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Max Planck Institute for Brain Research
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/1/20


New building of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt

The Max Planck Institute for Brain Research is located in Frankfurt, Germany. It was founded as Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin 1914, moved to Frankfurt-Niederrad in 1962 and more recently in a new building in Frankfurt-Riedberg. It is one of 83 institutes in the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Gesellschaft).

Research

Research at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research focuses on the operation of networks of neurons in the brain. The institute hosts three scientific departments (with directors Moritz Helmstaedter of the Helmstaedter Department, Gilles Laurent of the Laurent Department, and Erin Schuman of the Schuman Department), the Singer Emeritus Group, two Max Planck Research Groups, namely Johannes Letzkus' Neocortical Circuits Group and Tatjana Tchumatchenko's Theory of Neural Dynamics Group, as well as several additional research units. The common research goal of the Institute is a mechanistic understanding of neurons and synapses, of the structural and functional circuits which they form, of the computational rules which describe their operations, and ultimately, of their roles in driving perception and behavior. The experimental focus is on all scales required to achieve this understanding - from networks of molecules in dendritic compartments to networks of interacting brain areas. This includes interdisciplinary analyses at the molecular, cellular, multi-cellular, network and behavioral levels, often combined with theoretical approaches.

History

The "Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Hirnforschung" (KWI for Brain Research) was founded in Berlin in 1914, making it one of the oldest institutes of the "Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science", itself founded in 1911. It was based on the Neurologische Zentralstation (Neurological Center), a private research institute established by Oskar Vogt in 1898 and run together with his wife Cécile Vogt-Mugnier, also an accomplished brain researcher.

From 1901 to 1910, Vogt's coworker at this institute was Korbinian Brodmann, who in 1909 established the cytoarchitectonic classification of cortical areas still in use today (e.g., his area 17 is the primary visual cortex). Oskar Vogt's own scientific achievements also were in the field of cortical cytoarchitectonics and myeloarchitectonics.

In the 1920s Oskar Vogt became interested in the potential morphological correlates of mental abilities, and hence in the neuroanatomical study of 'elite brains'. When Lenin died of a brain hemorrhage in 1924, his brain was preserved in formaldehyde, where it remained for two years. In 1926, Vogt was recruited by the Soviet government to help establish Lenin's genius via histological investigation of his brain. He was given some space in Moscow to carry out this work and two years later, a spacious and representative brick building that had been confiscated from an American business. In it, he helped establish and then headed the Moscow Brain Institute. Between 1926 and 1930, Vogt travelled to Moscow several times to supervise the work on Lenin's brain by the Russian collaborators who had been trained at Vogt's KWI for Brain Research in Berlin.

In 1927, Vogt gave a preliminary report on his findings in Moscow, concluding from his histological observations that Lenin must have been an athlete in associative thinking ("Assoziationsathlet") - a conclusion deemed farfetched by some of his neurologist colleagues and adversaries. Lenin's brain was, for a time, on display in the Lenin Mausoleum and now rests at Moscow's Brain Institute.

World War I delayed the plans for a new building to house the KWI for Brain Research. The KWI's first proper building in Berlin-Buch was only inaugurated in 1931 under the directorship of Oskar Vogt. It was the world's largest and most modern brain research institute of its time, including Departments of Neurophysiology (Tönnies and Kornmüller), Neurochemistry (Marthe Vogt and Veit), Genetics (Timoféeff-Ressovsky), a Research Clinic (Soeken, Zwirner), and the Neuroanatomical Departments of Oskar and his wife Cécile Vogt. Based on critical remarks Vogt had made about national socialism, a protective attitude towards Jewish coworkers at the institute, and rumors that he was a communist (spirited by his Moscow contacts), Vogt was pressed to early retirement by 1937. The Vogts moved to Neustadt in the Black Forest and established another private brain research institute, funded in part by the family of steel baron Krupp (who had already funded Vogt´s first private institute in Berlin) and by Vogt´s own funds. In 1937, Hugo Spatz, a pupil of Franz Nissl, became Vogt's successor as director of the KWI for Brain Research and head of the Neuroanatomy Department. During his tenure, the Departments of Neuropathology (Hallervorden) and of Tumor Research (Tönnis) were added. One focus of both Spatz’s and Hallervorden’s histological research were pathologies of the extrapyramidal/motor system. In a previous collaboration they had described an extrapyramidal disease that was later named Hallervorden-Spatz syndrome.

Between 1940 and 1945, Hallervorden and Spatz became involved in the atrocities of the Nazi regime by studying the brains of euthanasia victims. For many years, brain sections from these studies remained archived in the institute (which by then had become the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main) together with research material from other periods. When this was recognized, all sections dating from the period 1933-1945 were given a burial at a Munich cemetery by the Max Planck Society in 1990. A memorial stone was erected in honor of the victims of these atrocities. Use of the eponym Hallervorden-Spatz syndrome is strongly discouraged due to Hallervorden and Spatz's involvement with the Nazi party and was replaced by the more descriptive terminology pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration.

After 1945, the different departments of the KWI for Brain Research were relocated to Dillenburg, Giessen, Köln, Marburg and Göttingen. In 1948 the Max Planck Society was founded to succeed the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, and the institute became the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. Hallervorden retired as director in 1955, Spatz in 1959. In 1962, a new building was erected in Frankfurt-Niederrad to house the Departments of Neurobiology (Hassler, Director 1959-1982) and Neuropathology (Krücke, Director 1956-1979), as well as the Research Groups "Evolution of the Primate Brain" (Stephan) and "Neurochemistry" (Werner). Rolf Hassler, a pupil of Oskar Vogt and coworker of the famous Freiburg neurologist Richard Jung, studied subcortical brain areas, thalamo-cortical systems, basal ganglia and the limbic system. Wilhelm Krücke, a pupil of Hallervorden, was a renowned specialist on peripheral neuropathies. He was the reason for the institute's relocation to Frankfurt, as he was simultaneously head of the 'Edinger Institute', the Neuropathology Department of Frankfurt University's Medical School. In 1982, the KWI for Brain Research's Department of General Neurology, which had been relocated to Köln, became the Max Planck Institute for Neurological Research in that city, independent of the MPI for Brain Research. The other relocated departments of the KWI were closed with the retirement of their directors.

In 1981, the MPIH was restructured towards non-clinical, basic neuroscience through the establishment of the Departments of Neuroanatomy (Wässle, Director 1981-2008) and Neurophysiology (Singer, Director 1982-2011), followed by the Department of Neurochemistry (Betz, Director 1991-2009). Heinz Wässle conducted functional and structural studies of the mammalian retina, Heinrich Betz analyzed the molecular components of synapses, and Wolf Singer studied higher cognitive functions with a focus on the visual system.

In the first decade of the new millennium, the MPG defined the analysis of neural networks as a central research topic for the institute. In 2008 Erin Schuman and Gilles Laurent were appointed as directors of the departments "Synaptic Plasticity" and "Neural Systems", respectively. The new departments took up work in the summer of 2009 and were initially located in interim facilities on the Science Campus "Riedberg" of the Frankfurt University. The construction of a new building for the institute on this campus was recently finalized, next to the MPI of Biophysics. The new institute building currently houses the three departments of the institute (those of Erin Schuman, Gilles Laurent and Moritz Helmstaedter), several Research Groups at the institute (Tatjana Tchumatchenko and Johannes Letzkus recently joined as Max Planck Group Leaders in 2013), several core facilities, and the Max Planck Research Unit for Neurogenetics of Peter Mombaerts.

As of 2016, Moritz Helmstaedter is the Managing Director of the Institute.[1]

Graduate Program

The International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Neural Circuits is a graduate program offering a Ph.D. The school is run in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics and the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt am Main as well as the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and the Ernst Strüngmann Institute.

References

1. Marx, Vivien (May 2015). "Erin Margaret Schuman". Nature Methods (Paper). 12 (5): 375. doi:10.1038/nmeth.3374.

External links

• Homepage of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research
• Homepage of the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Neural Circuits

Population Control, Nazis, and the United Nations
by Anton Chaitkin
1996

ROCKEFELLER AND MASS MURDER

The Rockefeller Foundation is the prime sponsor of public relations for the United Nations’ drastic depopulation program, which the world is invited to accept at the UN’s scheduled September conference in Cairo, Egypt.

The adoption of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo, Egypt in 1994, represented a fundamental shift in population and development, moving population policies and programmes from demographic targets towards a people-centred approach, grounded in the respect for human rights and a strong emphasis on environmental sustainability. Subsequently, the Millennium Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development integrated many goals and objectives of the ICPD Programme of Action.

While important progress has been made, considerable gaps still exist in the implementation of different areas of the Programme of Action. In 2010, the General Assembly decided to extend the Programme of Action beyond 2014 with a view to fully meeting its goals and objectives (A/RES/65/234). In 2014, the Secretary-General reported that progress in implementing the goals and objectives of the Programme of Action had been unequal and fragmented and that new challenges, realities and opportunities had emerged since its adoption (E/CN.9/2014/4). The General Assembly held a special session in September 2014 to assess the status of implementation of the Programme of Action and to renew political support for actions required for the full achievement of its goals and objectives.

The Commission on Population and Development (CPD), at its fifty-second session in 2019, will carry out a review and appraisal of the ICPD Programme of Action and its contribution to the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda. The timing of this appraisal, 25 years after “Cairo”, is consistent with the five-year cycle of review of the status of implementation of the ICPD Programme of Action carried out by the CPD in 2004, 2009 and 2014, respectively.

In preparation for the fifty-second session of the CPD, the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs will convene an expert group meeting. The meeting will examine progress and gaps in implementing the goals and objectives set out in the ICPD Programme of Action and explore the potential implications of future demographic trends for the full implementation of the Programme, and discuss the contribution of the ICPD Programme of Action to the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda. The meeting will also examine progress in measuring sustainable development indicators related to population....

Fertility below replacement level is of concern for governments as it leads to population decline and accelerates population ageing. By far the largest decline in total population attributed to fertility, the largest negative contribution of any component in any country, is expected in China: -236 million people between 2010 and 2050 or 18 per cent of China’s population. Other countries with the fertility component accounting for a population decline of 11 million or more people are Bangladesh, Brazil, Germany, India, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Japan, the Russian Federation, Thailand, and the United States of America (figure III.6). In terms of the largest impact relative to population size, 11 countries or areas will see their populations shrink by more than 20 per cent by 2050 due to fertility below the replacement level: Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Macao SAR of China, Mauritius, Poland, the Republic of Moldova, Singapore, Taiwan Province of China, and Thailand. For another 52 countries, the contribution of the fertility component to population decline will be between 10 and 20 per cent. Altogether, between 2010 and 2050, fertility below replacement level will contribute to a decline of the
total population for 110 countries....

