on the dire consequences of racial mixing.& Although he admitted that sufficient research had not been done in the area, that didn't stop him from making outrageous conclusions about the mental and physical abnormalities resulting from miscegenation. He concluded that,"hybridized people are a badly put together people and a dissatisfied, restless, ineffective people. One wonders how much of the exceptionally high death-rate in middle life in this country is due to such bodily maladjustments".

The true dean of scientific racism was undoubtedly Theodore Lothrop Stoddard. Born in 1883 of an old New England family, Stoddard graduated from Harvard Law School in 1908 but quickly converted to the

eugenics cause, particularly the dangers posed by Nordics being overwhelmed by "inferior" races with higher birthrates. Stoddard blamed Jean Jacques Rousseau for undermining Western civilization with his idea of the Noble Savage as well as the notion of "equality between all men".While Madison Grant had at least tried to base his racist ideas on scientific principles (more or less), Stoddard was far less patient. He viewed the threat posed by the low Nordic birthrate as being too critical to wait for more scientific research to be done. An active propagandist, Stoddard wrote twenty-two books and numerous articles in popular magazines.;

Throughout his books, there was one common theme:  that the Nordic race had "clean, virile, genius-bearing blood, streaming down the ages through the unerring action of heredity, which, in anything like a favorable environment, will multiply itself, solve our problems, and sweep us on to higher and nobler destinies." Stoddard viewed World War I as being a disaster for the Nordic race since it was mainly the Nordic soldiers who fought and died while the "inferior Mediterraneans stayed placidly at home". He also warned of the growing Communist threat since, "in every quarter of the globe...the Bolshevik agitators whisper in the ears of discontented colored men their gospel of hatred and revenge. Every nationalist aspiration, every political grievance, every social discrimination, is fuel for Bolshevism's hellish incitement to racial as well as to class war."; Traveling widely, Stoddard took keen interest in foreign policy and wrote about the dangers arising from the geopolitical ambitions of the "coloured" people of Asia, Africa and Latin America.; He also sounded an early warning against the rise of Islam and the dangers of Muslim fanatics. Although a few reviewers had the courage to speak out against Stoddard's books, he was far too popular to be ignored. While hardly the only apostle of scientific racism and eugenics during the 1920s and 1930s, Stoddard was the most well known.

Of course things were changing by then. Despite a greater crackdown on immigration (with the help of eugenics supporters such as Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding), the actual science on which  eugenics/scientific racism was supposedly based became increasingly flimsy. Franz Boas continued his crusade to undermine scientific racism while the mental testing movement began to question whether racial differences in intelligence actually existed. C.C. Brigham, who had written on the superiority of Nordic immigrants on intelligence during the 1920s later reversed himself completely stating that, "comparative studies of various national and racial groups may not be made with existing tests". On the biology front, genetic research completely undermined the concept of race and racist theories in general.

Things were changing on the world front as well. By the late 1930s, Hitler's Germany was showing the entire world what a racist ideology was really capable of doing if taken to extremes. Adolf Hitler and his fellow Nazis hardly needed to depend on Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant to support their ideology though. Many of their policies relating to racial theory, antisemitism, and Lebensraum could be traced back to homegrown social scientists such as Alfred Rosenberg and Otto Weininger. While German propaganda films such as Erbkrank were shown by eugenics societies around the world, rumours of what was happening in Germany made even the true believers uncomfortable. Despite reports of forced sterilization, ghettoes, and persecution, the full extent of the Nazi eugenics program didn't become apparent until after the end of World War II.

Continue to Part Three

Saving Civilization (Part 1)

When Francis Galton first coined the term "eugenics" in his 1883 book, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Development, he intended it to describe his theories concerning the importance of "good breeding" in shaping human development. A cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton drew upon evolutionary theory and

his own observations in animal breeding to propose that ability was shaped almost exclusively by heredity.In an earlier work, Hereditary Genius, Galton traced the ancestries of eminent Englishmen and concluded that almost all of them could be traced to a small number of interrelated families.

