Providentia

The Electric Doctor Abrams (Part One of Two)

By the turn of the 20th century, electricity was all the rage. 

Newspapers were filled with stories about technical geniuses  like Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and George Westinghouse working to bring electricity into every home.  Certainly, the prospect of new and improved labour-saving devices, all run by electricity, must have seemed miraculous enough.  So was it any wonder that more and more medical hucksters began turning out health products promising to cure every ailment under the sun using the power of electricity?  A full listing of the various "devices" being offered through newspaper ads and through mail order would likely fill a good-sized book.   Still, he leading figure of 20th century electrical quackery had to be Albert Abrams., the dean of bogus electrotherapy, and likely the most famous name ever to be associated associated with  electrotherapy.

Born in San Francisco in 1863, Abrams was the son of aa prominent banker and distinguished himself from an early age due to  his brilliant mind.   By the  time he turned nineteen, he had earned his medical doctorate from the University of Heidelberg (one of the world's foremost medical schools) and went on to become a professor of pathology at Cooper College (later absorbed into Stanford University Medical School) before he turned thirty.  Along as serving as a consultant at numerous prominent hospitals, he also authored a slate of medical books and research papers that still stand up to medical scrutiny even today.   Aside from making money with his private practice, he became independently wealthy through his marriage to two different heiresses, both of whom died young and who bequeathed their sizable estates to him.

Despite his eminent medical reputation, not to mention being a member of California's high society, Dr. Abrams' career eventually veered into a decidedly different direction by 1910.   After developing a strong professional interest in orthopedic medicine, he published two books focusing on the role of spinal treatment in curing disease.  Abrams also began training other doctors in Spondylotherapy, i.e., manipulating the spine to treat various medical conditions  and had a strong influence on the chiropractic movement.   But really, his foray into alternative medicine was just beginning...

For whatever reason, he soon gave up on spinal manipulation after developing what he called his Theory of Electronic Medical Analysis.   According to this theory, every disease had a signature electronic vibration that could be measured using specialized instruments.   This led to the invention of the dynamizer - a device developed by Abrams which became the cornerstone of his Electronic Reactions of Abrams diagnostic system (ERA for short).

In a nutshell, ERA worked by putting drops of the patient's blood onto blotting paper (the blood was first "cleansed" by treating it with a horseshoe magnet) and then placing it into the dynamizer. A wire was then attached to the forehead of a second, healthy person who stood on grounded plates (this second subject was known as a "reagent"). The reagent was stripped to the waist and placed facing westward.   When the dynamizer passed the vibrational frequency of the blood sample to the reagent, Abrams or one of his disciples tapped the reagent's abdomen. Based on the tapping, Abrams claimed to be able to pinpoint the nature and location of any disease in the patient's body.   On those few occasions when a dynamizer wasn't available,  he was able to diagnose patients by using his hands to find "rough areas" of the skin to find the affected body part that he insisted was responsible for whatever symptoms they were experiencing.

Visitors seeking out Dr. Abrams could find him at the luxurious medical office he maintained at 2151 Sacramento Street in San Francisco.  There the patient would be escorted to the reception area by Dr. Abrams' extremely androgynous assistant.  Not even bothering with gathering a medical history, the assistant simply asked each patient what they "thought" was wrong with them.  At this point, Dr. Abrams would come in and collect blood and saliva samples, not to mention a sample of the patient's handwriting, all of which would be placed in the dynamizer for a proper diagnosis.  After calling in the reagent, usually a young man stripped to the waist, the good doctor would then recite a complex series of numbers based on what he learned by tapping the young reagent's abdomen and which his assistant would dutifully record.   Once the diagnosis was made, Abrams then dismissed the reagent and proceeded with giving the patient a diagnosis and recommending the proper treatment.

Though Abrams often prescribed different medications to cure the supposed disease he had diagnosed in his patients, the treatment Abrams provided  usually involved his other great invention, the oscilloclast.  Basically  a boxlike gadget with electrodes to be placed on the patient's body, Abrams claimed that his oscilloclast could be used to cure patients by "duplicating and neutralizing the signature vibration of disease".  In extreme cases, he also rubbed his patients with assorted colored salves (the ingredients of which remained a proprietary secret).    

Though he maintained his own busy practice, Abrams hardly stopped there.  Through aggressive marketing, Abrams recruited and trained various "electronic practitioners", all of whom treated disease using machines leased from Abrams' company. Not only did Abrams collect a hefty sum from everyone undergoing his training, he also rented all necessary machines to his graduates, including their own dynamizer and oscillocast (Abrams maintained a strict legal license banning anyone else from producing them).  All of this would become a factor in later lawsuits, bit we'll get to that later.   

 It was quite a lucrative business for a while. Not only did Abrams become a favourite of osteopaths and chiropractors of the time, but he also made numerous friends in the media. His supporters included novelist Upton Sinclair and Pearson's Magazine.  A perennial showman, Abrams proudly boasted that his Electronic Medicine could cure a dizzying array of diseases, including hypertension, pneumonia, liver problems, cancer, skin problems, etc.   He even claimed that the Soviet government had called him in to consult on the treatment that the dying Lenin was receiving in Moscow and that he could diagnose patients remotely by using "electronic waves" going through telephone wires.  Not only did he insist that his machines allowed him to predict how long a patient might live by examining their vibrations, but he even used handwriting samples from people who were long dead to diagnose them as well.   For example, he used autographs from writers such as Samuel Johnson and Samuel Pepys to conclude that they had both developed syphilis prior to their deaths (he said the same of Henry Longfellow and Edgar Allan Poe).  

But that was hardly the full extent of the kind of "medical advice" that the good Dr. Abrams dispensed.   He was a rabid anti-vaccine advocate who insisted that all white people were susceptible to syphilis due to the widespread use of vaccines, something that he insisted led to white people being prone to "vibratory" medical problems (no word on what it did to other races, though).   He also insisted that all surgery was inherently dangerous and that people who have been operated on would inevitably develop cancer due to the damage that surgery did to the body's vibrations.   

Though there have always been a plethora of medical hucksters dispensing questionable advice, the sad part was that people often listened to what Albert Abrams had to say.   Not only did he have a widespread following  but his appeal as a medical showman virtually guaranteed enormous publicity whenever he made a formal pronouncement about medicine.   Even in the United Kingdom, visitors to the venerable Trafalgar Square in the heart of London could see an electric sign proclaiming the benefits of Electronic Medicine.   The outcome of one famous paternity case in San Francisco actually hinged on the evidence that Abrams provided which determined (through electronic analysis alone) that the defendant was the father of the child in question.

Whatever the actual benefits of Abrams' miracle cures, there was no disputing that they made him a very wealthy man.  Evidence of this wealth included a magnificent mansion in San Francisco, lavishly decorated with expensive furnishings and a stunning collection of Oriental art and rare books.   He also maintained an enormous wardrobe, complete with expensive jewelry which he wore during his many lecture tours abroad.    Though Abrams'  fame as a medical huckster peaked in the years immediately following World War I, he even found a way to profit from Prohibition when it began in 1920 (he claimed that his devices could duplicate the vibrational frequency of alcohol to produce an "electrical high" without the hangover).   