The analysis in this report of trends in fertility from 1950 to 2050 and beyond shows steady fertility declines in most countries in the world, as well as a slow-down of population growth at the global level. These trends are particularly marked for high and middle-income countries in Europe and Northern America, but they are also observed in much of Oceania, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in Northern and Southern Africa. Similar trends, albeit with a time lag, are beginning to take place in low-income countries in Africa and Asia. Almost all countries that have experienced fertility declines have either already completed their fertility transitions or have reached rather advanced stages, characterized by low fertility and mortality. More and more countries are reaching below-replacement fertility levels, in some cases resulting in negative population growth rates. High fertility remains increasingly a characteristic of the least developed countries, with nearly all pretransitional and early-transition countries located in sub-Saharan Africa....

The Projections prepared by the United Nations Population Division foresee that fertility in high-fertility countries will eventually decline, and that most, but not all countries will reach below-replacement fertility by the end of this century...

The international community will need to continue to invest in the poorest countries to expand family planning and reproductive health initiatives and, at the same time, support initiatives to cope with ageing populations. With the right development policies, economic and social gains, the advancement of women and girls as well as the improvement of living conditions of older persons will contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.

-- Review and Appraisal of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development and its contribution to the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, by United Nations Population Division

Evidence in the possession of a growing number of researchers in America, England, and Germany demonstrates that the Foundation and its corporate, medical, and political associates organized the racial mass murder program of Nazi Germany.

These globalists, who function as a conduit for British Empire geopolitics, were not stopped after World War II. The United Nations alliance of the old Nazi rightwing with the New Age leftwing poses an even graver danger to the world today than the same grouping did in 1941.

Oil monopolist John D. Rockefeller created the family-run Rockefeller Foundation in 1909. By 1929 he had placed $300 million worth of the family’s controlling interest in the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (later called “Exxon”) to the account of the Foundation.

The Foundation’s money created the medical specialty known as Psychiatric Genetics. For the new experimental field, the Foundation reorganized medical teaching in Germany, creating and thenceforth continuously directing the “Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry” and the “Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics and Human Heredity.” The Rockefellers’ chief executive of these institutions was the fascist Swiss psychiatrist Ernst Rudin, assisted by his proteges Otmar Verschuer and Franz J. Kallmann.

In 1932, the British-led “Eugenics” movement designated the Rockefellers’ Dr. Rudin as the president of the worldwide Eugenics Federation [International Federation of Eugenics Organizations]. The movement called for the killing or sterilization of people whose heredity made them a public burden.

The Racial Laws

A few months later, Hitler took over Germany and the Rockefeller-Rudin apparatus became a section of the Nazi state. The regime appointed Rudin head of the Racial Hygiene Society [German Society for Racial Hygiene]. Rudin and his staff, as part of the Task Force of Heredity Experts chaired by SS chief Heinrich Himmler, drew up the sterilization law. Described as an American Model law, it was adopted in July 1933 and proudly printed in the September 1933 Eugenical News (USA) with Hitler’s signature. The Rockefeller group drew up other race laws, also based on existing Virginia statutes. Otmar Verschuer and his assistant Josef Mengele together wrote reports for special courts which enforced Rudin’s racial purity law against cohabitation of Aryans and non-Aryans.

The “T4” unit of the Hitler Chancery, based on psychiatrists led by Rudin and his staff, cooperated in creating propaganda films to sell mercy killing (euthanasia) to German citizens. The public reacted antagonistically: Hitler had to withdraw a tear-jerker right-to-die film from the movie theaters. The proper groundwork had not yet been laid.

Under the Nazis, the German chemical company I.G. Farben and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New Jersey were effectively a single firm, merged in hundreds of cartel arrangements. I.G. Farben was led up until 1937 by the Warburg family, Rockefeller’s partner in banking and in the design of Nazi German eugenics.

Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Standard Oil pledged to keep the merger with I.G. Farben going even if the U.S. entered the war. This was exposed in 1942 by Sen. Harry Truman’s investigating committee, and President Roosevelt took hundreds of legal measures during the war to stop the Standard-I.G. Farben cartel from supplying the enemy war machine.

In 1940-41, I.G. Farben built a gigantic factory at Auschwitz in Poland, to utilize the Standard Oil/I.G. Farben patents with concentration camp slave labor to make gasoline from coal. The SS was assigned to guard the Jewish and other inmates and select for killing those who were unfit for I.G. Farben slave labor. Standard-Germany president Emil Helfferich testified after the war that Standard Oil funds helped pay for SS guards at Auschwitz.

In 1940, six months after the notorious Standard-I.G. meeting, European Rockefeller Foundation official Daniel O’Brian wrote to the Foundation’s chief medical officer Alan Gregg that “it would be unfortunate if it was chosen to stop research which has no relation to war issues” so the Foundation continued financing Nazi “psychiatric research” during the war.

In 1936, Rockefeller’s Dr. Franz Kallmann interrupted his study of hereditary degeneracy and emigrated to America because he was half-Jewish. Kallmann went to New York and established the Medical Genetics Department of the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The Scottish Rite of Freemasonry published Kallman’s study of over 1,000 cases of schizophrenia, which tried to prove its hereditary basis. In the book, Kallmann thanked his long-time boss and mentor Rudin.

Kallmann’s book, published in 1938 in the USA and Nazi Germany, was used by the T4 unit as a rationalization to begin in 1939 the murder of mental patients and various “defective” people, perhaps most of them children. Gas and lethal injections were used to kill 250,000 under this program, in which the staffs for a broader murder program were desensitized and trained.

Dr. Mengele…

In 1943, Otmar Verschuer’s assistant Josef Mengele was made medical commandant of Auschwitz. As wartime director of Rockefeller’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics and Human Heredity in Berlin, Verschuer secured funds for Mengele’s experiments at Auschwitz from the German Research Council. Verschuer wrote a progress report to the Council: “My co-researcher in this research is my assistant the anthropologist and physician Mengele. He is serving as Hauptstuermfuehrer and camp doctor in the concentration camp Auschwitz…. With the permission of the Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler, anthropological research is being undertaken on the various racial groups in the concentration camps and blood samples will be sent to my laboratory for investigation.”

Mengele prowled the railroad lines leading into Auschwitz, looking for twins — a favorite subject of psychiatric geneticists. On arrival at Mengele’s experimental station, twins filled out “a detailed questionnaire from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.” There were daily drawings of blood for Verschuer’s “specific protein” research. Needles were injected into eyes for work on eye color. There were experimental blood transfusions and infections. Organs and limbs were removed, sometimes without anesthetics. Sex changes were attempted. Females were sterilized, males were castrated. Thousands were murdered and their organs, eyeballs, heads, and limbs were sent to Verschuer and the Rockefeller group at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute.

In 1946, Verschuer wrote to the Bureau of Human Heredity in London, asking for help in continuing his “scientific research.”

Facelift

In 1947, the Bureau of Human Heredity moved from London to Copenhagen. The new Danish building for this was built with Rockefeller money. The first International Congress in Human Genetics following World War II was held at this Danish institute in 1956. By that time, Verschuer was a member of the American Eugenics Society, then indistingishable from Rockefeller’s Population Council.

Dr. Kallmann helped save Verschuer by testifying in his denazification proceedings. Dr. Kallmann created the American Society of Human Genetics, which organized the “Human Genome Project” — a current $3 billion physical multiculturalism effort. Kallmann was a director of the American Eugenics Society in 1952 and from 1954 to 1965.

In the 1950s, the Rockefellers reorganized the U.S. eugenics movement in their own family offices, with spinoff population-control and abortion groups. The Eugenics Society changed its name to the Society for the Study of Social Biology, its current name.

The Rockefeller Foundation had long financed the eugenics movement in England, apparently repaying Britain for the fact that British capital and an Englishman-partner had started old John D. Rockefeller out in his Oil Trust. In the 1960s, the Eugenics Society of England adopted what they called Crypto-eugenics, stating in their official reports that they would do eugenics through means and instruments not labeled as eugenics.

With support from the Rockefellers, the Eugenics Society (England) set up a sub-committee called the International Planned Parenthood Federation, which for 12 years had no other address than the Eugenics Society.

This, then, is the private, international apparatus which has set the world up for a global holocaust, under the UN flag.

International Federation of Eugenics Organizations [The Permanent International Eugenics Committee]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/1/20

The International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO) was an international organization of groups and individuals focused on eugenics. Founded in London in 1912, where it was originally titled the Permanent International Eugenics Committee, it was an outgrowth of the first International Eugenics Congress. In 1925, it was retitled. Factionalism within the organization led to its division in 1933, as splinter group the Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations was created to give a home to eugenicists who disliked the concepts of negative eugenics, in which unfit groups and individuals are discouraged or prevented from reproducing. As the views of the Nazi party in Germany caused increasing tension within the group and leadership activity declined, it dissolved in the latter half of the 1930s.

History

In 1912, Leonard Darwin presided over an International Eugenics Congress at the University of London which was sponsored by the Eugenics Education Society (now the Galton Institute) in Britain.[1] Over 800 attendees and an equal number of visitors gathered each day of the Congress to discuss the political, social and cultural context of eugenics and its practical applications. By its end, the Congress had established a Permanent International Eugenics Committee,[1] of which Darwin was named president.[2] In 1921, the Committee arranged for the second meeting of the International Eugenics Congress to take place, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.[1] Led by Henry Fairfield Osborn, Madison Grant, and Clarence Little, it focused on issues including human heredity, racial differences, regulation of human reproduction, and eugenics.

