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.

    9/232 (page V)
    INTRODUCTION The human race has developed through count¬ less ages under the laws of heredity by the sur¬ vival of the fittest. The weak and defective have perished. Only the physically strong and men¬ tally alert could withstand the severe conditions of early life, reach maturity, and become the fathers and mothers of the next generation. Modern civilization, human sympathy, and charity have intervened in Nature's plan. The weak and defective are now nursed to maturity and produce their kind. Under Nature's law we bred principally from the top. To-day we breed from the top and bot¬ tom, but more rapidly from the bottom. To-day the most intelligent and efficient, the strongest strains of blood, as a rule, limit their children to a point that means the extinction of a family in a few generations. We need constructive charity along with our present patchwork variety that tends to increase the burdens of race degeneracy and family sui¬ cide. [V]