"Polyhybrid Heterogeneous Bastards": Promoting Medical Genetics in America in the 1930s and 1940s

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences

Volumn 61, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 415-455

  Comfort, Nathaniel ^a  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE   (United States)

Author keywords

Eugenics; Human genetics; Laurence Hasbrouck Snyder; Madge Thurlow Macklin; Medical genetics; William Allan

Indexed keywords

HISTORY; HUMAN; MEDICAL GENETICS; REVIEW; UNITED STATES;

EUGENICS; GENETICS, MEDICAL; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HUMANS; UNITED STATES;

EID: 33749021106     PISSN: 00225045     EISSN: 14684373     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/jrl001     Document Type: Review

References (188)

1. Charles Davenport, "Eugenics and the Physician," N. Y. Med. J., 1912, 96, 1195-99, 1195.
2. Charles Davenport, N. Y. Med. J., Ibid., 1198.
3. William H. Schneider, "The Eugenics Movement in France," in The Wellborn Science: Eugenics in Germany, France, Brazil, and Russia, ed. Mark B. Adams (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 69-109, 72, 103;
4. J. P. Gaudilliere, "Mendelism and Medicine: Controlling Human Inheritance in Local Contexts, 1920-1960," Comptes Rendus de la Academie des Sciences III, 2000, 323, 1117-26.
5. Greta Jones, Social Hygiene in 20th-Century Britain (London: Croom Helm, 1986), ch. 1;
6. Archibald Edward Garrod, "The Incidence of Alkaptonuria: A Study in Chemical Individuality," Lancet, 1902, 2, 1616-20.
7. Sheila Faith Weiss, "The Race Hygiene Movement in Germany," in The Wellborn Science, ed. Adams, 8-68, 12;
8. Robert Proctor, Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 79-81.
9. Angus McLaren, Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945 (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1997), 28.
10. Barbara A. Kimmelman, "The American Breeders' Association: Genetics and Eugenics in an Agricultural Context, 1903-13," Soc. Stud. Sci., 1983, 13, 163-204;
11. Diane Paul and Barbara Kimmelman, "Mendel in America: Theory and Practice, 1900-1919," in The American Development of Biology, ed. Ronald Rainger, Keith Benson, and Jane Maienschein (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 281-310.
12. The eugenics literature is vast, but the works that inform this article include the following: Garland E. Allen, "The Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, 1910-1940," Osiris, 1986, 2, 225-64;
13. Elazar Barkan, Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
14. Elof Axel Carlson, The Unfit: A History of a Bad Idea (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 2001);
15. Kathy Cooke, "The Limits of Heredity: Nature and Nurture in American Eugenics before 1915," J. Hist. Biol., 1998, 31, 263-78;
16. Troy Duster, Backdoor to Eugenics (New York: Routledge, 1990);
17. Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995);
18. Kenneth Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972);
19. Mark H. Haller, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963);
20. Diane B. Paul, Controlling Human Heredity: 1865 to the Present (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1995);
21. Diane B. Paul, The Politics of Heredity: Essays on Eugenics, Biomedicine, and the Nature-Nurture Debate (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1998).
22. The Bulletins of the Eugenics Record Office, in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, for example, carry articles on heredity in relation to pellagra, tuberculosis, eye diseases, and fragile bones, among other conditions: Albert Govaerts, "The Hereditary Factor in the Etiology of Tuberculosis," E. R. O. Bull., 1922, 23;
23. Lucien Howe, "A Bibliography of Hereditary Eye Defects," E. R. O. Bull., 1921, 21;
24. Charles B. Davenport, "The Hereditary Factor in Pellagra," E. R. O. Bull., 1916, 16, 1-29;
25. Elizabeth B. Muncey, "A Study of the Heredity of Pellagra in Spartanburg County, South Carolina," E. R. O. Bull., 1916, 16, 30-75;
26. H. S. Conard and Charles B. Davenport, "Hereditary Fragility of Bone," E. R. O. Bull., 1915, 14, 1-30.
27. Lewellys Barker, "Heredity in the Clinic," Am. J. Med. Sci., 1927, 173, 597-605, 604.
28. Lewellys Barker, " Am. J. Med. Sci., Ibid., 598.