Still, it was only a matter of time before the backlash set in for Abrams' movement. More on that next week...

To be continued

 

Orfeo Ascending

For Orfeo Angelucci, his strange career as a spokesperson for the aliens watching Earth reportedly began on August 4, 1946 with an amateur science experiment.  

Born in Trenton, New Jersey to a working-class Italian American family, Angelucci was a sickly child with a history of childhood illness.    Diagnosed with “constitutional inadequacy” as a child, his poor health left him with recurring migraine headaches as well as a peculiar sensitivity to thunderstorms.   Despite having to leave school early due to poor health and family financial problems, he continued to study science in his spare time until a complete physical breakdown forced him to give up his job.   After nearly two years in hospital, he eventually returned to work and resumed his amateur science experiments.   While his experiments may have been somewhat offbeat, there was no doubting his enthusiasm.   Angelucci had a particular fascination with how electricity and thunderstorms affected humans and even wrote an enthusiastic letter to then-President Franklin Roosevelt about his discoveries.   In the letter, he insisted that the “range paralysis” he saw in chickens was related to atmospheric static conditions  and suggested that this might be relevant to the treatment of polio.   He never received an answer.

In the fateful 1946 experiment,  Angelucci tried to launch samples of the fungus, Aspergillis clavatus, into the upper atmosphere in a homemade weather balloon.    He hoped to study how the fungus was changed by atmospheric conditions but the balloon broke away from the mooring and was lost along with his fungus samples.  As he would later relate, Angelucci and the family members who had gathered to watch the balloon launch saw what appeared to be a flying saucer hover overhead.   When the balloon went up, the saucer apparently followed it until both were lost from sight.    No trace of the balloons or the fungus samples were ever found.   

After moving to California (where he heard there were fewer thunderstorms), Angelucci  attempted to break into the movie industry by writing his own script about a trip to the moon (no studios expressed any interest though).  He finally went to work for the Lockheed Corporation doing fabrication work while continuing scientific research in his spare time.  Along with self-publishing a thesis titled “The Nature of Infinite Energies” describing his theories on “atomic evolution, suspension and involution”,  he also wrote several letters to Linus Pauling outlining his theories on biology and nuclear causation.  Pauling wrote several letters back politely thanking him but adding that he had no comments he could make on these theories. 

With the advent of the “flying saucer” craze in 1948, Angelucci became fascinated with the various sightings being reported.  His own flying saucer event occurred on May 23, 1952 after he left the Lockheed plant early in the morning (he was working the night shift.)     In the statement he later wrote about his experience,, he described experiencing “prickling sensations” while driving home that felt as if his old medical problems were returning.    Angelucci then saw a “red-glowing, oval-shaped object” in the sky which he decided to follow.    On a deserted part of the highway, he saw two smaller objects detach themselves and approach his car.  A clear voice told him, “Don’t be afraid, Orfeo, we are friends” and instructed him to get out of the car.  The two smaller objects were apparently meant for communication.  

After reassuring him of their friendly intentions, he was told that the aliens had been watching him ever since his 1946 balloon experiment.    The voice then told him to “Drink from the crystal cup you will find on the fender of your car, Orfeo!”   And, sure enough, there was a goblet on his car fender filled with a liquid.    Angelucci reported, “It was the most delicious beverage I had ever tasted. I drained the cup. Even as I was drinking a feeling of strength and well-being swept over me and all of my unpleasant symptoms vanished.”   The goblet vanished after he replaced it on the fender.

The twin disks then formed into a luminous screen which showed two “oddly familiar” beings, a man and a woman.  “There was an impressive nobility about them,” he wrote.  “Their eyes were larger and much more expressive and they emanated a seeming radiance that filled me with wonder.”    The screen then vanished.   He was then told that “the road will open” and that they had been watching the Earth for centuries.  They also told him that he had been chosen for first contact and that the “flying saucers” were their own ships which were powered and controlled by tapping into “universal magnetic forces.”      Though “Cosmic law prevented one planet from interfering with the evolution of any other planet and that Earth needed to work out its own destiny”, they had been trying to help the human race move forward.   Perhaps not surprisingly, they also informed him that his numerous unconventional theories on nuclear causation and biology were absolutely correct.  After promising to be in contact again, they then left.

And thus Orfeo Angelucci’s strange mission was born.  Never as famous as other flying saucer enthusiasts such as George Adamski, the message he relayed in books such as his 1955 classic, The Secret of the Saucers, seemed to resonate with his early Catholic upbringing.   In the book (which was co-written by science fiction author Ray Palmer), Angelucci described his early experiences with the aliens as well as later trips on board flying saucers which seemed more like spiritual experiences.  Angelucci also became part of the lecture circuit along with other contactees and became a popular guest with radio show hosts as he described his flying saucer journeys.

On one later trip, he was told that Christ had been an “infinite entity of the sun” who had become “flesh and blood and entered the hell of ignorance and woe and evil” due to “compassion for the world’s suffering.”     During that same journey, Angelucci underwent a death and resurrection experience after which he heard the voices tell him, “Beloved friend of earth, we baptize you now in the true light of the worlds eternal.”   He also learned that the flying saucers were symbols of mankind’s “coming resurrection of the living death.”  

His message was also strongly influenced by many of the political and cultural ideas that were in vogue at the time.  The aliens appeared strangely concerned about communism which they described as a symbol of the earth’s fallen state and something that humanity needed to overcome (nothing about capitalism, however).    They also warned that the human race was living in a state akin to Purgatory and that a Great Armageddon was approaching unless humanity could reform.  Whether this was a nuclear war or something even more dire was left to the imagination of his readers. 

In a later book, Son of the Sun, Angelucci expanded more on his meetings with the angelic aliens and the mystical nature of his experiences on board the flying saucers.   He also described living for a week in the body of his “space brother” Neptune on a large asteroid while his usual body went to work in a waking dream state.  Angelucci published several other pamphlets expanding on his space-brother ideas and also claimed to be in contact with other people who had met the same aliens that he had. 

While Orfeo Angelucci remained part of the flying saucer movement until his death in 1993,  his cult following was never very large.   His books, complete with audio CDs of him describing his experiences, are still available on Amazon.   Carl Jung devoted part of his 1978 book, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies to him and regarded Angelucci’s account as being the most compelling of all the first-person contact narratives  published during that era. 

It is tempting to try explaining Angelucci using his medical history and how his “encounters” resemble the type of hallucination seen in certain neurological patients.   Unfortunately, there is not enough information available to make a real diagnosis in his case.   That his claimed experiences strongly reflected his own Catholic upbringing and personal beliefs (including pep talks with Jesus Christ himself) seems to be one of the common features that he shared with fellow contactees.   His other chief claim to fame was that he is believed to have been the first to coin the term, “New Age.” 