In forming his conclusions about heredity, Galton dismissed social and economic conditions and stated that "eminence" could not be affected by environmental factors and that; "no social hindrances" could keep a genius from rising to prominence while no amount of social advantage could enable someone of moderate ability to become prominent. Galton was unashamedly elitist in his views and wrote that, "I am sure that no one who has had the privilege of mixing in the society of the abler men of any great capital, or who is acquainted with the biographies of the heroes of history,can doubt the existence of grand human animals, of natures pre-eminently noble, of individuals born to be kings of men."

If Galton was elitist in his views on individual differences, his views on racial differences were even more pronounced. He was hardly unique there considering that idea of European supremacy was common in many scientific papers of the time. Paul Broca's research into brain measurement and anthropology often stressed the inferiority of non-white brains. Other researchers, including Robert Knox and Samuel George Morton, also weighed in with their own findings on the superior cranial capacity of white skulls over non-white ones (with African and Native American skulls typically falling at the bottom). Despite later debunking of these early racist researchers, their conclusions helped shaped social and economic policy for generations afterward.

For Galton, there was no question that racial differences in intelligence were linked to heredity. While he acknowledge the existence of occasional Africans of high intelligence, he stated that, "he average intellectual standard of the negro race, is some two grades below our own."; He added that great numbers of Negroes were "half-witted" and that visitors to Africa rarely met tribal chiefs who could be regarded as their intellectual equals. Galton's pronouncements weren't limited to non-whites however. He blamed Europe's decline on earlier Church practices such as celibacy which prevented the most intelligent people from breeding as well as for the persecution of heretics who were often "the most fearless, truthseeking and intelligent". Galton argued that, as a result, Catholic countries such as Italy and Spain lost their cultural prominence. He concluded that, "the wonder is that enough good remained in the veins of Europeans to enable their race to rise to its present, very moderate level of natural ability."

As for Charles Darwin himself, he was never a major supporter of eugenics (he knew his own family's genetic shortcomings too well to accept his cousin's views on heredity fitness).; He viewed intelligence and character as being environmental in nature and, in later years, he openly despaired of the less capable members of society outbreeding what he termed "the better class of men" but spoke out against forced selective breeding. Some cures were worse than the disease.

Regardless of Darwin's personal opinions, the eugenics movement flourished across Europe and North America. Spurred on by early heredity studies such as Dugdale's 1877 paper on the Juke family and by psychologists such as James Mark Baldwin (who coined the term organic selection), the eugenicists began to favour active intervention to encourage "fit" individuals to have more children while discouraging the "unfit" from reproducing at all. By the time of Galton's death in 1911 (he died childless by the way, make of that what you will), eugenics societies had chapters in almost every major country. Prominent eugenics supporters included George Bernard Shaw, Winston Churchill, Leonard Darwin (Charles' son), and H.G. Wells. In the U.S., Theodore Roosevelt, Margaret Sanger, and Woodrow Wilson were supporters as well.

It was Wilson who helped bring in the first compulsory sterilization law in Indiana in 1907. Another 29 states would bring in similar legislation and, after the U.S. Supreme Court Carrie Buck decision in 1927, sterilization of those deemed genetically unfit would continue for decades afterward.Although the U.K. never brought in formal eugenics legislation, other countries such as Canada and Germany certainly did. The practice of sterilization was helped along by the timely development of intelligence testing which eugenicists eagerly drew upon to identify likely candidates for their selective breeding policies.; Social scientists such as Henry Goddard (who became famous through his Kallikak study) and Paul Popenoe helped foster the development of eugenics legislation by publishing research that showed the positive results of weeding out genetic defectives. Such research would have far-reaching influence, both in the U.S. and in countries around the world.

Continue to Part 2

The Missing Link

When she made her first public appearance at the London Aquarium on Westminster Road in 1882, she was billed as "A Living Proof of Darwin's Theory of the Descent of Man".The handbill advertisement added that, "The usual argument against the Darwinian theory, that man and monkey had a common origin, has always been that no animal has hitherto been discovered in the transmission state between monkey and man. "Krao", a perfect specimen of the step between man and monkey, discovered in Laos by that distinguished traveler Carl Bock, will be on Exhibition in the new Lecture Room"

Krao certainly had an unusual appearance. Believed to be born in Thailand (then Siam) in 1876, Krao was born fully covered with hair including a long mane extending down her back. Being double-jointed in her hands and hips, as well as unusually prehensile, Krao first came to the attention of Carl Bock. The Swedish naturalist, who was acting as an agent for showman G.A. Farini (a.k.a. the Great Farini) had been investigating legends of tailed people living in Sumatra and was under orders to bring back a "monkey-man" specimen for display.