29. Debora Kamrat-Lang ("Healing Society: Medical Language in American Eugenics," Science in Context, 1995, 8, 175-196, 190-91) sees eugenicists and physicians in a power struggle, with leading eugenicists such as Harry Laughlin seeking to wrest authority over hereditary health from the doctors. However, not only Barker but also the main figures in the present article clearly sought to bring the authority of genetics into medicine.
30. S. C. Reed, "A Short History of Human Genetics in the U.S.A," Am. J. Med. Genet., 1979, 3, 282-95;
31. Ian H. Porter, "Evolution of Genetic Counseling in America," in Genetic Counseling, ed. Herbert A. Lubs and Felix de la Cruz (New York: Raven Press, 1977), 17-34;
32. Claude Nash Herndon, "Genetics in the Medical School Curriculum," Am. J. Hum. Genet., 1956, 8, 1-7;
33. Laurence H. Snyder, "Old and New Pathways in Human Genetics," Am. J. Hum. Genet., 1951, 3, 1-16;
34. E. L. Green, "Laurence Hasbrouck Snyder: Pioneer in Human Genetics," Am. J. Hum. Genet., 1987, 41, 276-85;
35. J. M. Opitz, "Biographical Note - Laurence H. Snyder," Am. J. Med. Genet., 1981, 8, 447-48;
36. G. G. Robertson and J. C. Haley, "Genetics in the Medical Curriculum," J. Assoc. Am. Med. Coll., 1946, 4, 351-53;
37. Claude Nash Herndon, "William Allan: An Appreciation," Am. J. Hum. Genet., 1962, 14, 97-101;
38. Herluf Strandskov, "Introduction to the Published Program of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics," Am. J. Hum. Genet., 1952, 4, 233-36.
39. J. Andrew Mendelsohn, "Medicine and the Making of Bodily Inequality in Twentiethcentury Europe," in Heredity and Infection: The History of Disease Transmission, ed. Jean-Paul Gaudilliere and Ilana Loewy (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 21-79, 55-58.
40. Diane Paul has made the case for the eugenic origins of medical genetics in "Eugenic Origins of Medical Genetics," in her The Politics of Heredity. Her main focus, however, is genetic counseling rather than genetic research.
41. Susan Lindee ("Genetic Disease in the 1960s: A Structural Revolution," Am. J. Med. Genet., 2002, 115, 75-82, also has pointed out that several founding members of the American Society of Human Genetics, established in 1948, had eugenic credentials.
42. Frederick Osborn, "William Allan, M. D.," N. C. Med. J., 1947, 8, 192-93, 191.
43. Unless otherwise noted, the following biographical details are taken from Ibid. and Herndon, "William Allan."
44. Herndon, "William Allan";
45. Jan Blodgett, North Carolina Medical College [Web page] (Davidson College Archives, 12 July 2000) viewed 5 July 2005; available from http:// www.davidson.edu/administrative/library/archives/history/exhibits. html#medical%20college.
46. See William Allan, "The Effect of Emetine on Entamoeba Histolytica in Stools," J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther., 1921, 16, 21-33.
47. Osborn, "William Allan, M. D.," 1.
48. Elizabeth Allan Berger, oral history interview by C. Nash Herndon, 12 March 1976, Bowman Gray Medical School Archives, Coy C. Carpenter Library, Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
49. Green, "Laurence Hasbrouck Snyder," 278-79.
50. Quoted in Laurence H. Snyder, "The Principles of Gene Distribution in Human Populations," Yale J. Biol. Med., 1947, 19, 817-33, 824.
51. For biographical background on Snyder, see Green, "Laurence Hasbrouck Snyder";
52. Opitz, "Snyder."
53. The annual Year Book of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Genetics for 1921 (114) mentions Snyder as having done statistical analyses on a project involving measurements of maze-running ability of alcoholized rats; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory also has an enrollment card signed by him for June 1921. See Employment Card, Carnegie Institution of Washington Station for Experimental Evolution/Department of Genetics Collection, Box "Employment Cards," Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Archives, Cold Spring Harbor, New York. Snyder spent either the summers of 1920 and 1921 or those of 1921 and 1922 at Cold Spring Harbor.
54. Opitz, "Snyder," 447.
55. Charles Dollard interview of Frederick Osborn, 6 February 1939, in folder 11, "Allan, William," III.A.1 A-B, Box 1, Carnegie Corporation of New York Records, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University Libraries, New York City, New York (hereafter, Allan file).