Aside from his books on Amazon and the few web pages dedicated to him, Orfeo Angelucci has been largely forgotten by believers and skeptics alike.   Ultimately, what impressed people most listening to his fantastic accounts was the utter sincerity he displayed at all times.   Whatever you might make of his strange claims, he seemed to believe what he was saying and that was enough to convince others as well.   If nothing else, he remains an object lesson in the power of belief.

The Kallikak Problem (Part Two of Two)

Continued from Part One

Despite the appeal of Goddard's book to eugenicists, not everyone was persuaded by his  findings.   One 1912 review in the British newspaper Guardian was particularly scathing in challenging the book's hereditarian bias.  In the review, the anonymous author pointed out that "One wonders, with effect how, with the most careful inquiry, anyone could obtain a diagnosis of true feeble-mindedness for past generations.  The author lays stress on the point that the two branches of the family did not differ in point of environment except insofar as the difference was due to their own difference in character.  But he does not allow for the facts:  (1) that the original feeble-minded son was illegitimate and therefore in quite a different position from the respectable normals and (2) that this difference in environment is handed on just as much as the physical heredity is handed on and goes far to determine the subsequent intermarriages.   He also talks lightheartedly of sterilization, as though the only objections to it were "sentimental" and not founded upon a rational perception of the extreme danger to society involved in treating human beings after such a fashion."

Sadly, this particular reviewer was very much in the minority concerning the potential danger of using Goddard's book to highlight the dangers of people with "inferior" genes.   Most other newspapers, especially in the U.S.., hailed the book as a "natural object lesson in heredity" that highlighted the risks of unrestricted breeding.   One editorial published on November 21, 1912 gave the panicked observation that feeble-minded individuals were multiplying at "twice the rate of the general population" and that they might eventually dominate society as a result.  

But what really made Goddard's Kallikak study so appealing to different political factions was how it could provide ammunition for a variety of different political crusades.   Vice crusaders agitating about prostitution and assorted other "immoral practices" could (and did) argue that feeble-mindednesst could lead women to gravitate or be forced into lives of prostitution and that such women needed to be protected  for their own safety.  Though Goddard himself insisted that there wasn't enough available data to prove that feeble-minded women were prone to "professional vice", other pundits, many citing Goddard's book, called for crackdowns on the red light districts found in most cities.   

On the other hand,  pundits railing against the dangers of immigration also invoked Goddard's study to show that potential immigrants needed to be carefully screened to keep out feeble-minded candidates.   Not only would it prevent them from turning to crime in the U.S. but would also prevent them from contributing their own inferior genes to America's melting pot.   Almost inevitably, Goddard himself set up an intelligence testing office at Ellis Island just a year after his study came out.  His immigration study results, released in 1917, declared that as much as eighty percent of all immigrants. particularly immigrants from specific ethic groups, met his criteria for feeble-mindedness.  That Goddard himself later revised this to forty percent did little to curb the calls for more stringent immigration laws to keep these "undesirables" out, not to mention establishing quotas that would remain in place for decades afterward.  

As for whether Goddard's study helped bolster the case for compulsory sterilization of people like Deborah Kallikak, that seems harder to establish.  Though sterilization laws were already on the books in some parts of the U.S. (Indiana had one as early as 1907), they certainly became more popular in the years following the publication of Goddard's book.   Ironically, Goddard himself was much more moderate in his own proposed solution for dealing with people he considered to be feeble-minded.  While he advocated keeping them in institutions where they could be trained to do simple work, sterilization was widely seen as a much more effective (not to mention cheaper) alternative.    

This led many overzealous medical doctors  to begin sterilizing people they considered to be feeble-minded, often without any form of informed consent and with only shaky legal justification.  One prominent sterilization advocate was Dr. Albert Priddy, long-time director of the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-minded.  Though sterilization wouldn't become legal in Virginia until 1924, Priddy had already conducted hundreds of sterilizations by them,  often based on his own harsh eugenics beliefs    This included sterilizing women he regarded as being "immoral" for being "too forward"  (one underage girl was sterilized because she was in the habit of "talking to the little boys").   It hardly seems surprising that Priddy often invoked Goddard's research to justify his actions, even when  this got him into trouble as families began fighting back.  

All of which led to the egregious Carrie Buck case and what Albert Priddy would regard as his greatest legal victory.  Buck, who had become an inmate at the Virginia State Colony in 1924, was deemed to be mentally unfit, largely due to her "unrestrained" behaviour with the opposite sex and giving birth to an illegitimate child.  Using intelligence tests which would be considered completely spurious by modern standards, Buck, her mother, and her young daughter Vivian were all deemed to be mentally unfit and, as a result, ideal candidates for sterilization and a perfect test case for more stringent sterilization laws.

Priddy was certainly in fine form when testifying during Carrie Buck's initial trial in fighting the sterilization order and the later case before the Supreme Court as he presented his evidence .  Many of the most prominent eugenicists of the day also testified.   Add in the fact that Carrie Buck's own mediocre lawyer (who failed to call a single witness on her behalf) and the the final verdict was no surprise to anyone.   All of which led to the appalling Buck vs Bell Supreme Court decision of 1927 in which Oliver Wendell Holmes, then associate justice of the Court concluded publicly that "three generations of idiots are enough."

Ironically, Goddard's Kallikak study wasn't introduced as evidence at the trial, largely because Goddard himself had come to accept that the study was obsolete due to the many scientific errors that had been made.   This included many of the same points raised by that anonymous Guardian reviewer in 1912 as well as questions concerning the actual paternity of Martin Kallikak Junior.   To Goddard's credit, he was often horrified at how his research was being used by eugenicists and he dedicated much of his remaining life to reforming special education for intellectually disabled children as well as recognizing the role that environment played in mental development.  He died in 1957 with much of his early eugenics research being largely forgotten.  

But while the end of World War II and the horrendous example of Nazi persecution helped doom the eugenics movement worldwide, the existing laws concerning sterilization remained on the books for decades afterward.   Though the rationale was often changed, the end result was still the same and thousands continued to be sterilized well into the 1980s. For that matter, compulsory sterilization continues to be seen in other countries, usually directed against minority groups lacking the resources to fight back.  

Though the "Kallikak" name still crops up at times in news stories and opinion pieces as a byword for "white trash" (including being the name of an ill-considered situation comedy in 1977),  it has been largely forgotten except as a warning about he dangers of  this kind of research and easily such research can be used to promote misinformation.   It is a warning that remains relevant even today.

The Kallikak Problem (Part One of Two)

It's relatively rare for a research study to get much attention in non-academic circles.  Still, when the 121-page book titled, The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness, came out in 1912,  even the book's author, Herbert Henry Goddard,  didn't expect to see it become a best-seller.   But it was likely not that surprising for a book that Stephen Gould  would later call the “primal myth of the eugenics movement”.  