In 1925, the Committee was renamed the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO).[1] American eugenicist Charles Davenport was a dominant force in the early history of the body.[2] As its president, in 1929, he wrote a letter to Benito Mussolini, then Prime Minister of Italy, warning him that "maximum speed [was] necessary" in implementing a eugenics program in Italy, because of the "enormous" danger of failing to control undesirable reproduction.[3] The IFEO held its 9th Conference in England in 1930.[4] Davenport led the IFEO meeting two years later in New York in 1932 at which Ernst Rüdin was selected as his successor to presidency.[1][2][5] In the 1930s, the organization was meeting every two years, with a simultaneous Conference.[6][7] By 1934, when the group met in Zurich,[6] the original IFEO had representative organizations and individuals from Argentina, Belgium, Cuba, the Dutch East Indies, England, Estonia, France, Italy, Germany, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States.[8][9]

The IFEO's emphasis on negative eugenics, in which the unfit are eliminated from society through such measures as forced sterilization and laws against reproduction, led to the formation of a splinter group in 1933, when Italian sociologist Corrado Gini established the Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations specifically to give a place to organizations fundamentally opposed to the approach.[10][11][12] The Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations had its first meeting in 1935 and soon represented groups from Argentina, Brazil, Catalonia, France, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland (French and Italian). Focused on encouraging reproduction of the "fit", the Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations was disrupted by the advent of World War II, its second congress cancelled, but Gini continued to promote positive eugenics until his death in 1965.[13]

The IFEO began to struggle in the 1930s with the increasingly controversial views on Eugenics in Nazi Germany.[14] Germany had not been permitted to join the IFEO until 1927 due to World War I and subsequent resistance to their membership by the French and Belgian,[9] but the German stance dominated discussion in IFEO meetings in the 1930s.[7][15] Reporting on the 1934 meeting in Zurich for the journal Eugenics Review, IFEO secretary Mrs. C.B.S. Hodson wrote:

A number of searching questions were exchanged with the different speakers. The Dutch in particular showed hesitancy in accepting the findings of transmissibility in regard to certain diseases as an adequate criterion for sterilization, while those coming from countries such as Switzerland, where the operation is a practical possibility and increasingly practised, found less difficulty in accepting the German point of view. In fact, between those critics who alleged that Germany was going too far and those (notably the French) who suggested that the categories should include more types, the protagonists of the new eugenic era in Germany appear to hold a middle course.

Of the 1936 meeting in the Netherlands, where Hodson indicates the views of Germany was a major focus, she wrote:[7]

it emerged that castration of sex offenders is being widely demanded in Holland, while sterilization is still regarded with distaste and suspicion. Denmark, originally most cautious to avoid compulsion in sterilization, has now made this as well as other regulations for the feeble-minded, compulsory for that category. At the same time administrators in Denmark take the utmost care to use their powers with reserve until public confidence has been built up. Marriage laws are easily promulgated in Scandinavia; in Germany (supposed land of drastic legislation) advisory marriage bureaux are paving the way with careful and paternal help towards legislation, which may be withheld for some time.

The 1936 meeting, hosted in Scheveningen, was attended by 50 delegates from 20 countries.[16] At that meeting, the term of the presidency was limited to four years, whereupon Rüdin was made honorary vice president along with Alfred Ploetz, Darwin and Jon Alfred Mjøen, newly elected.[17] Torsten Sjögren was chosen as his successor after five nominees had refused the office. Under Sjögren's presidency, activity in the IFEO lapsed to the point that the British Eugenics Society, instrumental in founding the group, considered withdrawing.[1][14] According to Stefan Kühl in For the Betterment of the Race (originally Die Internationale der Rassiten 1997), Sjögren was submissive to the Nazi party with their increasingly controversial views on eugenics, which contributed to the disintegration of the organization in the latter half of the 1930s.[12]

Notes

1. (Bashford and Austin 2010, p. 156)
2. (Michalik, p. 113)
3. (Sprinkle 1994, p. 91)
4. (Nature 1932)
5. (Yeomans and Weiss-Wendt 2013, p. 39)
6. (Hodson & 1934 217)
7. (Hodson 1936, p. 217)
8. (Bashford and Austin 2010, p. 157)
9. (Yeomans and Weiss-Wendt 2013, p. 12)
10. (Bashford and Austin 2010, pp. 389–90)
11. (Cassata 2011, p. 177)
12. (Kühl 2013, p. 110)
13. (Bashford and Austin 2010, pp. 391–92)
14. (Kühl 2013, p. 109)
15. (Hodson & 1934 220)
16. (Nature 1936)
17. (Hodson 1936, p. 219)

References

• Bashford, Alison; Austin, Philippa (26 August 2010). The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-970653-2.
• Cassata, Francesco (2011). Building the New Man: Eugenics, Racial Science and Genetics in Twentieth-century Italy. Central European University Press. ISBN 978-963-9776-83-8.
• Hodson, C.B.S. (October 1934). "International Federation of Eugenic Organizations: A Survey of the Zurich Conference". Eugenics Review. 26 (3): 217–220. PMC 2985370.
• Hodson, C.B.S. (October 1936). "International Federation of Eugenic Organizations: Report of the 1936 conference". Eugenics Review. 28 (3): 217–219. PMC 2985601.
• Kühl, Stefan (2013). For the Betterment of the Race: The Rise and Fall of the International Movement for Eugenics and Racial Hygiene. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-28612-3.
• Michalik, Piotr. "The Attempt to Introduce Eugenic Legislation in the Second Polish Republic as Viewed from the Perspective of the Solutions Adopted in the United States of America". In Wacław Uruszczak; Dorota Malec; Kazimierz Baran; Maciej Mikuła (eds.). Krakowskie Studia z Historii Państwa i Prawa, tom 4. Wydawnictwo UJ. ISBN 978-83-233-3388-3.
• "International Federation of Eugenic Organizations". Nature. 129 (3255): 431. 19 March 1932. doi:10.1038/129431a0.
• "International Federation of Eugenic Organizations". Nature. 141 (3557): 31. 1 January 1938. doi:10.1038/141031f0.
• Sprinkle, Robert H. (31 October 1994). Profession of Conscience: The Making and Meaning of Life-Sciences Liberalism. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-2158-7.
• Yeomans, Rory; Weiss-Wendt, Anton (1 July 2013). Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938-1945. U of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-4605-8.

Categories:

• Organizations established in 1912
• Eugenics organizations

Galton Institute [Eugenics Education Society] [The Eugenics Society] [The British Eugenics Society]
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/1/20

The Galton Institute is a nonprofit learned society based in the United Kingdom. Its aims are "to promote the public understanding of human heredity and to facilitate informed debate about the ethical issues raised by advances in reproductive technology."[1]

It was founded by Sybil Gotto in 1907 as the Eugenics Education Society, with the aim of promoting the research and understanding of eugenics.[2] Members came predominately from the professional class[3] and included eminent scientists such as Francis Galton.[2]:145 The Society engaged in advocacy and research to further their eugenic goals, and members participated in activities such as lobbying Parliament, organizing lectures, and producing propaganda.[2] It became the Eugenics Society in 1924[2]:144 (often referred to as the British Eugenics Society to distinguish it from others). From 1909 to 1968 it published The Eugenics Review, a scientific journal dedicated to eugenics.[2]:225 Membership reached its peak during the 1930s.[4]

The Institute is currently based in Wandsworth, London. The Society was renamed the Galton Institute in 1989.[5]

History

Creation of the Eugenics Education Society


Sybil Gotto, founder of the Eugenics Education Society (20th century). Image from the Wellcome Library.


Sir Francis Galton, circa 1890s. Honorary President of the Eugenics Education Society (1907–1911). Image from the Wellcome Library.

The Eugenics Education Society (EES) was founded in 1907 at the impetus of 21-year-old Sybil Gotto, a widowed social reformer.[2]:7 Inspired by Francis Galton's work on eugenics, Gotto began looking for supporters to start an organization aimed at educating the public about the benefits of eugenics.[2]:7 She was introduced to the lawyer Montague Crackanthorpe, who would become the second president of the EES[6], by James Slaughter, the Secretary of the Sociological Society.[2]:7 Crackanthorpe introduced Gotto to Galton, the statistician who coined the term "eugenics."[7] Galton would go on to be Honorary President of the Society[2]:43 from 1907 to 1911.[8] Gotto and Crackanthorpe presented their vision before a committee of the Moral Education League, requesting that the League change its name to the Eugenic and Moral Education League, but the committee decided that a new organization should be formed exclusively devoted to eugenics.[2]:29 The EES was located in Eccleston Square, London.[9]
The goals of Eugenics Education Society, as stated in first issue of the Eugenics Review were:

1. “Persistently to set forth the National Importance of Eugenics in order to modify public opinion, and create a sense of responsibility in the respect of bringing all matters pertaining to human parenthood under the domination of Eugenic ideals.

2. To spread a knowledge of the Laws of heredity so far as they are surely known, and so far as that knowledge might affect the improvement of the race.

3. To further Eugenic Teaching at home, in the schools, and elsewhere."[10]

Membership

The EES did not exist in isolation, but was rather a part of a large network of Victorian reform groups that existed in Britain at the turn of the twentieth century.[2]:9 Members of the Society were also involved in the National Association for the Care and Protection of the Feeble-minded, the Society for Inebrity, the Charity Organisation Society, and the Moral Education League.[2]:9 The British eugenics movement was a predominantly middle class[2]:26 and professional class phenomenon.[3] Most members of the EES were educated and prominent in their fields – at one point all members were listed in professional directories.[3] Two-thirds of the members were scientists,[2]:8 and the 1914 Council of the EES was dominated by professors and physicians.[3] Women constituted a significant portion of the Society’s members, exceeding 50% in 1913[3] and 40% in 1937.[11]:56 While the majority of members came from the professional class, there were also a few members from the clergy and aristocracy, such as Reverend William Inge, the Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral,[2]:47 and the Earl and Countess of Limerick.[11]:44 The Society underwent considerable growth in its early years. By 1911, the London headquarters was supplemented by branches in Cambridge, "Oxford, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Southampton, Glasgow, and Belfast," as well as abroad in "Australia and New Zealand".[2]:97 The Society found support in leading academic institutions. Statistician R. A. Fisher was a founding member of the Cambridge University Branch[2]:97, where Leonard Darwin, Reginald Punnett, and Reverend Inge lectured about the eugenic dangers a fertile working class posed to the educated middle class.[2]:101

Activities (1907–1939)

The main activities the Eugenics Education Society engaged in were research, propaganda, and legislative lobbying. Many campaigns were joint efforts with other social reform groups. The EES met with 59 other organizations between 1907 and 1935.[10]

Shortly after the Society was founded, members protested the closing of London institutions housing alcoholic women.[2]:31 A resolution was drafted proposing that alcoholics be segregated to prevent their reproduction, as the EES held the eugenic belief that alcoholism was heritable.[2]:32 This resolution proved unsuccessful in Parliament in 1913.[2]:32

In 1910, the Society's Committee on Poor Law Reform refuted both the Majority and Minority Reports of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, declaring their belief that poverty was rooted in the genetic deficiencies of the working class. This view was published in a special Poor Law issue of the Eugenics Review.[2]:72 The Committee suggested that paupers be detained in workhouses, under the authority of the Poor Law Guardians, to prevent their breeding.[2]:73 The same year, E. J. Lidbetter, EES member and former employee of the Poor Law Authority in London, attempted to prove the hereditary nature of poverty by compiling and studying the pedigrees of impoverished families.[2]


A Eugenics Society poster (1930s). Image from the Wellcome Library.

