Thirty-fourth annual report of the Malthusian League (founded 1877) : presented to the Members and Friends at the Annual Meeting on May 22nd, 1912 / by Alice Drysdale Vickery.

  • Vickery, Alice Drysdale.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Thirty-fourth annual report of the Malthusian League (founded 1877) : presented to the Members and Friends at the Annual Meeting on May 22nd, 1912 / by Alice Drysdale Vickery. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    T1i6 Oouiicil of tli6 IVtsltliusiau Lcsgu© d.6sir€s to make it generally known that the presidents of the British Medical Association and of the American Medical Association have both drawn attention in their presidential addresses of 1912 to the importance of restriction of families among the poor and unfit; and that a Judgment of the Hungarian .National Medical Senate in November, 1911, declared that the limitation of families by .prevention of conceiption was absolutely necessary in order to check the widespread evil ol’ attempted abortion. “ It therefore calls upon the medical profession in general to give information upon hygienic means of prevention of conception to all married persons who for it; and it especially calls upon hospital autho- rities, as dealing with the poorest section of the com- munity, to arrange for instruction in this respect to all men and women wdiose means or health or mental condition do not justify their having further additions to their families.” The International Eugenics Congress. The Congress, wlhich was held at the University of London from July 24th to 30th of last year, must be re- garded as an event of great importance in the history of the Neo-Malthusian movement, although considerable hostility to the advocacy of Neo-Malthusian doctrines was shown by a large and influential section of those ]iresent. But it is all the more worthy of note that the actual pronouncements concerning the eugenic aspects of Neo-Malthusianism were hardly in any case definitely adverse, and that many of the most anthoritative sug- gestions for race improvement, such as a longer interval between births, and the provision of better conditions lx>th for mothers and children, were on directly neo- Malthusian lines. The paper of Prof. Alfred Ploetz, President of the German Race-Hygiene Society, actually dealt with ” The Bearing of Neo-Maithusian- i.sm upon Race Hygiene.” Although it contended that the spread of unre(julaied Neo-Malthusian practice ought to be combated, it nevertheless disposed of most