Goddard, the director of the psychological laboratory at the Vineland Training School  in Vineland, New Jersey, was already well-known for his work in eugenics and intelligence, a reputation that would be firmly cemented when his book came out.   When the Vineland School was founded in the 19th century as the "New Jersey Home for the Education and Care of Feebleminded Children", it quickly became one of the principal training centers for training children deemed incapable of functioning in normal schools.  Often dismissed as "cretins" and "imbeciles" throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, such children typically faced extreme hardship and abuse, something that Henry Goddard was determined to fight when he first took over the school's psychological laboratory in 1906. Already well-known for translating Alfred Binet's intelligence test into English and standardizing the test on Vineland's students, Goddard also established himself as a prominent eugenics researcher through his research into the genetic background of the students he dealt with at Vineland. (he would also introduce the term "moron" to the English language).  

As for his most famous work, it apparently began in 1898 when an eight-year-old girl identified only as "Deborah" first came to the Vineland Training School.   In describing Deborah to his readers, Goddard was emphatic in portraying her as having  " the mentality of a high-grade feeble-minded person, the moron, the delinquent, the kind of girl or woman that fills our reformatories. They are wayward, they get into all sorts of trouble and difficulties, sexually and otherwise."    To bolster his case for Deborah's feeble-mindedness, his verbal description of her included numerous references to the kind of "abnormal" behaviours to which she was prone, i.e., jerking movements while walking and a tendency to stare blankly when people spoke to her.

Additional proof of Deborah's feeble-mindedness came the newly-translated Binet Test which he had administered to all the Vineland students,   As Goddard wrote, "By the Binet Scale this girl showed, in April, 1910, the mentality of a nine-year-old child with two points over; January, 1911, 9 years, 1 point; September, 1911, 9 years, 2 points; October, 1911, 9 years, 3 points. (p. 11)."   He also added that, "Here is a child who has been most carefully guarded. She has been persistently trained since she was eight years old, and yet nothing has been accomplished in the direction of higher intelligence or general education. To-day if this young woman were to leave the Institution, she would at once become a prey to the designs of evil men or evil women and would lead a life that would be vicious, immoral, and criminal."  

But children like Deborah were hardly limited to training schools where they could be properly helped.   Under Goddard's guidance, the Vineland Training School sent out field workers to investigate the families of these children to learn more about their backgrounds.   Though these field workers were highly-trained, they were often ill-prepared to deal with the kind of deep-rooted poverty and social problems the families they studied often faced.   Instead, all they could do was make reports about what they found without any attempt at explaining why the families were as backward as they reported.  And, as Goddard himself concluded from these reports that: "The surprise and horror of it all, was that no matter where we traced them, whether in the prosperous rural district, in the city slums to which some had drifted, or in the more remote mountain regions, or whether it was a question of the second or the sixth generation, an appalling amount of defectiveness was everywhere found."  In other words, feeble-minded children came from feeble-minded parents.

As for Deborah, Goddard's investigators managed to trace her ancestry back for generations and discovered something that, to them, seemed remarkable.   Deborah's great-great-grandfather was a man identified only as "Martin Kallikak"  (I'll get into the significance of the name a little bit later.)   Prior to fighting in the American Revolution, Martin had become the father of an illegitimate child who would become Deborah's ancestor.   The boy's mother had given the child the same name as his father despite his illegitimate status and he passed this name down to his children.   During the course of Goddard's research into Martin Kallikak Junior's descendants, one hundred and forty-three of the nearly five hundred known descendants  they traced "were or are feeble-minded, while only forty-six have been found normal. The rest are unknown or doubtful."

But Martin Kallikak Senior had other children later in his life after marrying a "respectable girl of good family."   Despite having the same surname as the other Kallikak family branch, the descendants of Martin's legitimate children were much more illustrious.  As Goddard pointed out, "All of the legitimate children of Martin Sr. married into the best families in 
their state, the descendants of colonial governors, signers of the Declaration of Independence, soldiers and even the founders of a great university. There are doctors, lawyers, judges, educators, traders, landholders, in short, respectable citizens, men and women prominent in every phase of social life. There have been no feeble-minded among them; no illegitimate children; no immoral women. There has been no epilepsy, no criminals, no keepers of houses of prostitution."    It was the comparison of these two family branches which inspired the Kallikak pseudonym that Goddard assigned to Martin and his descendants (the name came from the Greek words καλός (kallos) meaning good and κακός (kakos) meaning bad).

In comparing these two family branches, Goddard concluded that feeble-mindedness, criminal behaviour, and immorality were basically genetic in nature, a finding very much in vogue at the time given the popularity of eugenics   In Martin Kallikak's case, having a child with a feeble-minded woman led to generations of crime, poverty, and social disorder, not to mention hundreds of descendants who ultimately became wards of the state (including Deborah Kallikak).   Goddard bolstered his arguments with elaborate family trees showing each family branch along with how the proliferation of positive and negative traits matched Gregor Mendel's own conclusions about genetic inheritance.   

Along with the elaborate family trees and verbal descriptions of the "feeble-mindedness" found in Deborah Kallikak and her relatives, Goddard also included numerous photographs presenting the "bad" Kallikaks in a menacing light. Later authors such as Stephen J. Gould would argue that the photos had been deliberately retouched to highlight their defectiveness though this remains controversial.   In all, Goddard's book was intended to be a searing indictment of the dangers of unrestricted breeding.   

While hardly the only study of its kind published up to that time, Goddard's book would prove to be the most influential.    It also established Goddard as of the the country's leading authorities in eugenics, the book would prove enormously influential in boosting public support for eugenics, both in North America and in Europe.  

Continue to Part Two

The Last Alchemist

Alchemy has a very long history.

First believed to have been practiced in Ancient Persia, the ancient dream of endless wealth and immortality has enticed practitioners for thousands of years. While attempts to transmute lead into gold or create the elixir of life have always ended in failure, the lure was enough to entice famous scientists such as Roger Bacon, Tycho Brahe and Isaac Newton to give it a try. Still, by the 18th century, there was enough skepticism for alchemy to be dismissed as a fantasy by the scientific community.

Which brings us to James Price...

Born in 1752, his original name was actually Higginbotham but he changed it to Price when a wealthy relative left him a legacy. After distinguishing himself at Oxford by earning various degrees, he became a member of the Royal Society at the age of 29. Although Price seemed set for an eminent career in science, he began to concentrate a more unconventional line of research: transmuting base metals into precious metals (particularly turning mercury into gold). 

Unfortunately for Price, whatever respect alchemists claimed in previous centuries had long since evaporated by his time. After telling a few of his friends that he had been successful in his strange research, Price became the subject of some fearful whispering among fellow chemists. It was this public skepticism that caused him to begin a series of public demonstrations of his transmutation process. The process centered on a special "powder of production" that could transform mercury and other base metals into gold or silver "under special circumstances".   He conducted seven public experiments beginning on on May 6, 1782 and ended on May 25th. With various peers, baronets, clergymen and chemists in attendance, Price mixed borax, niter, mercury, and other assorted chemicals and produced small amounts of gold and silver that he later presented to King George III.