In 1912, President Leonard Darwin assembled a Research Committee to standardize the format and symbols used in pedigree studies. The members of the Committee were Edgar Schuster, Alexander M. Carr-Saunders, E. J. Lidbetter, Major Greenwood, Sybil Gotto, and A. F. Tredgold. The standardized pedigree they produced was published in the Eugenics Review and later adopted by Charles Davenport's Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor in the United States.[2]:77

In 1912, a group of physicians from the EES met unsuccessfully with the President of the Local Government Board to advocate for the institutionalization of those infected with venereal disease.[2]:32 The Society’s interest in venereal disease continued during WWI, when the Royal Commission on Venereal Diseases was formed with the inclusion of members of the EES.[2]:33

In 1916, EES President Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, published a pamphlet entitled “Quality not Quantity,” encouraging members of the professional class to have more children.[2]:49 Darwin proposed a tax rebate for middle-class families in 1917, but the resolution was unsuccessful in Parliament.[2]:49 In 1919, Darwin stated his belief that fertility was inversely proportional to economic class before the Royal Commission on Income Tax.[2]:49 He feared the falling birth rate of the middle-class would result in a “national danger.”[2]:49


A Eugenics Society exhibit (1930s). Image from the Wellcome Library.

The Eugenics Education Society was renamed the Eugenics Society in 1924 to emphasize its commitment to scientific research extending beyond the role of public education.[2]:144

In the 1920s and 1930s, members of the Eugenics Society advocated for graded Family Allowances in which wealthier families would be given more funds for having more children, thus incentivizing fertility in the middle and upper classes.[2]:49[11] Statistician and EES member R. A. Fisher argued in 1932 that existing Family Allowances that only funded the poor were dysgenic, as they did not reward the breeding of individuals the EES viewed as eugenically desirable.[2]:49

In 1930, the Eugenics Society formed a Committee for Legalising Sterilisation, producing propaganda pamphlets touting sterilisation as there solution for eliminating heritable feeblemindedness.[2]:204

During this time period members of the Society such as Julian Huxley expressed support for eutelegenesis, a eugenic proposal to artificially inseminate women with the sperm of men deemed mentally and physically superior in an effort to better the race.[12]:77

Activities (1942–1989)

The Eugenics Society underwent a hiatus during the Second World War and did not reconvene until 1942, under the leadership of General Secretary Carlos Blacker.[11]In the postwar period, the Society shifted its focus from class differences to marriage, fertility, and the changing racial makeup of the UK.[12]

In 1944, R. C. Wofinden published an article in the Eugenics Review describing the features of "mentally deficient" working-class families and questioning whether mental deficiency led to poverty or vice versa.[12]:46 Blacker argued that poor heredity was the cause of poverty, but other members of the Society, such as Hilda Lewis, disagreed with this view.[12]:47

Following WWII, British eugenicists concerned by rising divorce rates and falling birth rates attempted to promote marriages between "desirable" individuals while preventing marriages between those deemed eugenically unfit.[12]:44 The British Social Hygiene Council, a group with ties to the Eugenics Society, formed the Marriage Guidance Council, an organization that offered pre-marital counseling to young couples.[12]:45In 1954, the Eugenics Society was referred to by the North Kensington Marriage Welfare Centre's pamphlet "Eugenic Guidance," as a source for consultation for couples worried about passing on their "weaknesses."[12]:45

As a result of the British Nationality Act of 1948, which enabled Commonwealth citizens to immigrate to the UK, postwar Britain saw an influx of non-white populations.[12]:98 The Eugenics Society became concerned with changes to the racial makeup of the country, exemplified by its publication of G. C. L. Bertram's 1958 broadsheet on immigration from the West Indies.[12]:98 Bertram claimed that races were biologically distinct due to their evolved adaptations to different environments, and that miscegenation should only be permitted between similar races.[12]:99

In 1952, Blacker stepped down as Secretary of the Eugenics Society to become the administrative chairman of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, or IPPF.[12]:122 The IPPF was sponsored in part by the Eugenics Society and headquartered within the Society's offices in London.[12]:123 Blacker's influence continued in 1962, when he published an article in the Eugenics Review defending voluntary sterilization as humanitarian effort beneficial to mothers and their existing children.[12]:124

The last volume of the Eugenics Review was published in 1968. It was succeeded by the Journal of Biosocial Science.[2]:255 Following the 1960s, the Eugenics Society experienced a loss of support and prestige and eventually shifted its focus from eugenics in Britain to biosocial issues such as fertility and population control in Third World countries.[8] The Eugenics Society changed its name to the Galton Institute in 1989, a reflection of the negative public sentiment towards eugenics following WWII.[8]

Acknowledgement of Eugenic Past

The Galton Institute's website currently states that "the Galton Institute rejects outright the theoretical basis and practice of coercive eugenics, which it regards as having no place in modern life."[13]Furthermore, "the current Galton Institute has disassociated itself completely from any interest in the theory and practice of eugenics, but recognises the importance of the acknowledgement and preservation of its historical records in the interest of improving awareness of the 20th century eugenics movements in the social and political context of the times."[14] Current President Veronica van Heyningen has acknowledged that "Galton was a terrible racist," but she believes it is "reasonable to honour him by giving his name to institutions" due to his significant contribution to the field of genetics.[15]

Prominent Members

• Leonard Arthur, tried for murder in 1981 but acquitted
• Arthur Balfour
• Florence Barrett
• William Beveridge
• Paul Blanshard
• Walter Bodmer
• Russell Brain, 1st Baron Brain
• Chris Brand
• Cyril Burt
• Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister (1937–1940)
• Winston Churchill, Honorary Vice President
• John Cockburn
• David Coleman
• James Herbert Curle
• Charles D'Arcy
• Charles Davenport, Vice President (1931)
• Mary Dendy
• Robert Geoffrey Edwards
• Havelock Ellis
• Hans Eysenck
• Ronald Fisher
• Francis Galton, after whom the institute was eventually renamed
• Charles Goethe
• Ezra Gosney
• Madison Grant
• David Starr Jordan, Vice President (1916, 1931)
• Franz Josef Kallmann
• John Harvey Kellogg
• John Maynard Keynes, Director (1937–1944), Vice President (1937)
• Richard Lynn
• James Meade
• Peter Medawar
• Naomi Mitchison
• Sybil Neville-Rolfe, née Gotto, founder
• Henry Fairfield Osborn
• Frederick Osborn
• Roger Pearson
• Alfred Ploetz, Vice President (1916)
• Margaret Pyke
• Margaret Sanger
• Eliot Slater
• Marie Stopes
• James Mourilyan Tanner
• Richard Titmuss
• Alice Vickery
• Frank Yates

Presidents[6][16]

• James Crichton-Browne, President (1908–1909)
• Montague Crackanthorpe, President (1909–1911)
• Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, President (1911–1929)
• Bernard Mallet, President (1929–1933)
• Humphrey Rolleston, President (1933–1935)
• Thomas Horder, President (1935–1949)
• Alexander Carr-Saunders, President (1949–1953)
• Charles Galton Darwin, grandson of Charles Darwin, President (1953–1959)
• Julian Huxley, Vice-president (1937–1944), President (1959–1962)
• James Gray, President (1962–1965)
• Robert Platt, President (1965–1968)
• Alan Parkes, President (1968–1970)
• P. R. Cox, President (1970–1972)
• C. O. Carter, President (1972–1976)
• Harry Armytage, President (1976–1982)
• Bernard Benjamin, President (1982–1987)
• Margaret Sutherland, President (1987–1993)
• G. Ainsworth Harrison, President (1993–1994)
• Peter Diggory, President (1994–1996)
• Robert Peel, President (1996–1999)
• John Timson, President (1999–2002)
• Steve Jones, President (2002–2008)
• Walter Bodmer, President (2008–2014)
• Veronica van Heyningen, President (2014–present)

See also

• American Eugenics Society
• Amy Barrington
• Eugenics
• Human Betterment Foundation
• Arthur Jensen
• Walter Kistler
• Glayde Whitney
• Social hygiene movement

References

1. "Galton Institute Home Page". Galton Institute. Accessed 14 December 2010.
2. Mazumdar, Pauline M. H. (1992). Eugenics, human genetics, and human failings : the Eugenics Society, its sources and its critics in Britain. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415044243.
3. MacKenzie, Donald (1976). "Eugenics in Britain". Social Studies of Science. 6 (3/4): 499–532. doi:10.1177/030631277600600310. ISSN 0306-3127. JSTOR 284693. PMID 11610196.
4. Brignell, Victoria (9 December 2010). "The eugenics movement Britain wants to forget". newstatesman.com. New Statesman. Retrieved 10 June 2018. Membership of the British Eugenics Society reached its peak during the 1930s.
5. "British Eugenics Society". The Eugenics Archives. Retrieved 2019-09-27.
6. "Past Presidents – The Galton Institute". Retrieved 2019-10-15.
7. "The Eugenics Society archive". wellcomelibrary.org. Retrieved 2019-10-04.
8. Mazumdar, Pauline M. H. (2000). "Essays in the History of Eugenics (review)". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 74 (1): 180–183. doi:10.1353/bhm.2000.0029. ISSN 1086-3176.
9. "Papers of the Eugenics Society to be Digitised". Wellcome Library. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
10. Baker, Graham J. (2014-05-01). "Christianity and Eugenics: The Place of Religion in the British Eugenics Education Society and the American Eugenics Society, c.1907–1940". Social History of Medicine. 27 (2): 281–302. doi:10.1093/shm/hku008. ISSN 0951-631X. PMC 4001825. PMID 24778464.
11. Jones, Greta (1996). Social Hygiene in Twentieth Century Britain. Kent, United Kingdom: Croom Helm Ltd. ISBN 0-7099-1481-4.
12. Hanson, Clare (2013). Eugenics, Literature and Culture in Post-War Britain. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-80698-5.
13. "Eugenic past – The Galton Institute". Retrieved 2019-10-15.
14. "About – The Galton Institute". Retrieved 2019-10-17.
15. McKie, Robin (2019-07-13). "Top university split in row over erasing 'racist' science pioneers from the campus". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2019-11-16.
16. "Governance – The Galton Institute". Retrieved 2019-11-16.