56. Anon, "On the Role of Laurence H. Snyder in the Development of Human and Medical Genetics in the United States; An Oral History Tape Interview," Am. J. Med. Genet., 1981, 8, 449-68, 468;
57. Green, "Laurence Hasbrouck Snyder," 286.
58. For biographical information on Macklin, see Barry Mehler, "Macklin, Madge Thurlow, Feb. 6, 1893-March 14, 1962," in Notable American Women: The Modern Period: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Barbara Sicherman and Carol Hurd Green (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1980), 451-52.
59. Barry Mehler, "Macklin, Madge Thurlow, Feb. 6, 1893-March 14, 1962," in Notable American Women: The Modern Period: A Biographical Dictionary, 1980), 451-52.Ibid.
60. Barry Mehler, "Macklin, Madge Thurlow, Feb. 6, 1893-March 14, 1962," in Notable American Women: The Modern Period: A Biographical Dictionary, 1980), 451-52.Ibid.
61. McLaren, Our Own Master Race, 129-30.
62. Herndon, "William Allan," 98.
63. As a recent example of this view, Allan cited Edwin Bramwell, "Discussion on Migraine," Br. Med. J., 1926, 2, 765.
64. In the mid-1930s, the American constitutionalist George Draper looked at migraine in G. A. Touraine and George Draper, "The Migrainous Patient: A Constitutional Study," J. Nerv. Ment. Dis., 1934, 80, 1-204.
65. Francis Graham Crookshank, Migraine and Its Allies (London: Balliere, Tindall and Cox, 1924).
66. J. Arthur Buchanan, "The Mendelianism of Migraine," Med. Record, 1920, 98, 807-8.
67. William Allan, "The Neuropathic Taint in Migraine," Arch. Neurol. Psych., 1927, 18, 587-90.
68. William Allan, "The Relation of Occupation to Migraine," J. Nerv. Ment. Dis., 1927, 66, 131-32.
69. William Allan, "The Sex Ratio in Migraine," Arch. Neurol. Psych., 1932, 27, 1436-40.
70. Both quotes in this paragraph are from William Allan, "The Inheritance of Migraine," Arch. Intern. Med., 1929, 42, 590-99, 593.
71. William Allan, "Heredity in Hypertension: A Statistical Study," Arch. Intern. Med., 1933, 52, 954-58, 955.
72. William Allan, " Arch. Intern. Med., Ibid., 958.
73. William Allan, "Heredity in Diabetes," Ann. Intern. Med., 1933, 6, 1272-74, 1274.
74. William Allan, "Preventing Hereditary Diseases that Wreck Childhood," J. Assoc. Am. Med. Coll., 1939, 14, 231-34, 232.
75. William Allan, "Eugenic Significance of Retinitis Pigmentosa," Arch. Ophthalmol., 1937, 18, 938-47.
76. William Allan, "Preventing Hereditary Diseases that Wreck Childhood," J. Assoc. Am. Med. Coll., 1939, 14, 231-34, 232.
77. Daniel Fox, "Health Policy and Changing Epidemiology in the United States: Chronic Disease in the Twentieth Century," in Unnatural Causes: The Three Leading Killer Diseases in America, ed. Russell Charles Maulitz (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 11-31.
78. William Allan, "Medicine's Need of Eugenics," South. Med. Surg. J., 1936, 98, 416-17, 416.
79. William Allan, "The Relationship of Eugenics to Public Health," Eugenical News, 1936, 21, 73-75, 74.
80. Allan, "Preventing Hereditary Diseases that Wreck Childhood," 231-32.
81. William Allan, "Why Have Muscular Dystrophy? A Lethal and Unnecessary Gene," Trans. Assoc. Am. Physicians, 1938, 53, 184.
82. Allan, "The Relationship of Eugenics to Public Health," 75.
83. Francis Galton, "Hereditary Improvement," Fraser's Mag., 1873, 7, 116-30, 125.
84. Allan, "Medicine's Need of Eugenics," 417.
85. Allan, "Eugenic Significance of Retinitis Pigmentosa," 947;
86. Allan, "Why Have Muscular Dystrophy?";
87. William Allan, "Relation of Hereditary Pattern to Clinical Severity as Illustrated by Peroneal Atrophy," Arch. Intern. Med., 1939, 63, 1123-31, 1126.
88. William Allan, "Presidential Address: North Carolina Medical Society," N. C. Med. J., 1940, 1, 280-82, 282.
89. "CD and Mr. Osborn (telephone)," 20 December 1938; Charles Dollard to L. C. Dunn, 7 February 1939; Charles Dollard to William Allan, 25 April 1939, Allan to Dollard, 5 October 1942, Allan file.
90. Herndon, "William Allan," 99.
91. Allan, "Preventing Hereditary Diseases that Wreck Childhood," 233.
92. Allan, "Medicine's Need of Eugenics," 416.
93. Edward J. Larson, Sex, Race, and Science: Eugenics in the Deep South (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 157.
94. For more on Draper and the Pioneer Fund, see William H. Tucker, The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002).