The initial reaction was certainly positive. Oxford University bestowed a Doctor of Medicine degree on Price and there was tremendous demand for the written account of his experiments. Anyone remembering the cold fusion debacle some time  back can appreciate the tremendous enthusiasm resulting from the news of Price's discovery. The notion of endless wealth being produced for England through alchemy was certainly intoxicating (setting aside the fact that gold was mainly valuable because it was scarce). Since James Price was a respected and wealthy scientist who came from a distinguished family, the possibility that he might have faked his results seemed unthinkable.

But the Royal Society wasn't quite so accepting.  When Price refused to provide additional details about his discovery, they then insisted that he repeat his experiments under controlled conditions to rule out the possibility of error.   Instead, downplayed his earlier success and insisted that his powder of production was too expensive to make in large quantities.  He added that the process of creating gold wasn't as cost-effective as he had previously assumed and that the cost of ingredients was greater than the cost of the gold produced. While insisting that his experiments were of scientific value, he argued hat there would be no point in repeating them.

The president of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks, flatly told Price that his scientific reputation was at stake as well as the reputation of the Royal Society itself. Price, in return, claimed to be the victim of persecution and that his reputation ruled out any possibility  of deceit. By then, even Price's friends had become distressed by his refusal and finally persuaded him to produce more of his powder of production for the Royal Society to examine. He left London in January, 1783 and returned to his Guildford laboratory. Although he had promised to return in a month, nothing more was heard from him for six months when he finally returned to London. Inviting as many members of the Royal Society as he could to his Guildford laboratory, he arranged for a demonstration on August 3rd of that same year.

Price's reputation had already been damaged by his long delay and even most of his friends had deserted him by the time of his demonstration. That only three members of the Royal Society showed up on August 3rd was probably the last straw for Price. After greeting his guests cordially, he stepped away from them and drank a vial of what would later turn out to be poisonous.  When Price began to collapse, his visitors tried to help him but it was too late. Before they could arrange for medical attention, James Price was dead.

An investigation would later find that Price had recently written his last will and testament and wrapped up his affairs before calling for the demonstration. Despite intense speculation over why Price had staked his professional reputation (and his life) on his strange fixation with alchemy, no real explanation was ever found. It's probably likely that he had deceived himself into believing that he was successful and, little by little, resorted to deception to avoid disgrace. Suicide may have been the only solution for the mess that he had created for himself.

James Price's suicide marked the end of alchemy in the United Kingdom (though it lingered on in other parts of the world). His sad fate represents an object lesson in how easy it is to be seduced by the prospect of fame and fortune as well as how hard it is to admit that you're wrong. Too many other would-be discoverers have learned this the hard way.

Grounding the Electric Girl

While Andy Warhol may have popularized the "everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes " meme,  it was hardly original.  Long before the modern era,  newspaper stories often did an excellent job of spreading the kind of stories that could propel obscure individuals to instant fame for a variety of reasons.   Though this often involved bizarre mishaps or significant personal achievements,  anyone with a strange new talent could frequently capitalize on it to achieve, if not fame and fortune, at least a certain name recognition.  For a while, anyway.

And so it was with Angelique Cottin, a.k.a. the "Electric Girl".  

Though her exact birth date is not recorded,  Angelique's early years seemed unremarkable enough.  Growing up as part of a  poor farm family in the northwestern French village of La Perrier, she likely had little education aside from the basic schooling that all rural children received at the time.   But that all changed on January 15, 1846 at 8 pm in the evening while 14-year-old Angelique was doing her customary weaving with other girls in her village.   As reports later describe, the oaken frame on which Angelique was working suddenly began jerking so violently that none of the girls could hold it in place.   Alarmed by what was happening, they girls ran off to tell their parents.   When the skeptical adults ordered them to resume their spinning, nothing unusual occurred until Angelique sat down as well.  Which was when the jerking movement began again.   

When the same thing happened on the following morning,  villagers accused Angelique of being possessed and insisted that she be taken to the local priest to see if an exorcism was needed.  Fortunately, the priest was sensible enough to dismiss the fears of the villagers  and decided to observe what was happening directly.   Among the strange happenings he observed was Angelique's chair suddenly  jerking away from her whenever she tried to sit down.  Also, the very touch of her hand seemed enough to repel the table at which she was sitting .  Impressed by what he saw, the priest then referred her to the local physician who, along with the girl's parents, brought Angelique to Paris to be tested scientifically.  Among the scientists who agreed to participate was prominent astronomer Francois Arago who arranged for the testing to be carried out at his observatory.   There, along with several other savants,  Arago conducted different tests which were later included in a report presented to the Paris Academy of Sciences. 

The report, which later received international newspaper coverage, made the following conclusions:    "1st.   It is the left side of the body which appears to acquire this sometimes attractive, but more frequently repulsive property.   A sheet of paper, a pen, or any other light body, being placed upon a table, if the young girl approaches her left hand, even before she touches it, the object is driven to a distance as if by a gust of wind.  The table itself is overthrown the moment it touches her hand, or even by a thread which she may hold in it.   2nd.  This causes instantaneously a strong commotion in her side which draws her towards the table.  3rd.  As had been observed, the first day, if she attempted to sit, the seat was thrown far from her with such force that any person occupying it was carried away with it.  4th.  One day, a chest  upon which three men were seated, was moved in the same manner.  Another day, although the chair was held by two very strong men, it was broken in their hands."    There were additional points (thirteen in all), but I think you get the idea.

While Arago ruled out magnetism or electricity in trying to explain what was happening during Angelique's demonstration, he eventually concluded that she was somehow generating a new force "unknown to science".  Another savant added that "under peculiar conditions, the human organism gives forth a physical power which, without visible instruments, lifts heavy bodies, attracts or repels them, according to a law of polarity, and overturns them."   Also, bear in mind that spirit mediums were already gaining considerable popularity across North America and Europe with table-tipping and spirit-rapping being commonly reported during countless seances.   Newspapers reporting on Angelique Cottin and the apparent verification of her remarkable powers had no trouble making a connection between her  case and assorted spiritualist claims already being made.

Against the advice of the scientists themselves, Angelique's parents, who likely saw their daughter's strange talents as a way of making money, started making arrangements to have her repeat her performance before a paying audience.  Before this could happen though, Arago called on the Academy to conduct more stringent testing to determine what was actually happening    Responding to Arago's  requet, the Academy appointed a formal committee of esteemed scientists to make the investigation.  And it was quite a committee. along with Arago, the other committee members were: Henri Becquerel (a pioneer in radioactivity and a future Nobel laureate), zoologist and author Isidore Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, physicist Jacques Babinet, physician Pierre Francois Olive Rayer, and psychiatrist Etienne Pariset.   