External links

• Galton Institute
• Charity Commission. The Galton Institute, registered charity no. 209258.

Torsten Sjögren
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/1/20

The International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO) was an international organization of groups and individuals focused on eugenics. Founded in London in 1912, where it was originally titled the Permanent International Eugenics Committee, it was an outgrowth of the first International Eugenics Congress. In 1925, it was retitled. Factionalism within the organization led to its division in 1933, as splinter group the Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations was created to give a home to eugenicists who disliked the concepts of negative eugenics, in which unfit groups and individuals are discouraged or prevented from reproducing. As the views of the Nazi party in Germany caused increasing tension within the group and leadership activity declined, it dissolved in the latter half of the 1930s.

In 1912, Leonard Darwin presided over an International Eugenics Congress at the University of London which was sponsored by the Eugenics Education Society (now the Galton Institute) in Britain.[1] Over 800 attendees and an equal number of visitors gathered each day of the Congress to discuss the political, social and cultural context of eugenics and its practical applications. By its end, the Congress had established a Permanent International Eugenics Committee,[1] of which Darwin was named president.[2] In 1921, the Committee arranged for the second meeting of the International Eugenics Congress to take place, at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.[1] Led by Henry Fairfield Osborn, Madison Grant, and Clarence Little, it focused on issues including human heredity, racial differences, regulation of human reproduction, and eugenics.

In 1925, the Committee was renamed the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations (IFEO).[1] American eugenicist Charles Davenport was a dominant force in the early history of the body.[2] As its president, in 1929, he wrote a letter to Benito Mussolini, then Prime Minister of Italy, warning him that "maximum speed [was] necessary" in implementing a eugenics program in Italy, because of the "enormous" danger of failing to control undesirable reproduction.[3] The IFEO held its 9th Conference in England in 1930.[4] Davenport led the IFEO meeting two years later in New York in 1932 at which Ernst Rüdin was selected as his successor to presidency.[1][2][5] In the 1930s, the organization was meeting every two years, with a simultaneous Conference.[6][7] By 1934, when the group met in Zurich,[6] the original IFEO had representative organizations and individuals from Argentina, Belgium, Cuba, the Dutch East Indies, England, Estonia, France, Italy, Germany, South Africa, Switzerland, and the United States.[8][9]

The IFEO's emphasis on negative eugenics, in which the unfit are eliminated from society through such measures as forced sterilization and laws against reproduction, led to the formation of a splinter group in 1933, when Italian sociologist Corrado Gini established the Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations specifically to give a place to organizations fundamentally opposed to the approach.[10][11][12] The Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations had its first meeting in 1935 and soon represented groups from Argentina, Brazil, Catalonia, France, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland (French and Italian). Focused on encouraging reproduction of the "fit", the Latin International Federation of Eugenics Organizations was disrupted by the advent of World War II, its second congress cancelled, but Gini continued to promote positive eugenics until his death in 1965.[13]

The IFEO began to struggle in the 1930s with the increasingly controversial views on Eugenics in Nazi Germany.[14] Germany had not been permitted to join the IFEO until 1927 due to World War I and subsequent resistance to their membership by the French and Belgian,[9] but the German stance dominated discussion in IFEO meetings in the 1930s.[7][15] Reporting on the 1934 meeting in Zurich for the journal Eugenics Review, IFEO secretary Mrs. C.B.S. Hodson wrote:

A number of searching questions were exchanged with the different speakers. The Dutch in particular showed hesitancy in accepting the findings of transmissibility in regard to certain diseases as an adequate criterion for sterilization, while those coming from countries such as Switzerland, where the operation is a practical possibility and increasingly practised, found less difficulty in accepting the German point of view. In fact, between those critics who alleged that Germany was going too far and those (notably the French) who suggested that the categories should include more types, the protagonists of the new eugenic era in Germany appear to hold a middle course.

Of the 1936 meeting in the Netherlands, where Hodson indicates the views of Germany was a major focus, she wrote:[7]

it emerged that castration of sex offenders is being widely demanded in Holland, while sterilization is still regarded with distaste and suspicion. Denmark, originally most cautious to avoid compulsion in sterilization, has now made this as well as other regulations for the feeble-minded, compulsory for that category. At the same time administrators in Denmark take the utmost care to use their powers with reserve until public confidence has been built up. Marriage laws are easily promulgated in Scandinavia; in Germany (supposed land of drastic legislation) advisory marriage bureaux are paving the way with careful and paternal help towards legislation, which may be withheld for some time.

The 1936 meeting, hosted in Scheveningen, was attended by 50 delegates from 20 countries.[16] At that meeting, the term of the presidency was limited to four years, whereupon Rüdin was made honorary vice president along with Alfred Ploetz, Darwin and Jon Alfred Mjøen, newly elected.[17] Torsten Sjögren was chosen as his successor after five nominees had refused the office. Under Sjögren's presidency, activity in the IFEO lapsed to the point that the British Eugenics Society, instrumental in founding the group, considered withdrawing.[1][14] According to Stefan Kühl in For the Betterment of the Race (originally Die Internationale der Rassiten 1997), Sjögren was submissive to the Nazi party with their increasingly controversial views on eugenics, which contributed to the disintegration of the organization in the latter half of the 1930s.[12]

-- International Federation of Eugenics Organizations [The Permanent International Eugenics Committee], by Wikipedia

Karl Gustaf Torsten Sjögren (/ˈʃoʊɡrən/ SHOH-grən, Swedish: [ˈɧø̂ːɡreːn];[1] 30 January 1896 – 27 July 1974) was a Swedish psychiatrist and geneticist. He was born in Södertälje and died in Gothenburg.[2] Torsten Sjögren was professor of psychiatry at Karolinska Institutet from 1945 to 1961. He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1951.

Sjögren–Larsson syndrome is named after him (along with Tage Larsson) as well as Marinesco–Sjögren syndrome. [3][4]

He was also involved in the characterization of juvenile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis.

He should not be confused with Henrik Sjögren, after whom Sjögren's syndrome is named.

References

1. "Sjögren pronunciation". Forvo.
2. doctor/1609 at Who Named It?
3. synd/1678 at Who Named It?
4. SJOGREN T, LARSSON T (1957). "Oligophrenia in combination with congenital ichthyosis and spastic disorders; a clinical and genetic study". Acta Psychiatr Neurol Scand Suppl. 113: 1–112. PMID 13457946.

German Society for Racial Hygiene
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 4/1/20

The German Society for Racial Hygiene (German: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Rassenhygiene) was a German eugenic organization founded on 22 June 1905 by the physician Alfred Ploetz in Berlin. Its goal was "for society to return to a healthy and blooming, strong and beautiful life" as Ploetz put it. The Nordic race was supposed to regain its "purity" through selective reproduction and sterilization.[1] The society became defunct after World War II.


Hartheim Euthanasia Centre in 2005

History

Soon after the society was founded, it received generous support by the German imperial government and it was not the only organization of its kind in the world. Many organizations existed post WW2 with similar goals. Notable members comprised Ploetz' brother-in-law Ernst Rüdin and his childhood friend Gerhart Hauptmann, Wilhelm Bölsche, Max von Gruber, Agnes Bluhm, Wilhelm Filchner, Anastasius Nordenholz, and Ludwig Hermann Plate. The biologists Ernst Haeckel and August Weismann, as well as the gynecologist Ernst Ludwig Alfred Hegar became honorary members.

Since Ploetz wanted to establish an international movement, the society was soon renamed International Society for Racial Hygiene with branches in Berlin including Erwin Baur, in Munich, in Freiburg with the well-known human geneticists Fritz Lenz and Eugen Fischer and from 1910 in Stuttgart, which included the geneticist Wilhelm Weinberg.[2] The organization was affiliated with the British Eugenics Education Society under Francis Galton; branches in Sweden, the United States, and the Netherlands were also established in the early 20th century.[3] In 1924, the organization was named back to German Society for Racial Hygiene.[4]

The ideas represented by the society became increasingly popular after the International Hygiene Exhibition of 1911. The organization wanted to establish "racial hygiene" as a scientific subject and contributed substantially to their implementation in Germany. With both adoption of the ideas of Nazi eugenics and with concrete consultations on political racial measures, the society took direct influence on statutes like the "Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring", which were an integral part of the Action T4 "euthanasia" programme of the Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler. By 1933, the Society for Racial Hygiene had 1,300 members, many of them academics, as well as high functionaries in the Nazi Party.[5]

References

1. Schafft, Gretchen Engle: "From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich". University of Illinois Press. 2004. Pg. 42.
2. Carlson, Elof Axel: "The Unfit: a history of a bad idea". CSHL Press. 2001. Pg. 321.
3. Schafft 2002, pg. 42
4. Hubbard, Ruth: "Abortion and Disability: Who Should and Should not Inhabit the World" in Davis, Lennard J. (ed.): "The Disabilities Studies Reader". Routledge. 1997. Pg. 191.
5. Burleigh, Michael; Wippermann, Wolfgang: "The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945". Cambridge University Press. 1991. Pg. 52.
• (in German) Wolf, Caroline Wissenschaftler wider besseres Wissen in amatom Nr. 18.

Birth control
by Molly Ladd-Taylor
Eugenicsarchive.ca
April 28, 1014

Birth control has had a complicated relationship to eugenics. While birth control makes it possible for a woman to decide for herself when (and if) to have children, eugenics puts society’s interest in reproduction above the individual’s desires. Yet proponents of birth control often used eugenic arguments while eugenicists distributed contraceptives in poor communities to reduce births among those they considered unfit. The tension between the right to choose birth control, a precondition for women’s freedom, and the coercive use of birth control as a means of population control, has shaped social policy and the politics of reproduction.