95. David Bass et al., "Eugenics and Bowman Gray School of Medicine (now Wake Forest University School of Medicine)" (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Wake Forest University of School of Medicine, 2003).
96. Philip Reilly, The Surgical Solution: A History of Involuntary Sterilization in the United States (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 135.
97. Franz J. Kallman, "The William Allan Memorial Award for Outstanding Work in Human Genetics," Am. J. Hum. Genet., 1962, 14, 95-101, 96.
98. Madge Thurlow Macklin and J. Thornley Bowman, "Inheritance of Peroneal Atrophy," J. Am. Med. Assoc., 1926, 86, 613-16.
99. For a recent review of the genetics of Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, see P. Young and U. Suter, "The Causes of Charcot-Marie-Tooth Disease," Cell. Mol. Life Sci., 2003, 60, 2547-60.
100. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Hereditary Abnormalities of the Eye I. Introduction: The Laws of Heredity and Their Exemplification in the Inheritance of Eye Color," Can. Med. Assoc. J., 1926, 16, 1340-42.
101. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Hereditary Abnormalities of the Eye III. (Section 1) Anomalies of the Entire Eyeball," Can. Med. Assoc. J., 1927, 17, 327-31, 331.
102. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Hereditary Abnormalities of the Eye III. (Section 2) Anomalies of the Entire Eyeball (continued)," Can. Med. Assoc. J., 1927, 17, 421-23, 423.
103. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Hereditary Abnormalities of the Eye V. Inheritable Defects of the Iris and Lens," Can. Med. Assoc. J., 1927, 17, 937-42, 942.
104. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Should the Teaching of Genetics as Applied to Medicine have a Place in the Medical Curriculum?," J. Assoc. Am. Med. Coll., 1932, 7, 368-73;
105. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "'Medical Genetics': A Necessity in the Up-to-date Medical Curriculum," J. Hered., 1932, 23, 485-86.
106. Macklin, "Teaching of Genetics as Applied to Medicine," 368.
107. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "The Teaching of Inheritance of Disease to Medical Students: A Proposed Course in Medical Genetics," Ann. Intern. Med., 1933, 6, 1335-43, 1336.
108. On Jordan's views, see H. E. Jordan, "The Place of Eugenics in the Medical Curriculum," in Problems in Eugenics: Papers Communicated to the First International Eugenics Congress (London: Eugenics Education Society, 1912), 396-99;
109. Gregory Michael Dorr, "Segregation's Science: The American Eugenics Movement in Virginia, 1900-1980" (Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 2000).
110. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Medical Genetics: An Essential Part of the Medical Curriculum from the Standpoint of Prevention," J. Assoc. Am. Med. Coll., 1933, 8, 291-304, 292.
111. Macklin, "Teaching of Genetics as Applied to Medicine," 370.
112. Macklin, "Teaching of Genetics as Applied to Medicine," Ibid., 371.
113. Macklin, "Teaching of Genetics as Applied to Medicine," 371.Ibid.
114. For a nearly identical trope, see Larson, Sex, Race, and Science, 85.
115. Macklin, "Medical Genetics: An Essential Part of the Medical Curriculum," 296-97.
116. Macklin, "Teaching of Genetics as Applied to Medicine," 372.
117. For details and discussion of Macklin's writing on feeblemindedness, see McLaren, Our Own Master Race, ch. 7.
118. Macklin, "Teaching Inheritance to Medical Students," 1341-43.
119. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "The Role of Heredity in Disease," Medicine, 1935, 14, 1-75.
120. James T. Patterson, The Dread Disease: Cancer and Modern American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), 60.
121. The English version of their paper appeared three years later: K. Yamagiwa and K. Ichikawa, "Experimental Study of the Pathogenesis of Carcinoma," J. Cancer Res., 1918, 3, 1-29.
122. See Robert Proctor, Cancer Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1994);
123. David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).
124. Patterson, Dread Disease, 58-59;
125. Karen A. Rader, Making Mice (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004);
126. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Inheritance in Cancer, A Note on the Work of Maud Slye," Can. Med. Assoc. J., 1926, 16, 1119-20;
127. J. P. Simonds, "The Nature of Cancer," Sci. Monthly, 1935, 40:6, 535-40, 540.
128. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "The Hereditary Factor in Human Neoplasms," Q. Rev. Biol., 1932, 7, 255-79, 255.
129. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Has a Real Increase in Lung Cancer been Proved?," Ann. Intern. Med., 1940, 17, 308-24.
130. Madge Thurlow Macklin and Charles C. Macklin, "Does Chronic Irritation Cause Primary Carcinoma of the Human Lung?," Arch. Pathol., 1940, 30, 924-55.
131. Macklin, "The Hereditary Factor in Human Neoplasms," 278.
132. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Heredity and the Physician," Sci. Monthly, 1941, 52, 56-67, 65.
133. Mehler, "Macklin," 452.
134. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Comparison of the Number of Breast-Cancer Deaths Observed in Relatives of Breast-Cancer Patients, and the Number Expected on the Basis of Mortality Rates," J. Natl. Cancer Inst., 1959, 22, 927-51.
135. Henry T. Lynch, "Genetic Heterogeneity and Breast Cancer: Variable Tumor Spectra," in Genetics and Breast Cancer, ed. Henry T. Lynch (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1981), 134-73, 135.
136. F. Clarke Fraser, "On Being a Medical Geneticist," Am. J. Hum. Genet., 1963, 15, 1-10, 1.
137. William B. Provine, The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971).
138. On Landsteiner's discovery of the blood groups, see William H. Schneider, "Chance and Social Setting in the Application of the Discovery of Blood Groups," Bull. Hist. Med., 1983, 57, 545-62.
139. For a thorough treatment of the debate from the German perspective, see Pauline M. H. Mazumdar, "Two Models for Human Genetics: Blood Grouping and Psychiatry in Germany between the World Wars," Bull. Hist. Med., 1996, 70, 609-57.
140. Schneider, "Chance and Social Setting in the Application of the Discovery of Blood Groups."
141. Mazumdar, "Two Models for Human Genetics," 629.
142. Laurence H. Snyder, "Human Blood Groups and Their Bearing on Racial Relationships," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A., 1925, 11, 406-07;
143. Laurence H. Snyder, "Human Blood Groups: Their Inheritance and Racial Significance," Am. J. Phys. Anthropol., 1926, 9, 233-63;
144. Laurence H. Snyder, "Blood Grouping and Its Practical Applications," Archives Pathol. Lab. Med., 1927, 4, 215-57;
145. Laurence H. Snyder, "The 'Laws' of Serologic Race-Classification, " Hum. Biol., 1930, 2, 128-33.
146. Snyder, "Human Blood Groups and Their Bearing on Racial Relationships," 407.
147. Laurence H. Snyder, Blood Grouping in Relation to Clinical and Legal Medicine (Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins, 1929).
148. Laurence H. Snyder, "Linkage in Man," Eugenical News, 1931, 18, 117-19.
149. Arthur L Fox, "The Relationship between Chemical Constitution and Taste," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A., 1932, 18, 115-20;
150. Laurence H. Snyder, "Inherited Taste Deficiency," Science, 1931, 74, 151-52;
151. Albert F Blakeslee, "Genetics of Sensory Thresholds: Taste for Phenylthiocarbamide," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A., 1932, 18, 120-26.
152. See for example Laurence H. Snyder and George M. Curtis, "An Inherited 'Hollow Chest': Koilosternia, a New Character Dependent upon a Dominant Autosomal Gene," J. Hered., 1934, 25, 445-47;
153. Laurence H. Snyder, R. C. Baxter, and A. W. Knisely, "Studies in Human Inheritance XIX. - The Linkage Relations of the Blood Groups, the Blood Types, and Taste Deficiency to P. T. C.," J. Hered., 1941, 32, 22-25.
154. Berger-Herndon interview, 16.
155. H. Fangerau, "'Baur-Fischer-Lenz' in 1921-1940 Critical Book Reviews: A Quantitative Study of Contemporary Reception of Racial Eugenics Theories," Medizinhist J., 2003, 38, 57-81;
156. H. Fangerau and I. Muller, "The Standard Textbook on Racial Hygiene by Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer, and Fritz Lenz as Viewed by the Psychiatric and Neurological Communities from 1921 to 1940," Nervenarzt, 2002, 73, 1039-46;
157. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, 204-9.
158. Laurence H. Snyder, The Principles of Heredity (Boston, New York: D.C. Heath and Company, 1935).
159. Laurence H. Snyder, "Genetics in Medicine," Ohio State Med. J., 1933, 29, 705-8, 707.
160. Laurence H. Snyder, The Principles of Heredity, 2nd ed. (Boston: Heath, 1940), chapter 29, "Eugenics," quotations from 400, 407, 411.