Conducted at the Jardin des Plantes at Paris' Muséum national d'histoire naturelle (National Museum of Natural History) just days after Angelique's previous test, the tests devised by the appointed committee were specifically intended to rule out any possibility of fraud.   This time, however, the Committee was less than impressed by what Angelique could apparently accomplish.   About the only real effect she could demonstrate was having the chair she was trying to sit on being forcibly thrown back as previous witnesses had attested.  Unfortunately, the Committee wasn't so easily fooled.   As they noted in their final report, "Upon serious suspicions arising as to the manner in which these movements occurred, the committee has decided that they shall be submitted to an attentive examination. It frankly announces that the investigations tended to discover the fact that certain habitual manœuvres hidden in the feet and hands could have produced the observed fact."  

Apparently unnerved by Angelique's failure to repeat her previous performance, not to mention the accusation of fraud, her guardians suddenly announced that her powers had failed.  Certain that Angelique's powers would return in time, they  offered to notify the Academy so they could resume the testing.   But, as the Committee noted in their report, "Many days have passed since, yet the committee has received no intelligence. We have learned, however, that Mdlle. Cottin is daily received in drawing-rooms where she repeats her experiments."   The report ended with the recommendation that "the communications transmitted to the Academy on the subject of Mdlle. Angélique Cottin should be considered as never having been sent in."   Being scientists, they couldn't accuse Angelique of being a fraud but their conclusion came as close to this as they could get.

And, that was pretty much it for the Electric Girl.   Months later, Angelique's parents announced that her powers were gone for good and she faded back into complete obscurity.   Still, despite the science behind magnetism and electricity becoming better understood,  the public fascination with Electric Girls remained as strong as ever.   Hence the popular appeal of Lulu Hurst, aka the Georgia Wonder,  whose brief career during the 1880s had her amazing audiences with her apparent feats of impressive strength (using powers gained during an electrical storm, according to her publicity agents).  Though Hurst would later admit that all of her stunts were based on basic physics, she claimed to believe that her powers were genuine at the time.   Despite Hurst's popularity inspiring various copycats, none would ever match her popularity, or Angelique Cottin's, for that matter...

While children claiming mysterious powers don't attract the attention they once did given our more skeptical age, instant celebrities seem more common than ever thanks to the power of social media.  Perhaps these instant celebrities should pay closer attention to Angelique Cottin's story and how rapidly that fame can slip away.   People are always searching for the Next Big Thing, whether it involves Electric Girls or American Idol winners, and today's marvel becomes yesterday's news much sooner than anyone realizes.

 

 

 

 

 

The Shrinking Penis Panic

In September 2003, news sources documented numerous accounts of mysterious foreigners (origin and description varying with each retelling) in Khartoum, Sudan who were causing penises to disappear by shaking the hands of their victims in public.

Details were rarely consistent but media stories describing the panic told of victims who reported that their penises began to "melt into their body" either after shaking hands or using a "penis-melting cyborg comb" that had been given to them by a mysterious stranger.  One Sudan based columnist went as far as reporting in a foreign-based newspaper that ""Even though what I write today will harm 'tourism' in Sudan, I consider it my duty to warn anyone who wants to come to Sudan to refrain from shaking hands with a dark-skinned man. Since most Sudanese are dark-skinned, he had better avoid shaking hands with anyone he doesn't know…". The mysterious hand-shaker (often referred to as `Satan`s Friend`) was said to "drain men`s virility"  through a handshake and then extort money from victims to regain their lost manhood. The accusations and recriminations were directed against numerous convenient scapegoats including ``Zionist agents`` attempting to exterminate the Sudanese by preventing men from procreating. Though  medical examinations showed no indication of sexual abnormalities in victims, it took an active intervention on the part of the Sudanese government (including numerous arrests of alleged victims and others accused of practicing "sorcery") to bring an end to the hysteria.  While it was ultimately deemed to have been a hoax that got out of hand, the resulting furor took a while to subside. 

Despite being the most widely reported outbreak, what occurred in Khartoum was only part of a epidemic of genital shrinking hysteria reported in six West African nations between January 1997 and October 2003. There appears to be superficial resemblances to the cultural psychosis known as Koro, but with a significant twist given the accusations  levelled against mysterious "others" attempting to emasculate African men.   Cases of perceived genital shrinkage have been primarily reported in South-east Asian males although similar cases have been reported in non-Oriental cultures and seem to be associated with a fear of losing sexual potency.

What then are we to make of what happened in Khartoum in 2003? 

It seems likely that the epidemic was fueled by media coverage and word-of-mouth but the political turmoil resulting from a long and bloody civil war (which has since escalated) probably played a part as well. There seems to be little available information on psychological or demographic factors that may have made the victims more vulnerable to suggestion. While "mass hysteria" is a convenient label for outbreaks of unusual symptoms, it seems to mask the very legitimate fears that people in a given time or culture may experience and which may emerge in an exaggerated form with the right provocation. For the Sudanese males who were affected, the fear of ethnic cleansing (including the very real ethnic cleansing occurring in Darfur) may well have driven the epidemic with various scapegoats (domestic or foreign) being proposed as targets of potential retribution.

While the idea of penis-shrinking hysteria may make for entertaining reading, the paranoia that can be triggered during mass hysteria outbreaks shouldn`t be dismissed so easily.  The violence that can erupt as a result of mass hysteria has led to some tragic episodes over the years.  Witch-hunts (sometimes literally so) have claimed countless lives through the centuries and even "civilized" people can form lynch mobs under the right circumstances. 

In other words, don't believe everything you hear (especially if it involves penis-melting combs).   

Remembering Aktion T-4

As part of my recent trip to Berlin, Germany, I took an extended tour of some of the less well-known memorials to Berlin's often-horrific history.   Though Tiergarten is now a lovely wooded park, visitors to Tiergartenstrasse 4 can still see a plaque set in the pavement, complete with memorial flowers, commemorating the first Nazi campaign to "purge" Germany of inferior genetics:   Aktion T4.    

Though Jews and other undesirables had long been a part of Nazi eugenic policy, people suffering from mental illness and developmental disabilities were also identified as being unfit as well.    Patients in psychiatric hospitals, asylums, and other facilities for children with mental or physical impairments were seen as consuming valuable resources and contributing to the economic disaster faced by the German people after the end of World War I.     Still, given that many of these patients were part of loving families who might object to any kind of overt sterilization campaign, the Nazis recognized that the
"problem" of dealing with the intellectually and mentally disabled could not be resolved in peacetime as there would be too great an opposition to doing what "must be done".  Despite the groundwork laid down by years of Nazi propaganda against the mentally disabled, it would take the outbreak of World War II in 1939 before the next step could begin in earnest.

It was in 1939 that, Action T4 (named for Tiergartenstrasse 4, the address of the building that housed the department tin charge of the directive) began to carry out the eugenics program.  And the program was actually voluntary at first.  Parents were asked if they wished their severely disabled children to be euthanized and a panel of doctors assessed individual cases of newborn children with various defects (real or suspected) to which children should be put to death.  The voluntary element vanished quickly and parents were told that their children were being sent to centres where they would receive "special care."   After the children were killed, usually by carbon monoxide poisoning, parents were told that their child had died of pneumonia.  The bodies were then autopsied and tissue samples taken for medical research. 