Birth Control and the Law: Criminalization and Legalization

Women and men in every society have sought to control their own reproduction. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, rising expectations for health, child welfare, and women’s rights, combined with elite anxieties about immigration and the declining birth rate among educated whites, brought personal decisions about reproduction and child welfare into the public eye. “Birth control” – that is, legal contraception, abortion, and contraceptive sterilization – entered the world of policy and politics.

Birth control and even abortion were largely unregulated in North America until the late nineteenth century. In 1873, the U.S. Congress enacted the Comstock Law, which defined contraceptives as obscene and made it a federal crime to send information about contraception or abortion through the mail or across state lines. In Canada, the Criminal Code of 1892 prohibited the advertisement or sale of any literature or device intended to prevent conception or cause abortion.

Laws against contraception and abortion generally remained in place until the 1960s. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the prohibition on contraceptive use among married couples in 1965 and extended the right to use contraceptives to unmarried couples in 1972. A year later in Roe v. Wade (1973), the court ruled that the constitutional right to privacy included abortion (until the fetus could live outside the womb). In Canada, contraception was decriminalized and some abortions made legal in the 1969 revisions to the Criminal Code. In 1988, the Supreme Court decision R. v. Morgentaler legalized all abortions in Canada. Even so, the right to contraception and especially abortion remains hotly debated, especially in the United States.

The Question of Contraceptive Sterilization

In law, there is a distinction between eugenic and contraceptive sterilization. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld compulsory eugenic sterilization in the notorious Buck v. Bell decision in 1927, but voluntary sterilization for contraceptive purposes (like all other forms of birth control) had an ambiguous legal status until the 1970s. Most U.S. hospitals restricted voluntary sterilization to patients who met the 120 rule (a woman’s age multiplied by the number of her children had to be at least 120); voluntary sterilizations were also restricted in Canada prior to the decriminalization of contraception in 1969. In both countries, public pressure led to the relaxation of restrictions and public funding for contraceptive surgery in the 1970s, just as eugenic sterilization laws were being repealed. Sterilization quickly became one of the most popular forms of birth control. At the same time, there was a significant increase in coerced “contraceptive” sterilizations, both in the United States and, to a lesser extent, in Canada.

The legal-political status of birth control in Canada, and to a lesser extent the United States, was also shaped by the doctrine (and lobbying power) of the Catholic Church. In 1930, the papal encyclical Casti Connubii affirmed the sanctity of marriage and condemned divorce, artificial birth control, abortion, and eugenics legislation.

The Two Sides of Birth Control

Both birth control and eugenics emerged as political issues in the early twentieth century, in the context of industrialization, immigration, and the changing status of women and racialized groups. At first, conservative eugenicists opposed legal contraception because of its association with feminism. They thought that “fit” white women were already having too few children compared to the poor and uneducated and worried that expanding women’s reproductive options would lead to “race suicide.” By the 1930s, however, birth control’s association with feminism had weakened and many eugenicists saw contraception as a tool of population control.

Birth Control as Woman’s Right

In the nineteenth century, most North American women lacked the right to vote and sit on juries. Married women were economically dependent on their husbands and legally obliged to submit to their sexual needs. Elite women who objected to the idea that constant pregnancy was the married woman’s fate asserted the principle of “voluntary motherhood.” Using the language of degeneracy, they claimed that the damage caused by involuntary motherhood could be passed on to succeeding generations. Only if motherhood was truly voluntary could superior offspring be ensured.

From the 1890s to the 1910s, a small group of feminists and sex radicals, such as the American Margaret Sanger, took the radical position that women were entitled to heterosexual pleasure without fear of procreation. They claimed that “birth control,” a term coined by Sanger, was essential to women’s freedom and self-fulfillment and they openly defied the laws that made disseminating birth control information a crime. Sanger was arrested after she opened the first North American birth control clinic in Brooklyn, New York, in 1916. After a lengthy legal battle, a New York court ruled in 1923 that physicians could provide contraceptive information. Birth control was a medical decision, not a woman’s right.

Birth Control as Population Control

The idea of birth control as population control took root in the 1920s. The slogan, “more children from the fit, less from the unfit,” wrongly attributed to Margaret Sanger, reflects both many birth controllers’ deep-seated eugenicist beliefs and a politically expedient strategy designed to win support from physicians and potential donors. In the infamous Negro Project of the Birth Control Federation of America (later Planned Parenthood), the racist-eugenicist goal of reducing the birth rate of southern backs undercut Sanger’s own commitment to birth control as a woman’s right.

The population control argument for birth control was also pervasive in Depression-era Canada. Rubber manufacturer A.R. Kaufman, a prominent birth controller and eugenicist from Kitchener, Ontario, founded the Parents’ Information Bureau (PIB), which hired visiting nurses to distribute contraceptive information to poor couples with large families. In 1936, when PIB worker Dorothea Palmer was arrested in a French Canadian neighbourhood in Eastview, Ontario, Kaufman’s lawyers launched a spirited legal defense. They contended that distributing contraceptives to poor Francophone Catholics was a public good and secured Palmer’s acquittal.

Population Control vs. Women’s Rights in the Postwar Era

After the Second World War, contraceptive use became an increasingly respectable form of “family planning,” and population control advocates shifted their attention to reducing fertility in the global south.

The tensions between population control and women’s rights exploded in the 1970s. Feminists demanding easier access to abortion and contraceptive sterilizations had to confront the reality that large numbers of African Americans, Indigenous women, Latinas, and women with disabilities were being coerced into sterilization. After the sterilization of two black girls at a family planning clinic in Alabama became an international scandal in 1973, a federal judge declared that “the dividing line between family planning and eugenics is murky.” He prohibited any government-funded sterilization where the patient’s capacity for non-coerced consent was in doubt, including minors and persons with intellectual disabilities (ID). Yet social workers and trial judges have continued to pressure welfare mothers and drug users to “choose” long-term contraceptives, and some parents of children with intellectual disabilities have sought sterilization for their daughters. In 1986, the Supreme Court of Canada barred court-ordered contraceptive sterilizations of persons with ID.

The Tangled Histories of Birth Control and Eugenics

Reproductive decisions must never be coerced, and the shameful association between birth control and eugenics should be exposed. In recent years, however, Margaret Sanger’s advocacy of eugenics has been used to tarnish all publicly-funded reproductive health services, especially the U.S. Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which requires most insurers to pay for contraception, including voluntary sterilization, as part of women’s health care. In fact, the history of birth control is two-sided. Birth control is not just another term for population control; the right to use – or not to use – birth control is also a cherished women’s right.

References

Chesler, E. (1992). Woman of valor: Margaret Sanger and the birth control movement in America. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Dyck, E. (2013). Facing eugenics: reproduction, sterilization, and the politics of choice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Gordon, L. (2002). The moral property of women: a history of birth control politics in America. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Kluchin, R. M. (2009). Fit to be tied: sterilization and reproductive rights in America, 1950-1980. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press.

Ladd-Taylor, M. (2001). Eugenics, sterilization and modern marriage: the strange career of Paul Popenoe. Gender & History, 13, 298-327.

Ladd-Taylor, M. (2014). Contraception or eugenics? Sterilization and 'mental retardation' in the 1970s and 1980s. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 31, 189-211.

McLaren, A. (1990). Our own master race: eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945. Toronto, Ont: McClelland & Stewart.

McLaren, A., & McLaren, A. T. (1997). The bedroom and the state: the changing practices and politics of contraception and abortion in Canada, 1880-1997. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Revie, L. (2006). 'More than just boots!' The eugenic and commercial concerns behind A. R. Kaufman's birth controlling activities. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 23, 119–43.

Roberts, D.E. (1997). Killing the black body: race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty. New York: Pantheon Books.

Schoen, J. (2005). Choice and coercion: birth control, sterilization, and abortion in public health and welfare. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Stote, K. (2012). The coercive sterilization of Aboriginal women in Canada. American Indian Culture and Research Journal, 36, 117-150.

****************************

Eugenics and Birth Control
by PBS.org
Accessed: 4/2/20

In 1883 a British biologist named Francis Galton combined the roots of the Greek words for "good" and "origin" to create the term "eugenics" for an applied science based on genetics and breeding. The "science" of eugenics proposed that human perfection could be developed through selective breeding. In the late nineteenth century researchers developed the idea, a blend of genetic research and social theory. Eugenics soon crossed the Atlantic and by the 1920s and 1930s was adopted by mainstream scientists, doctors and the general public.

Positive and Negative Approaches

The eugenics movement had two basic strands. Advocates of "positive" eugenics believed in promoting childbearing by the "fit" classes. Those who supported "negative" eugenics stood for the discouragement and suppression of reproduction among people of "inferior stock." Within these two camps, the definitions of who would be classified as "fit" and "unfit" varied greatly.

A Vehicle for Racism and Nativism

Some eugenicists separated the "fit" and "unfit" classes along racist and nativist lines. Under this eugenics model, those considered most worthy of rearing children were couples who were middle class or upper class Nordic-Teutonic whites. Racial minorities and ethnic immigrant groups were typically classified as unfit. The poor and physically handicapped, whose problems were classified as hereditary, were also in this negative category. Eugenics supporters pushed middle and upper-class "native" whites to have large families. In some circles eugenicists went as far as declaring birth control selfish and a form of "racial suicide." The same people believed that blacks and other minorities should not reproduce. Although eugenicists did not promote contraceptive use, fearing that the "unfit" would not use the methods properly, sterilization was often promoted as the best option to limit their numbers.

Eugenics and Birth Control

Margaret Sanger's birth control movement and quest for the Pill intersected the rise of the eugenics movement in America. At a time when birth control was still not publicly accepted in American society, some eugenicists believed birth control was a useful tool for curbing procreation among the "weak." In the 1920s and 30s, Sanger calculated that the success of the eugenics idea gave her own movement legitimacy, and tried to ally her cause with the movement. Eugenics was a dominant theme at her birth control conferences, and Sanger spoke publicly of the need to put an end to breeding by the unfit. In 1920 Sanger publicly stated that "birth control is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit [and] of preventing the birth of defectives."

What Did Sanger Believe?

Sanger's relationship with the eugenics movement was complex -- part strategy and part ideology. Many historians now believe that Sanger opposed eugenics along racial lines. Furthermore, Sanger opposed the belief of many eugenicists that poverty was hereditary, asserting instead that poverty, criminal behavior and other social problems were due to environmental factors and were not predetermined.

