Eugenics in race and state.

  • International Congress of Eugenics
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

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

Credit: Eugenics in race and state. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    480/534 (page 464)
    464 DISCUSSIONS Dr. Laughlin : Several hundred before the statute was enacted. Nearly all of them were performed in the Reformatory at Jeffersonville, an institution for young men. These operations were performed by Dr. Harry C. Sharp, who began this work in 1899, eight years before the law was enacted, and later sought legislative authorization. After the thing was done the law was enacted; under the law only one hundred and twenty cases were performed. These operations ceased in Indiana because Governor Marshall, who later became vice-president of the United States, told the superintendents of the subject institutions that if they continued them, he would veto their appropriations. The work fell into' disuse, and finally the Supreme Court of Indiana (1921) declared the law as written, unconstitutional, on the usual grounds of lack of due process of law and its being a bill of attainder. Dr. Fisher: I thought it Was a dead law in Connecticut. Dr. Laughlin: It is now, but while active, seven or eight years ago, 27 operations were performed by Dr. Pollack in the hospital for the insane at Norwich. Dr. Koegel: When the law is declared illegal, and it is so when it is declared un¬ constitutional, does that create any damage suits? Dr. Laughlin: None up to the present time, although in many states the institution •officials have been obliged to discontinue the use of the law because of the fear that they would be held personally liable. In most, but not all of the states, the laws have been used principally in voluntary cases, in which cases, of course, there has been no fear of damage suits. In a test case in New Jersey there was an injunction issued against the superintendent of the institution preventing him from performing the proposed operation. That is why in this state the law was held unconstitutional. If Alice Smith, the subject of the test case, had been operated upon subsequently to the injunction, her family could probably have gotten damages. Dr. Key: I should like to ask the speaker if he attaches any significance to the fact that the states that have passed the law are western and those that have not are eastern. Is it due to the superior foresight of the western states? Dr. Fisher: In the East anything that is new is scandalous. THE SOCIAL EVIL IN RELATION TO EUGENICS Daisy M. O. Robinson Dr. Fisher: We are apt to think that environment and manner of life cannot affect the next generation. Shell shock, malnutrition, poisoning from alcohol or tobacco, possibly tea and coffee, etc., we think are not inherited, yet there may be something very much like such inheritance, in the practical sense. Whether there is inheritance in the biological sense is not the only matter. We are anxious to make a more perfect mankind and we are interested in the practical side of it. I should like to take this opportunity of emphasizing the importance of uniting the study of Hygiene and Eugenics.