But word of what was really happening began to spread quickly and parents began refusing consent for their children to be taken.  More often than not however, the children were taken anyway and the parents were often punished for their resistance.  As Germany moved to a war footing, the program was later expanded to include older children and adults as well.  Lists of chronic patients were compiled from hospitals and sanatoriums (Jewish patients in particular were identified). 

They were then transferred to special facilities where they could be killed.  It would be in occupied Poland that T4 would first be implemented on a broad scale with thousands of mental patients being killed by carbon monoxide gas in improvised gas chambers.  The bodies were then burned in crematoria. The success of the program in Poland then led to the implementation of T4 across all of occupied Europe as the Germans advanced.  Between 1939 and 1941,  75,000 to 250,000 people with intellectual or mental disabilities were executed by various means ranging from lethal injection to gas. 

The architects of T4 were medical doctors with the training to carry out the "operational" aspects of the program (including Hitler's personal physician) but countless doctors and nurses also participated.  As rumours of what was happening in the killing centres grew, many families tried to protect their loved ones by withdrawing them from hospitals and caring for them at home or arranging for doctors to "re-diagnose" them to avoid T4.   It would be the opposition from church groups and other parts of society that led to Hitler formally cancelling T4 in 1941.  While killings continued after 1941, they were less systematic and were absorbed into the broader Final Solution program.

In December 1946, the Doctors' trial was held to try 23 medical doctors and administrators for their role in "crimes against humanity" including human medical experimentation and their role in implementing T4.  Seven were later executed and many others would receive long periods of imprisonment.  As for the children and adults who were killed, only their family members were left to mourn their deaths.

Would the systematic killing of millions of Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and other "undesirables" have been as effective without the early experience in mass murder provided by Aktion T4?   That's something historians can only speculate about.   In the meantime, the plaque on Tiergartenstrasse continues to be the focus of pilgrimages by patient rights advocates from around the world.    

The Rise and Fall of "The Clearing House of Cupid" (Part Two of Two)

Continued from Part One

Even as eugenics became more popular, pundits such as Davenport still had to contend with the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany during the 1930sand the frankly horrific policies it was adopting.   Openly inspired by the eugenics policies advocated in the United States (and with less-than-covert funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, among other U.S. agencies),  the Nazi campaign to sterilize hundreds of thousands of genetic "undesirables" led to uncomfortable comparisons with what was already happening across much of North America and Europe. 

Davenport himself denounced Hitler's plan as being a "little too unconservative"  and added that "It is desirable to sterilize in many cases, but common sense must be used in administering any sterilization in law...The chief objections are that it interferes with personal liberty.  In the case of males who lose the feeling of pride and paternity, they are likely to lose of feeling of responsibility for their legal dependents.  The great advantage of sterilization is that it dries up the stream of those who inevitably become wards of the state."   

But Charles Davenport was hardly the only one to defend the need for sterilizing undesirables.  Research studies such as the Jukes and Kallikak studies of previous decades continued to be invoked to justify  the practice as a way of curbing "genetic undesirables".   By 1940, even as newspapers continued denouncing what the Nazis were doing in Europe, more than 33,000 people ha been sterilized across the United States (13,731 men and 19,304 women).   While most of these sterilizations were technically voluntary (or else involved the consent of a parent or guardian), the question of how voluntary they really were may never be known for certain.   While there were certainly legal battles opposing sterilization, typically with the support of the Catholic Church and other anti-sterilization factions, most sterilizations were carried out with a minimum of publicity.

Though vasectomies on males were relatively simple and safe to carry out, sterilizing females was often far more hazardous.  Known as a salpingeotomy, the procedure involved removing one or both of a woman's Fallopian tubes.   This was delicate surgery involving the opening of the abdominal wall and required a general anesthetic.    Assuming no complications (this was in a pre-antibiotic era), women typically required a week or more in hospital before being released.   Even eugenicists like Harry Laughlin stressed that salpingeotomies should only be carried out by skilled surgeons though this was often ignored when it came to sterilizing women  in prisons or mental institutions.   Though only a few deaths were reported (usually due to complications from the anesthetic), there were probably far more  that were either ignored or else attributed to other causes.   

At the same time, many states also enacted laws intended to restrict marriage to people deemed to be fit to reproduce.  In Delaware, for example, a law passed in 1935 banned marriage or epileptics, people of "any taint of insanity or unsound mind" and anyone with a communicable disease such as tuberculosis (this was later changed to apply one to anyone suffering from syphilis).  

But Charles Davenport also relied on his work with the Eugenics Record Office to highlight the dangers of racial mixing, a.k.a.  miscegenation.  His book, Race Crossing in Jamaica (1929)  contained much of the research he had completed up to that time which supposedly showed how inbreeding between white and black populations in Jamaica resulted in a "weakening" of the country's culture and economy over time.   While eminent statistician Karl Pearson  denounced the book saying that ' the only thing that is apparent in the whole of this lengthy treatise is that the samples are too small and drawn from too heterogeneous a population to provide any trustworthy conclusions at all",  it still carried enough weight with racist supporters to ease the passage of anti-miscegenation laws across many U.S. states.  

But the tide was slowly turning against Charles Davenport and his Eugenics Record Office.   Refugees fleeing occupied Europe continued to spread word about what the Nazis were doing in occupied Europe (including the notorious Aktion T-4) and more people than ever were dubious about the supposed benefits that eugenics would bring.   In 1935, a review panel funded by the Carnegie Foundation called for a halt to all eugenics research and, in 1939, the Eugenics Records Office was officially closed.  

Despite this opposition though, Charles Davenport and his supporters continued to defend his racist research as being a necessary part of eugenics and encouraged schools and universities to include his books and research papers in their courses.   He and Harry Laughlin also continued to be involved with the Nazi eugenics movement, including accepting honorary degrees, holding editorial positions with prominent German journals, and contributing to academics publications right up to the United States' formal entry into World War Two.    

Though Davenport had been forced into retirement by this time, this just gave him more free time to give lectures on eugenics across the United States.  In 1940, he gave one of his final lectures at the Battle Creek Sanatorium in Miami, Florida at the invitation of fellow eugenicist John Harvey Kellogg.   Far from being subdued by the setbacks he had experienced, Davenport talked about his ongoing research into studying twins and his plans to examine U.S. draft records to measure physiological changes over time.  He also talked about plans that he and Kellogg had for a future race betterment conference once the world was at peace again.   As it happened, that particular planned never panned out as Kellogg and Harry Laughlin both died in 1943 and Davenport died of pneumonia a year later,  With their passing, the era of scientific eugenics was largely over though many of the policies that it had helped foster, including sterilizations and anti-miscegnation laws, would persist for decades afterward.