Suspect Intentions

Following World War II and the Holocaust, the science of eugenics was discredited. It was soon forgotten by many. But when Margaret Sanger was being lauded for her role in the creation of the Pill in the 1960s, many in the African American community recalled her association with eugenics. Suspicious of her intentions to begin with, some were appalled by her ongoing support of the population control movement.

Legacy of Distrust

Some African Americans believed that Sanger's motive was not to aid black women but to eliminate future black generations. In promoting the development of the birth control pill in the 1950s, Sanger had heralded it as the panacea to world overpopulation, starvation and hunger. Sanger wrote: "I consider that the world, and almost our civilization for the next 25 years, is going to depend on a simple, cheap, safe, contraceptive to be used in poverty stricken slums, jungles and among the most ignorant people." Although African American women appreciated the effectiveness and reliability of oral contraceptives, and used the method in large numbers, they resented the way white-dominated organizations seemed to push the Pill in black communities.

About Margaret Sanger
by The Margaret Sanger Papers Project
New York University
Accessed: 4/2/20
© The Margaret Sanger Papers.

-- Lysol, by Wikipedia

Margaret Louise Higgins was born on September 14, 1879 in Corning, New York to Michael Hennessey Higgins, an Irish-born stonemason with iconoclastic ideas, and Anne Purcell Higgins, a devoutly Catholic Irish-American. When Anne Higgins died from tuberculosis at the age of fifty, Margaret, the sixth of eleven children, pointed to her mother's frequent pregnancy as the underlying cause of her premature death. Margaret Higgins sought to escape what she viewed as a grim class and family heritage. With the help of her older sisters, she attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute in 1896 and then entered the nursing program at White Plains Hospital in 1900. In 1902, just months before completing the program, she met and married architect William Sanger. Margaret Sanger and her husband had three children and the family settled in Hastings, a Westchester County suburb of New York City.

Suburban life, however, did not satisfy the Sangers. By 1910 the family moved to New York City. William Sanger wanted to give up his work as a draftsman to try his hand at painting, while Margaret Sanger returned to nursing to help support the family. The Sangers also became immersed in the pre-war radical bohemian culture flourishing in Greenwich Village. They joined a circle of intellectuals, activists, and artists that included Max Eastman, John Reed, Upton Sinclair, Mabel Dodge and Emma Goldman. Margaret Sanger became a member of the Liberal Club and a supporter of the anarchist-run Ferrer Center and Modern School. She also joined the Women's Committee of the NY Socialist Party, and took part in labor actions led by the Industrial Workers of the World, including the 1912 strike at Lawrence, MA and the 1913 strike at Paterson, NJ.

Margaret Sanger's work as a visiting nurse focused her interest in sex education and women's health. In 1912 she began writing a column on sex education for the New York Call entitled "What Every Girl Should Know." This experience led to her first battle with censors, who suppressed her column on venereal disease, deeming it obscene. Increasingly, it was the issue of family limitation that attracted Sanger's attention as she worked in New York's Lower East Side with poor women suffering the pain of frequent childbirth, miscarriage and abortion. Influenced by the ideas of anarchist Emma Goldman, Sanger began to argue for the need for family limitation as a tool by which working-class women would liberate themselves from the economic burden of unwanted pregnancy.

Shocked by the inability of most women to obtain accurate and effective birth control, which she believed was fundamental to securing freedom and independence for working women, Sanger began challenging the 1873 federal Comstock law and the various "little Comstock" state laws that banned the dissemination of contraceptive information. In March 1914, Sanger published the first issue of The Woman Rebel, a radical feminist monthly that advocated militant feminism, including the right to practice birth control. For advocating the use of contraception, three issues of The Woman Rebel were banned, and in August 1914 Sanger was eventually indicted for violating postal obscenity laws. Unwilling to risk a lengthy imprisonment for breaking federal laws, Sanger jumped bail in October and, using the alias "Bertha Watson," set sail for England. En route, she ordered friends to release 100,000 copies of Family Limitation, a 16-page pamphlet which provided explicit instructions on the use of a variety of contraceptive methods.

On arrival in England, Margaret Sanger contacted a number of British radicals, feminists, and neo-Malthusians whose social and economic theories helped Sanger develop broader justifications for the use of birth control. She was also deeply influenced by psychologist Havelock Ellis and his theories on the importance of female sexuality. Sanger broadened her arguments for birth control claiming it would fulfill a critical psychological need by enabling women to fully enjoy sexual relations, free from the fear of pregnancy.

In 1915 William Sanger was jailed for 30 days for distributing a copy of Family Limitation to an undercover postal agent. Shortly after, in October of that year, Margaret Sanger, keen to focus media attention on her trial and generate favorable public support, returned to New York to face The Woman Rebel charges. When her only daughter, five-year old Peggy, died suddenly in November, sympathetic publicity convinced the government to drop Sanger's prosecution. Denied the forum of a public trial, Sanger embarked on a nationwide tour to promote birth control. Arrested in several cities, her confrontational style attracted even greater publicity for herself and the cause of birth control

Although in 1914 Sanger had been promoting woman-controlled contraceptives, such as suppositories or douches, a 1915 visit to a Dutch birth control clinic convinced her that a new, more flexible diaphragm, carefully fitted by medically trained staff, was the most effective contraceptive device. After returning from a national tour in 1916, Sanger opened the nation's first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn. On October 24, 1916, after only nine days in operation, the clinic was raided, and Sanger and her staff were arrested. Sanger was convicted and spent thirty days in prison. However, the publicity surrounding the Brownsville Clinic also provided Sanger with a base of wealthy supporters from which she began to build an organized movement for birth control reform. Sanger appealed the Brownsville decision and although her conviction was upheld, the New York State appellate court exempted physicians from the law prohibiting dissemination of contraceptive information to women if prescribed for medical reasons. This loophole allowed Sanger the opportunity to open a legal, doctor-run birth control clinic in 1923. Staffed by female doctors and social workers, the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau served as a model for the establishment of other clinics, and became a center for the collection of critical clinical data on the effectiveness of contraceptives.

Sanger separated from her husband, William, in 1914, and in keeping with her private views on sexual liberation, she began a series of affairs with several men, including Havelock Ellis and H. G. Wells. In 1922 she married oil magnate James Noah H. Slee, but did so on her own terms, insuring her financial and sexual independence. Slee, who died in 1943, became the main funder of the birth control movement.

With the suppression of the radical left after World War I, Sanger decided to expand support for birth control by promoting it on the basis of medical and public health needs. In 1917 she established a new monthly, the Birth Control Review, and in 1921 she embarked on a campaign of education and publicity designed to win mainstream support for birth control by opening the American Birth Control League. She focused many of her efforts on gaining support from the medical profession, social workers, and the liberal wing of the eugenics movement. She increasingly rationalized birth control as a means of reducing genetically transmitted mental or physical defects, and at times supported sterilization for the mentally incompetent. While she did not advocate efforts to limit population growth solely on the basis of class, ethnicity or race, and refused to encourage positive race-based eugenics, Sanger's reputation was permanently tainted by her association with the reactionary wing of the eugenics movement.

In 1929 Sanger formed the National Committee on Federal Legislation for Birth Control to lobby for birth control legislation that granted physicians the right to legally disseminate contraceptives. However, most doctors remained hostile to birth control. In addition, Sanger faced strenuous opposition from the Catholic Church. In the end, her legislative campaigns and efforts to secure government support for birth control failed. Sanger did, however, succeed in the courts. In 1936, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that physicians were exempt from the Comstock Law's ban on the importation of birth control materials. This decision, in effect, gave doctors the right to prescribe or distribute contraceptives (though the ban on importing contraceptive devices for personal use was not lifted until 1971).

By the late 1920's, Sanger's efforts to broaden support for birth control changed the movement's focus away from radical feminism toward more conservative mainstream middle-class values. Increasingly Sanger herself was viewed as too radical for the movement she had launched. In 1928 she angrily resigned as president of the American Birth Control League and as Sanger's leadership in the movement was eclipsed by younger professionals with more mainstream agendas. With the merger of the American Birth Control League and the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau into the Birth Control Federation of America in 1939 (later renamed the Planned Parenthood Federation of America) Sanger's role in the birth control movement became largely honorific. By 1942, Sanger was living in Tucson, AZ and had retired from active participation in the movement.

World War II refocused Sanger's attention on international aspects of the birth control movement. She had traveled extensively in the early 1920's and 1930's to lecture on birth control in Asia and Europe. In 1930 she organized the Birth Control International Information Centre with British feminist Edith How-Martyn to serve as a clearinghouse for information. By the end of the war, growing alarm over the consequences of population growth, particularly in the Third World, renewed interest in efforts to build an international birth control movement, propelling Margaret Sanger out of retirement. Working with family planning leaders in Europe and Asia, she helped found the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) in 1952 and served as its first president until 1959. At her retirement, the IPPF was the largest private international organization devoted to the promotion of family planning.

Through all her work for birth control, Sanger was consistent in her search for simpler, less costly, and more effective contraceptives. Not only did she help arrange for the American manufacture of the Dutch-based spring-form diaphragms she had been smuggling in from Europe, but in subsequent years she fostered a variety of research efforts to develop spermicidal jellies, foam powders, and hormonal contraceptives. Finally in the 1950s, her role in helping to find critical research funding made possible the development of the first effective anovulant contraceptive -- the birth control pill.

The 1965 Supreme Court decision, Griswold v. Connecticut made birth control legal for married couples. Only a few months later, on September 6, 1966, Margaret Sanger, the founder of the birth control movement, died in a Tucson nursing home at the age of 86.

Part 1 of 2

Family Limitation
by Margaret Sanger
Eighteenth Edition
REVISED
1914

The preponderance of evidence shows an association between douching and numerous adverse outcomes. Most women douche for hygienic reasons; it can be stated with present knowledge that routine douching is not necessary to maintain vaginal hygiene; again, the preponderance of evidence suggests that douching may be harmful. The authors of the present review believe that there is no reason to recommend that any woman douche and, furthermore, that women should be discouraged from douching.