After striking a deal with Krao's parents, Farini brought Krao to Europe. Since Darwinism was all the rage at the time, Farini enthusiastically presented her as a "missing link" who was living proof of Darwin's theory. He even hinted that Krao (which he claimed was a Laotian word for monkey) was part of a race of "small hairy people" who could be found in that remote region. Considering the exotic appeal that faraway lands had for the general public, the notion that there was a hidden tribe of ape-men waiting to be discovered by science seemed plausible enough.

Naturalists were more skeptical though. In an 1883 edition of Nature, A.H. Keane reported on his own investigation of Krao and concluded that she was completely human and simply suffered from a condition that made her appear unusually hairy (hypertrichosis). Carl Bock and other naturalists disputed Keane's findings and reported on legends in parts of South-East Asia concerning a "hairy family of Burma" with a long lineage of unusually hairy features. Members of this "hairy family" had been signed on as performers by P.T Barnum and sent on tour as part of his circus in the 1880s.

As for Krao, she was a lively and intelligent girl who eagerly learned English and invariably charmed her public with her graceful manner. When presented to an audience of scientists, physicians, and journalists at a meeting in Dublin, Krao came forward and shook each person's hand with a polite greeting. According to a description of the meeting, "all were amazed at how prettily she spoke. At the end she bowed them out saying distinctly, "Hope ge'men, you come again". During that same meeting, the physician who presented her case described her "simian features" and spoke enthusiastically about plans to educate the "monkey-child" when she was older.

When Farini took Krao on a tour of the eastern U.S. in 1884, P.T. Barnum, who never missed a chance to make a profit, was moved by Krao's success to find his own "missing link". Locating a 16-year old Russian boy named Fedor Jeftichew who also suffered from hypertrichosis, Barnum brought him to the US in 1884 and billed him as "Jo-Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy". Barnum invented a story of Fedor being a wild savage who had been captured in a cave and slowly civilized. He also said that Fedor and his father had been examined by scientists in London and boasted that they were living proof of the "Darwin Theory established" and were classified as "homo troglodytes" (not an accepted scientific term). During the show, Fedor learned to bark and growl on cue and generally behaved the way that a "missing link" was expected to behave but, much like Krao, became well educated.

As a popular star, Fedor was eventually able to control how he was being displayed and managed to have the "missing link" label dropped from all of his advertisements. In fact, he and performers like him later managed to have the hated "freaks" label dropped by 1898 and earned the legal right to be displayed as "prodigies" instead (political correctness isn't just a 20th century phenomenon).It probably helped that billing side show performers as "missing links" had long since lost its appeal for audiences (although geek shows still managed to live on).

Krao continued to be a famous performer with star billing at circus shows, including Ringling Brothers.To his credit, Farini allowed her a full and independent life and she was spared the hideous exploitation that scarred the lives of other "freaks" like Saartjie Baartman, Ota Benga, and Julia Pastrana. As an adult, Krao was a vivacious and dignified performer (despite the "monkey-girl" label) who spoke five languages fluently and became an accomplished pianist. Though she never married, she had numerous friends and admirers and maintained her own apartment for the last twenty years of her life.She died of pneumonia on April 16, 1926.

While "freak shows" continued to exist, their popularity had long since waned and formerly independent performers found themselves becoming increasingly unemployable. There is a certain irony that the same period that saw the decline of freak shows also saw the rise of the eugenics movement stressing the careful control of genetics and the weeding out of hereditary inferiors. By the 1920s, freaks were no longer viewed as curiosities to be stared at but as examples of the kind of biological "throwbacks" that needed to be dealt with by any means necessary.

A new era had begun.

