Sterilization for human betterment : a summary of results of 6,000 operations in California, 1909-1929 / by E.S. Gosney ... and Paul Popenoe.

  • E. S. Gosney
Date:
1929
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Sterilization for human betterment : a summary of results of 6,000 operations in California, 1909-1929 / by E.S. Gosney ... and Paul Popenoe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/232 (page VIII)
    INTRODUCTION yearly in caring for defectives in its public insti¬ tutions, and estimated that the civilized world was paying $5,000,000,000 annually for the same purpose. This cost in money is trivial compared with the heartaches, crime, and horror that find their origin in these defectives. No sane man would wish to bring into life a child so defective that it could not be a self-sustaining, respectable citizen. Such children should never be born. They are a burden to themselves, a burden to their family, a burden to the state, and a menace to civiliza¬ tion. Certainly if anything can be done, which is sanctioned by common sense and good morals, to prevent this accumulation of human misery and degeneracy, it should be done. What can be done? The prevention of reproduction by castration has been practiced as far back as we find historic records. But sterilization by the simple surgical operation now practiced and herein described, without mutilation and without unsexing the patient, was discovered only in the last half cen¬ tury. Theoretically it should have no effect except to prevent parenthood, and experience indicates that it has no other effect. Nearly twenty years ago California, Indiana, and other states passed laws authorizing the sterili- [ viii ]