While eugenics remains mostly out of favour these days, it continues to be invoked by white supremacists and far-right groups worldwide.  Along with relying on the writings of Charles Davenport, et al, for inspiration, these groups also look to more modern conspiracy theories, including the "Great Replacement" theory proposed by French writer Reynaud Camus.  According to this theory, a global elite is deliberately conspiring against Aryan populations of Europe and North America and replacing them with "non-white" populations via low birth rates and liberal immigration policies.    And it seems to be falling on receptive ears given that Anders Brevik, the shooter who carried out the 2011 Norway attacks later claimed that his actions were intended to protect the Nordic race from Islamic immigration.   Shooters responsible for similar attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand, Charleston, South Carolina, and El Paso, Texas.  

But the specter of eugenics  also continues to be invoked due to many of the actions taken by the current U.S. federal administration.   This includes reports of involuntary sterilization of men women detained by immigration as well as anti-immigrant policies aimed at preventing a perceived influx of non-white refugees.     As for the next chapter in the eugenics saga, that remains to be seen.

 

 

The Rise and Fall of the "Clearing House of Cupid" (Part One of Two)

By all accounts, the large old-fashioned white building standing on an 80-acre estate on Syosset Road, near Cold Harbor, Long Island wasn't a particularly scenic place.   It's main claim to fame was that it was the site of the Eugenics Record Office (informally known as the "Clearing House of Cupid").   Between 1910 and 1939, the office served as the center for eugenics research across the United States and its influence over public policy, not to mention the lives of countless thousands of men and women, would be profound.

Though the eugenics movement of the early 20th century got its start in the United Kingdom, largely spurred by the writings of such notables as Francis Galton,  it was in the United States that the movement would truly take root.   In an era of rising racial tensions as well as the perceived threat of the thousands of immigrants entering the country through Ellis Island, applying the "scientific" principles of eugenics to "weed out" undesirable genetic traits and encourage the development of a race of improved humans was irresistible to many.   Since "anti-miscegenation" laws banning marriages between people of different racial groups were already in place in many states, the appeal of expanding these laws to limit marriage to people with "positive" genes, or at least providing prospective couples with the genetic counseling to make such choices seemed eminently sensible.

Or so, Charles Benedict Davenport thought.

An eminent biologist with an aristocratic bearing, Davenport became one of the true leaders of the American Eugenics Movement and the director of the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory.  It was there that he founded the Eugenics Record Office in 1910 and, for many years, he remained the public face for eugenics across the United States.   Through various public appearances, lectures, and newspaper articles, Davenport continued to champion the need for more stringent laws governing marriage as well as the establishment of "State Eugenics Boards" to determine who was fit for marriage (and who wasn't).   While the Eugenics Record Office he ran didn't have that kind of power, he still encouraged young men and woman across the United States to send in data concerning any marriage they were contemplating so that he and his team could determine the suitability of these matches.  

To make these applications even easier, Davenport even had a special blank form that could be sent out to anyone who asked for it.    With the lofty title of "index to germ plasm: a parallel record of innate traits for prospective marriage", the form needed to be filled out by both parties to determine the presence of positive and negative traits that could affect marital success.   Once the form was received, Davenport's office then provided a "scientific" determination of whether the match would be for the eugenic good of the race.   

Along with pronouncements on the likelihood of such traits as hair and eye color being passed on to any children of the proposed marriage, Davenport's team also looked for evidence of prospective insanity or vulnerability to diseases such as cancer and tuberculosis (never mind that genetic testing was almost completely nonexistent at the time).   During the summer months,  Davenport and Eugenics Record Office Superintendent Harry H. Laughlin also operated a  training school for eugenicists where applicants with the necessary college degree could learn to become eugenics field workers 

Though Davenport himself claimed to be "unusually liberal" when it came to heredity, the records maintained at Cold Springs still represented an encyclopedic database for would-be eugenicists to consult free of charge.  This also included thousands of "surname trait cards" that could be searched to determine how many people with the same surname had adverse genetic traits.  For example, anyone searching for people with the surname of "Brown" or "Smith" who shared some common trait such as a hare-lip or depression, could receive the information free of charge.   

With funding from fervid eugenicist John D. Rockefeller as well as Mrs. E.H. Harriman (who also donated the building and the land on which the Office was situated), Davenport and Laughlin oversaw a staff of 34 field workers who were in charge of collecting and maintaining the archives as well as handling all information requests and conducting research on various topics related to eugenics.   This included family studies looking at the effects of inbreeding in some communities as well as geographic-based studies (basically a look at the :"good and bad blood" in a given community).   They also collected family "pedigrees" relating to musical or mathematic talent, vulnerability to tuberculosis, and hundreds of other positive and negative traits.

It was Harry Laughlin who provided reporters with what he felt was the ultimate purpose of the "Clearing House of Cupid":

"Eugenics is a long-time investment.  Fundamentally, it has two purposes - the first to supply some means of cutting off the supply of degenerate and defective social misfits;  the second to increase the fecundity of eugenically desirable families.  The first we call negative eugenics; the second, constructive eugenics... We know from the great superiority of the cultivated plant and the domesticated animal what splendid results may result from intelligent mating.  It is one of the functions of this office to promote such intelligent mating and to study how to cut off the supply of defectives."

Though Davenport and Laughlin denied being more preoccupied with defective rather than superior genes,  there is no disputing that he Eugenics Record Office had its greatest success when it came to "negative eugenics"    Field workers from the Office crisscrossed the country to find examples of genetic "defectives" and, almost inevitably, championed the passage of laws to sterilize different populations deemed to be unfit, including patients in psychiatric hospitals, people with substance abuse problems, and career criminals.  This also meant administering "intelligence tests" to would-be immigrants to weed out anyone deemed not to "measure up" to societal standards of mental ability.   That a disproportionate number of these "defectives" happened to belong to racial and ethnic minorities was hardly acknowledged (though it was often used to justify blatantly racist policies across the United States).  

With the still-controversial Buck vs. Bell Supreme Court decision in 1927, eugenics sterilization statutes were passed in were passed across the United States.   It was Harry Laughlin who first advocated what he termed a "Model Eugenical Sterilization Law" calling for the sterilization of anyone who "because of degenerate or defective hereditary qualities are potential parents of socially inadequate offspring, regardless of whether such persons be in the population at large or inmates of custodial institutions, regardless also of the personality, sex, age, marital condition, race, or possessions of such person. Standards established and terms defined by the statute."   

Along with being a model for U.S. states to follow (often replacing relatively toothless laws already in place), Laughlin's Model Law also helped inspired Adolf Hitler's his Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring which was enacted in 1933.    In fact, Hitler and his fellow Nazi eugenicists held Laughlin in such high regard that he was offered an honorary doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1936.   Unfortunately, for all the popularity that eugenics had enjoyed up until then, news stories about what was happening in Nazi Germany and other parts of occupied Europe would soon redefine how people viewed eugenics.

Continue to Part Two