The Virtuoso

He may have been one of the most promising musicians of the twentieth century. Fritz Kreisler reportedly said of him that, "a fidder such as [X] is born every one hundred years, one like [Josef] Hassid, every two centuries".

Born in the Polish town of Suwalki in 1923, Josef Hassid's mother died when he was an infant.After studying with a local violin teacher, Josef was taken by his father to Warsaw to extend his musical education. Beginning at the age of ten, he studied with Mieczyslaw Mihalowicz at the Chopin School of Music and, after only two years, went on to represent Poland at the 1935 Wienawski Competition.  A shy, introverted child, Josef's memory failed him during his final performance at the competition and he failed to make it to the second round(he still managed to receive an honour diploma for his performance). The memory lapse devastated Josef who reportedly cried for more than an hour after leaving the concert hall.

In 1937, Josef's father took; his son to Spa, Belgium to study with the legendary Carl Flesch who quickly recognized Josef's talent and took over his musical education. During his time in Spa, Josef met and fell in love with a local girl but the relationship was forcibly terminated by their parents since she wasn't Jewish. Flesch later arranged for Josef to be brought to London in 1938 for a private recital at the house of Sir Philip Sassoon.; Josef's playing mesmerized his audience. Due to the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 and the Jewish persecution that followed, Josef and his father decided to stay in London where he continued his musical training with Flesch.

On April 4, 1940, Josef Hassid gave his first public performance at London's Wigmore Hall. Billed as the "Polish Boy VIolinist", Josef played works by Bach, Schubert, and Paganini among others. Three weeks later, he premiered at the Queen's Hall in a performance with the London Philharmonic. His brilliant playing attracted the attention of record producer, Walter Legge, who arranged for Josef to give his first (and only) recording engagement. Josef recorded four RPM records at the HMV studios on Abbey Road.Those precious albums are the only surviving record of Josef Hassid's brilliant talent (most of his recorded pieces are available on Youtube).

Shortly after his recording session, Josef's father noticed that his son was becoming increasingly withdrawn and moody. While he had always been prone to episodes of depression and performance anxiety, Josef became even more erratic over time and often went for weeks without even touching his violin.He lashed out at his father and frequently insisted that he would be giving up his music. Worried about Josef's nervous breakdown, Flesch arranged for Josef to be assessed by Thomas Horder (Winston Churchill's personal physician) who arranged to him to be admitted to his private hospital. In informing the hospital of Josef's arrival, Horder told them: "I am sending you a genius". After several hospital stays, Josef Hassid was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia.

As Josef's condition worsened, he renounced music and denied ever having played the violin. Carl Flesch wrote numerous letters pleading for Josef to return to his performing. In one letter, he stated that:"I hope you will do everything within your will-power to get well again as soon as possible. A great artist like you owes it to the world to become active again". After a year in hospital, Josef Hassid returned home and tried to return to his music but he continued to find reasons against giving another performance. As his health worsened, Josef was later diagnosed as having a brain tumour. Following a dangerous and unsuccessful brain operation (not a lobotomy as some accounts stated), Josef Hassid died in 1950. He was twenty-seven years old.

While child prodigies such as Josef Hassid and Yehudi Menuhin routinely face years of grueling training to develop their talent, we may never know why some musicians are able to succeed when others fail. Whether or not the pressure to perform played a role in Josef's mental illness, the few available recordings of his playing continue to serve as a testimony to an amazing talent that burned out too soon.

The Resurrection Men

"Up the close and down the stair, In the house with Burke and Hare. Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, Knox, the boy who buys the beef."

One of the highlights of my recent trip to Edinburgh was a visit to the Surgeon's Hall Museum that's part of the University of Edinburgh Medical School campus.; Among the exhibits to be found there was a display dedicated to one of the most notorious episodes in Edinburgh history: the Burke and Hare case (also known as the West Port murders). Selling seventeen murder victims to Dr. Robert Knox of the University of Edinburgh medical school for dissection earned William Burke and William Hare a permanent place in forensic history and popular folklore.