161. Laurence H. Snyder, "The Study of Human Heredity," Sci. Monthly, 1940, 51, 536-41, 541.
162. Medical Genetics and Eugenics (Philadelphia: Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1940), Foreword.
163. Maud Slye, "Cancer and Heredity," in Medical Genetics and Eugenics, 109-27, 127.
164. Earnest A. Hooton, "Human Heredity or Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge," in Medical Genetics and Eugenics (Philadelphia: Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1943), 40-60, 40.
165. Laurence H. Snyder, "Heredity and Modern Life," in Medical Genetics and Eugenics (Philadelphia: Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1943), 22-39, 39.
166. J. B. S. Haldane, "A Search for Incomplete Sex-Linkage in Man," Ann. Eugenics, 1936-37, 7, 28-57, 37.
167. Diamond, L. K.; Blackfan, K. D.; Baty, J. M., "Erythroblastosis Fetalis and Its Association with Universal Edema of the Fetus, Icterus Gravis Neonatorum and Anemia of the Newborn." J. Pediat., 1932, 1, 269-309.
168. Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, #111680, found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez.
169. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "Erythroblastosis Fetalis," Am. J. Dis. Child., 1944, 67, 445-49;
170. Madge Thurlow Macklin, "The Diagnosis of Rh Incompatibility, especially by Microscopic Appearances: Its Relation to the Syndrome formerly Diagnosed as Erythroblastosis," J. Pediatr., 1944, 25, 33-54.
171. Laurence H. Snyder, Murray D. Schonfeld, and Edith M. Offerman, "The Rh Factor and Feeblemindedness," J. Hered., 1945, 36, 9-10.
172. Laurence H. Snyder, "The Future Development of Medical Genetics," in Medical Genetics: A Series of Lectures Presented to the Medical Schools of Duke University, Wake Forest College, and the University of North Carolina (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1941), 113-22, 113.
173. Laurence H. Snyder, "Medical Genetics and Public Health," Bull. N. Y. Acad. Med., 1946, 22, 566-87, 566.
174. Laurence H. Snyder, Bull. N. Y. Acad. Med., Ibid., 586.
175. Strandskov, "Introduction to the Published Program of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics," 233.
176. Snyder, "Old and New Pathways in Human Genetics," 382.
177. Laurence H. Snyder, "The Genetic Approach to Human Individuality," Sci. Monthly, 1949, 68, 165-71.
178. Laurence H. Snyder, Sci. Monthly, Ibid., 167.
179. Laurence H. Snyder, Sci. Monthly, Ibid., 165.
180. Archibald Edward Garrod, Charles R. Scriver, and Barton Childs, Garrod's Inborn Factors in Disease: Including an Annotated Facsimile Reprint of The Inborn Factors in Disease by Archibald E. Garrod (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 181.
181. Ludmerer, Genetics and American Society, 187.
182. Victor A. McKusick, "History of Medical Genetics," in Emery-Rimoin Principles and Practice of Medical Genetics, ed. David L. Rimoin et al. (London and New York: Churchill Livingstone, 2002), 3.
183. This is McKusick's most thorough articulation of the history of his field. He also expressed this idea in a brief article nine years earlier: Victor A. McKusick, "Medical Genetics. A 40-year Perspective on the Evolution of a Medical Specialty from a Basic Science," J. Am. Med. Assoc., 1993, 270, 2351-56.
184. See Charles E. Rosenberg, "The Bitter Fruit: Heredity, Disease, and Social Thought," in No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 25-53.
185. The "new eugenics" idea is widespread. Much of this literature is unproductively alarmist, but the more sober discussions of it include the following: Garland E. Allen, "Essays on Science and Society. Is a New Eugenics Afoot?," Science, 2001, 294, 59-61;
186. Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee, "The Revival of Eugenics in American Popular Culture," J. Am. Med. Womens Assoc., 1997, 52, 45-46;
187. Garland E. Allen, "Modern Biological Determinism: The Violence Initiative, the Human Genome Project, and the New Eugenics," in The Practice of Human Genetics, ed. Michael Fortun and Everett Mendelsohn (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1999), 1-23.
188. My position is close to Diane Paul's in "Eugenic Anxieties, Social Realities, and Political Choices," Soc. Res., 1992, 59, 663-83, although I see more continuity in the eugenic thought from the 1920s to today.