Actually, only William Burke was hanged for the crime (Hare turned King's evidence and testified against his partner). After Burke's body was dissected at the medical school, his death mask and a book bound with his skin were placed in the museum where they can still be seen by visitors. William Hare managed to vanish into obscurity after the trial (or tossed face first into a lime pit by an angry mob depending on which story you want to believe). Unfortunately, that left only one target for public outrage over the murders: Dr. Robert Knox.

A well-known physician, anatomist, and zoologist, Robert Knox was one of the most popular lecturers at the University of Edinburgh's medical school. Since joining the faculty in 1822, Dr. Knox distinguished himself with writing on a diverse range of topics including anthropology, zoology, epidemiology, and anatomy. He also took over the Surgeon's Hall Museum and expanded the collection. Visitors to the dissecting theatre where Knox gave his anatomy lectures often found him "dressed with an overgown and with bloody fingers" from dissecting cadavers for medical students.

Due to the limited number of available corpses (only executed criminals who had been specifically condemned to death and dissection by the courts could be legally used), anatomy professors who wanted to teach human anatomy to students were forced to rely on illegal sources to meet the demand. Beginning in the 18th century, "resurrection men" or "body-snatchers" began to offer bodies to medical schools, no questions asked. The actual source of the bodies varied, whether stolen from cemeteries or simply indigents who had died in poorhouses (resurrectionists would often pretend to be relatives to claim the bodies). Trafficking in dead bodies was extremely profitable and cases occurred throughout the United Kingdom and other countries.

The ghoulish reputation and the stigma associated with dissection led to a certain hysteria among friends and relatives of the newly dead. Many of them actually stood watch over the gravesites to ensure that the bodies were left alone. There was also a market for "burglar-proof grave vaults" with lurid advertisements playing up the body-snatching trade and corpses "mutilated every year on dissecting tables in medical colleges". Despite successful prosecution in many places, body-snatching was often considered a misdemeanor offense nda helped ensure a steady supply of cadavers.

There was nothing unusual about Knox agreeing to buy bodies from Burke and Hare (and they had actually approached another professor first). When they were finally caught in 1828 and the body of their last victim was found in Knox's possession, Dr. Robert Knox's medical career was ruined. Although a thorough investigation showed no evidence that he had known about the murders, public opinion in Edinburgh turned against him. "Burking" became a new slang word for suffocation and local folklore helped feed the mob frenzy. Whatever hope Robert Knox had of his involvement being forgotten quickly faded as rumours of "mob justice" made him afraid for his life. While the passing of the Anatomical Act of 1832 expanded the number of cadavers available for medical school and finally put the body-snatchers out of business, it was too late to help Knox.

Despite a lengthy campaign of harassment, including attacks on his home, burning in effigy, and crowds gathering at his lectures, Knox continued to teach and do research although his career slowly went downhill. He never dissected another human cadaver despite writing numerous papers on human anatomy and was eventually forced out of all of his positions at the medical school. It was only after the death of his wife and one of his children in 1841 that he left Edinburgh for a medical school in Glasgow. Due to problems there, he searched for another teaching position and found that he had been essentially banned from every medical school in Scotland due to his presumed involvement with the West Port Murders.Despite being legendary for his medical knowledge, he had difficulty finding a job as a surgeon as well.

After eventually relocating to London and years of hardship (despite some success as a popular science writer),Robert Knox was appointed as a Pathological Anatomist at the Cancer Hospital at Brompton in 1856. He also had an extensive obstetrical practice and made numerous public lectures. Knox also continued writing on a vast array of science topics including medicine, comparative anatomy and anthropology.; While there was the lingering effect of his Burke and Hare involvement to deal with, he remained immensely popular with his friends and patients despite his failing health and the death of all but one of his six children. He slipped into a coma on December 9th, 1862 and died 11 days later without regaining consciousness and is buried in Woking Cemetery near Surrey. Even in death, he never returned to Edinburgh.

Although most of his papers on ethnic differences can rightly be condemned as racist today (he was definitely a man of his time), Robert Knox left an enormous legacy of writing including books on science, anatomy, and medicine. His books on fishing and art were popular sellers as well. Dr Robert Knox dealt with the (typically anonymous) gossip surrounding his supposed involvement with the West Port Murders with unusual grace and managed to keep it from overshadowing his life.

That can be a major accomplishment in itself.

After The Halifax Explosion

It's still considered the largest man-made accidental explosion in history.

Even during World War I, the city of Halifax, Nova Scotia was one of Canada's busiest ports. As the terminus of the St. Lawrence Seaway, its location made it the third largest port in the British Empire and a natural base of operations for Canada's navy. Thousands of tons of munitions passed through the port regularly with little thought of the potential danger involved. Until...

On December 6, 1917, a French ship, the SS. Mont-Blanc was carrying a heavy load of explosives from New York to Halifax. As the ship was proceeding into the harbour, a Norwegian ship, the S.S. Imo crossed into its path (it was carrying relief supplies). Though both crews attempted to avoid a collision, the Imo struck the Mont-Blanc on its starboard (right) bow.Attempts to disengage the two ships started a fire that the Mont-Blanc's crew was unable to get under control and they quickly abandoned ship under the captain's orders. Although the French-speaking crew attempted to warn authorities of the terrible danger, they were not understood as the burning ship drifted toward shore.

At 9:04:45 AM, the SS Mont-Blanc exploded. Its cargo, including 450,000 pounds of TNT, 2300 tons of picric acid, and 35 tons of benzol, exploded with a force of 3 kilotons of TNT. The Mont-Blanc was instantly destroyed and the resulting fireball rose 1.9 kilometers into the air. Hot metal rained down on the cities of Halifax and Dartmouth and the tsunami triggered by the blast sent the water rising 18 meters above the harbour's high-water mark. The force of the explosion also triggered fires throughout Halifax's North End and entire neighbourhoods were set on fire. The damage from the explosion affected buildings as far as 16 kilometers from the blast epicenter. An estimated 2000 people were killed in the explosion and resulting firestorm and over 9000 people were injured. Only the heroic actions of many of Halifax's emergency personnel and support workers kept the death toll from rising even higher (many of them were killed in the process). All told, more Nova Scotians died in the explosion than were killed in World War I.

To make matters worse, a massive blizzard struck the Halifax area on the day after the explosion, interfering with rescue efforts. Many of the survivors still trapped in wreckage were forced to deal with the severe cold and Halifax emergency crews were swamped trying to build shelters for all those left homeless. With more than 1630 homes being completely destroyed and an additional 12000 being seriously damaged, providing adequate housing was a critical necessity throughout the harsh winter.

Immediately after the disaster, medical relief trains began arriving from across Canada and the United States. The city of Boston provided a relief train that arrived within a day of the explosion (the city of Halifax still provides an annual Christmas tree to Boston in gratitude). Medical facilities were swamped with injured and even first-year medical students were drafted to treat patients.

Though the reconstruction would take decades, the Halifax Explosion represented one of the first modern disasters to be studied from a sociological and psychological perspective. Several years after the explosion, Samuel Henry Prince completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University.  His thesis, titled Catastrophe and Social Change: Based on a Sociological Study of the Halifax Disaster, represented the first systematic study of relief efforts following a major disaster. As a scholar, pastor, and social activist, Prince's own experience dealing with disaster was considerable. Not only was he part of the rescue effort following the Titanic sinking five years earlier, but he narrowly escaped being injured in the Halifax explosion himself (despite the risk of flying glass, he arrived on the scene just minutes after the blast to help with rescue efforts). After the explosion, Prince helped mobilize international relief efforts and continued to work on behalf of survivors and their families for years afterward.

In his book, Prince described the "shock and disintegration" that followed the explosion as well as the massive relief effort needed and the complex social issues that were linked to aiding survivors. He also emphasized the long-term consequences of the tragedy by stating: "The Halifax Disaster will leave a permanent mark upon the city because so many of the living have been blinded or maimed for life. But it is possible that the disaster may leave a mark of another sort, for it is confidently believed by those who took part in the relief work during the first few weeks that Halifax will gain as well as lose.  The sturdy quality of its citizens will bring "beauty out of ashes""". Prince also stressed the role that disasters can play in bringing about meaningful social change to prevent future loss of life.

Although there had certainly been previous disasters and major relief efforts, Catastrophe and Social Change represents one of the first attempts at studying disasters from a social science perspective and is still considered a classic in the field. While emergency management would eventually become a well-researched topic after World War II, the lessons learned from the Halifax Explosion continue to be applied in rescue efforts around the world.

To download Catastrophe and Social Change

Starving Sarah

Think of this as your word for the day: inedia. Defined as the ability to live without food, it's most commonly associated with certain religious traditions concerning saints or ascetics who, through divine intervention or yogic discipline, were able to go without food for long periods of time. Closely linked with breatharianism (ability to live without air), those few cases of reported inedia that have been tested under controlled conditions have invariably found that prolonged fasting leads to starvation and dehydration.

Which brings us to the tragic case of Sarah Jacob...

Born in 1857 in rural Wales, Sarah first became famous due to her apparently miraculous fasting. As one of seven children, she lived in an isolated farmhouse and her life seemed normal until she turned 10. After developing health problems (including seizures, abdominal pains, and fainting) Sarah's food intake gradually reduced until she apparently lost interest in food altogether by late 1867. Her parents, Evan and Hannah Jacob, began announcing Sarah's "miraculous" ability to go without food and she quickly became a celebrity. Spectators came from all over to see the "Welsh Fasting Girl" and were often obliged by Sarah's parents to leave donations after their visit.

Interest in Sarah Jacob picked up after a local vicar published an article on her in a national newspaper on February 19, 1869. In the article, the vicar was enthusiastic about the "wonderful little girl" and suggested that she be scientifically investigated. When a public meeting was called, a committee was appointed to watch Sarah over a two-week period to make sure that she wasn't being fed secretly. It wasn't a particularly thorough investigation and many of the watchers even left Sarah unattended at times (her parents had full access at all times). One critic described this first investigation as "the greatest possible farce and mockery".

Since the watch had failed to find any evidence of faking, interest in Sarah Jacob became even more intense.Crowds came from all over England to see Sarah and visitors to the local train station were often greeted by little boys offering to act as guides (for a generous tip of course). The boys would carry signs that said, "Fasting Girl" and "This is the shortest way to Llethernoryadd-ucha". As they were escorted to the Jacob home, the visitors found Sarah, lying in bed, with a wreath of flowers on her head and dressed as a bride. Her healthy appearance, despite her apparently not having eaten in months, was featured in newspapers around the world. Physicians continued to be skeptical and suggested that Sarah was suffering from some sort of hysteria but Welsh nationalists rallied to her defense (she was one of their own after all). The case became a political minefield for the U.K. government.

After another public meeting, a second investigation into Sarah's inedia began. She was taken to Guy's Hospital in London on December 9th, 1869 and was watched around the clock by eight nurses.  The nurses were told not to deny food if Sarah requested it but to monitor her carefully. After just a few days, Sarah grew noticeably weaker and her parents were urged to suspend the test so she could be fed. They refused despite pleas from the hospital staff and the vicar. The parents maintained that Sarah often appeared weak and that she was in no danger. On December 17, Sarah Jacob died after eight days of fasting. To nobody's surprise (except possibly the parents), the cause of death was starvation.

The public reaction to Sarah's death was pretty much what you might expect. Sarah's parents were tried and convicted of criminal negligence after a coroner's inquest. Evan Jacob was sentenced to a year in prison and Hannah was given six months. Although the attending physicians were tried for their role in Sarah's death, they were exonerated since they had urged that Sarah be given food. I haven't been able to find out what happened to Sarah's parents or their remaining children although the Jacobs were forced to sell their farm to pay for their legal expenses.

There have been other cases of fasting girls before and after Sarah Jacob but Sarah's death made physicians more willing to speak out against the practise. It was Sir William Gull who first identified the syndrome that he named anorexia nervosa in 1868 although it's hard to apply the diagnosis in Sarah's case. Whether Sarah's inedia began as a trick that she played on her parents or motivated by the financial benefit that her visitors' donations brought to her family, the fatal outcome was the same.

While inedia continues to be viewed with skepticism by the modern medical community, 20th century cases that have been reported include Therese Neumann, Prahlad Jani, and Jasmuheen.  Whether through self-deception or fakery, the movement goes on.