-- Vaginal Douching: Evidence for Risks or Benefits to Women's Health, by Jenny L. Martino and Sten H. Vermund

As a columnist, [Freda Bedi] addressed women's issues with a directness which was startling. Throughout 1943, she had a weekly column in the Tribune entitled 'From a Woman's Window which tackled issues -- such as childbirth and breast-feeding -- which rarely surfaced in the mainstream media at that time. But her focus on gender, and the unfair and unequal burden on India's women, was evident much earlier. Throughout her adult life, she sought to extend the bounds for women in public life. It would be difficult to describe Freda as a feminist. In her marriage, she willingly embraced a subservience to her husband and his personal and political ambitions. When she argued for women's interests, it was not on the basis of a principled demand for equality but of a measure more equity and respect. As a Tibetan Buddhist, she eventually found a comfortable niche with a distinctly patriarchal spiritual tradition which -- as with most major religions -- limited and confined women's role. Yet her championing of women, and her campaigning for the redress of women's grievances, was a consistent aspect of her life, and first became evident as an activist and writer in pre-independence Lahore.

In the spring of 1936, eighteen months after arriving in India and just a few weeks before Tilak's death, Freda was prominent in a public debate on the desirability of birth control clinics. The event was organised by the medical college students' union, and addressed a pressing issue in an era of large families and high infant and maternal mortality. 'Mrs Freda Bedi said that birth control did not mean no babies, it meant better babies; it did not mean no motherhood, but sensible motherhood. Birth control clinics should really be called "sensible motherhood clinics". Motherhood should be a glorious fulfilment of all that is best in woman and a source of vitality and joy and woman should not be condemned through relentless and machine-like production of children. The way to ensure this was to have efficient birth control clinics established in the Punjab where the service should be absolutely free.'2 There was lively opposition to her argument, with speakers expressing concern about birth control being sinful, leading to sterility and frustrating India's need for a large army, but the chair of the meeting declared that the general sentiment was in support of the clinics.

A couple of months later, Freda wrote for the Tribune's magazine section as part of a debate about the segregation of the sexes. 'All healthy minded people must agree,' she declared, 'that it is best if girls and boys can mix freely socially, while keeping a good attitude towards one another .... To my mind, co-education from childhood upwards is the only solution.' But swayed by her experience as a college teacher, she was also concerned that women students were ignoring skills such as cooking and sewing.

The trouble with the present system is that a young man is usually faced with the alternative of a young modern educated wife, who has no idea of running a home intelligently or of bringing up children well, or on the other hand of a pretty girl, very uneducated, who can cook, sew and manage and bring up children but will live a life very apart from him, and be quite unable either to act as a hostess to his friends or to educate his children in the way he would like. I believe that in modern India, a wife, if she is to be useful must be educated, but I am shocked at the way girls in college here neglect learning household affairs. After all, the majority of girls are going to be married and it is only kindness to their husbands to be and their children that they should know something of the more practical things of life.3

In comments that must have upset some of her students, Freda went on to say that the 'trouble is that, because higher education is something of a rarity here still, girls become swelled-headed and think that they are sure to marry rich husbands and that it is below their dignity to work in the house.' This combination of progressive and traditional outlooks was a hallmark of Freda's take on life, and evident in it is how she saw her own role in the household, as her husband's companion and collaborator, but also as the homemaker.

As for the role of women outside the household -- and particularly whether in such a conservative society, where purdah was still common, educated girls should pursue careers -- Freda encouraged young women to seek out occupations which did not excite 'undue opposition from the family and society'. When asked which avenues were open to women, she replied: 'All avenues, ultimately. They have to be fought for, or even just recognised. At present teaching, medicine and nursing hold the field. Journalism is also beginning to attract writers .... Journalism for women, the development of a women's angle in a daily newspaper is a work of which any woman might be proud. It is a national service.'4

That drew a sharp riposte from a student at Fateh Chand in an article provocatively headlined 'The Amazon, grave danger to womanliness':

It is significant that in its most loathsome and unacceptable form the suggestion for feminine careers has come from Mrs Freda Bedi, a Western-bred lady. Though, happily, she has united herself to an Indian, and she may be thinking she has 'naturalised' herself to Indian sentiments of life and living, yet the Western influences that moulded her in her childhood and adolescent years have indelibly determined the make-up of her mind and by the very laws of her being she cannot but look upon things with a vision that must needs have a taint of Westernism in it. Mrs Freda Bedi, let us not forget, has a good deal of selfless socio-political public service in Indian interests to her credit, and we revere her on that account. But we should be wary of accepting her views that may tend to disturb our accepted notions of social propriety that are peculiar to our native genius.5

That must have stung. A student at her own college insisting that Freda was not Indian, could never be Indian, and dismissing her arguments not simply on their merits but because they were tainted by her roots in an alien and uncomprehending West.

The opportunities particularly for educated young women, and the need to balance the desire for a career with domestic and household skills, was becoming an increasing focus of Freda's writing. In the summer of 1938, she published a 150-page book entitled the Modern Girl's Guide to Home-Making -- an advert declared that this 'profusely illustrated and practical book should be given to every bride in her dowry and to every growing girl for her birthday'. She also became chief advisory editor to a new Lahore-based monthly journal, Modern Girl.6 No copies of either have been located, so their contents have to be gauged on the basis of reviews. The market for English books and journals was necessarily restricted to Lahore's educated elite. This was not an attempt to address village India, or even the emerging lower middle class, but more the graduates of Fateh Chand and their families.

The reviewer in the Tribune was unconvinced by Freda's Guide. The book addressed the problems of home-making and how they could be surmounted; included recipes, 'exclusively English'; and dealt with home decorating, furnishing and colour schemes in a manner which suggested that 'only a large house and a lot of furniture of different kinds can make a home'. That wasn't the only aspect of the book that jarred. 'She has given an illustration of a typical English kitchen which is rare in India, as also the bath-room and the lavatory. It is submitted that such things are not suited to this country where the poor constitute an overwhelming majority. Besides it is not possible, except for the very rich, to have a sitting-room, dining-room or a bed-room of the type illustrated.' When Freda herself lived so simply in the Model Town huts, it's surprising that she chose to commend a vastly more expensive lifestyle -- this was perhaps the brief that the publisher had insisted upon. The book also offered advice about diet and menus, though the food recommended was expensive and made no provision for vegetarians; there was a 'slimming without tears' section; and a guide for domestic staff about 'how to wait at tables'.7

The monthly magazine appears to have had a similar style and agenda -- though it was received more warmly by the Tribune, which said it filled 'a long-felt want in Lahore society circles and should be eagerly read by educated women all over India. As Mrs Freda Bedi has put it, the "Modern Girl" aims at pointing the way to the true modern girl, the Indian wife and young mother, who has the future of the nation in her pretty hands.' The articles in the first issue covered fashion, the 'place of art in Indian homes', and a topic 'dear to every young girl ... "How to become a Modern Venus"'.8 The journal didn't prosper. A year after its launch, Freda wrote on 'Modern Girl' headed paper to tell Olive Chandler that the magazine had closed.

I had no financial interest, being in an advisory capacity only, but it had a lot of me in it, + really fulfilled a long felt need -- practical home-keeping, child-upbringing, modern news + views, for that rather pathetic creature the 'educated' Indian girl, who is brought up on books + examinations + is often unable to create a new + satisfactory home life for herself in the midst of old prejudices + antiquated methods. It was widely appreciated + quite unique but alas! However, I don't despair. They are seeds, + somewhere, somehow, they will bear some kind of fruit.9

Freda had identified a need, and a way of addressing it, but the readership simply wasn't there in sufficient numbers. It was another twenty years before Femina found a way of making a women's magazine work in the Indian market.

-- The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead

There are three methods of birth control:

1. Absolute continence.

2. Sterilization.

3. The use of appliances that prevent conception.

INTRODUCTION

Birth Control or family limitation has been recommended by some of the leading physicians of the United States and of Europe. While the medical profession as a whole has not yet taken a united stand upon the subject, we know that the practice of birth control has already been incorporated into the private moral code of millions of the most intelligent and respected families in every country.

There is little doubt but that its general practice among married persons will shortly win full acceptance and sanction by public authorities, who will encourage the practice among the diseased and unfit and help to direct the movement into its proper channels.

In cases of women suffering from serious ailments, such as Bright's disease, heart disease, or tuberculosis, the physician usually warns the woman to guard herself against pregnancy. It is an established fact that two-thirds of the women who die from the above-named diseases do so because they have become pregnant. Therefore, it is imperative that physicians should not only warn women suffering from these diseases against pregnancy, but they should see that they are properly instructed in methods to prevent conception. Such responsibility on the part of physicians would reduce the maternal mortality of the world tremendously.

While the above-named diseases are not considered transmissible from the mother to the child, there are certain other diseases and conditions such as insanity, syphilis, idiocy and feeble-mindedness which are passed to the next generation.

When either the man or the woman is afflicted with any one of these diseases, it is absolutely wrong to allow a child to be born. In such cases the man or the woman should be sterilized.

The patient should understand that such an operation does not deprive him or her of sexual desire or expression. It simply renders the patient incapable of producing children.

To conserve the lives of mothers and to prevent the birth of diseased or defective children are objects for which we need a sound educational campaign for Birth Control.

We hold that children should be:

1. Conceived in love.

2. Born of the mother's conscious desire.

3. And only begotten under conditions which render possible the heritage of health.

We want parents to be conscious of their responsibility to the race in bringing children into the world. Instead of being a blind and haphazard consequence of uncontrolled instinct, parenthood must be made the responsible and self-directed means of human expression and regeneration.

TO THE WORKING WOMAN

The need for safe practical information on birth control is more urgent today among women than it has ever been before.

The working man and woman have begun to realize the difficulty of supporting a family of eight or ten children on a wage scarcely sufficient to decently keep two or three. They have begun also to realize that no increase of wages, obtained through long days of toil or through strikes or lockouts, can keep pace with the increased cost of living or the cost of an ever-increasing family.

It is the big battalions of unwanted babies that make life so hard for the wife of the workingman. It is the ever-increasing number of children, coming year after year into her life, that perpetuates poverty and misery and ignorance from generation to generation.

The working mother knows through her natural instinct that she should not have more children than her husband's wages can support, yet she does not know what she can do to prevent conception. When she asks her friends or neighbors for advice, she is given remedies, usually unscientific, unauthoritative and unreliable, which her experience or knowledge warns her may be injurious.

So she is thrust back upon the possibility of taking drugs for producing abortion, or resigning herself to all the children nature will give her, which can mean from ten to twenty in one woman's lifetime.

These women resent the fact that the educated women are able to obtain safe, scientific, harmless information of birth control, while Society condemns its use among the working women who need it most. Present-day society is generous in doling out pittances for the unfit and diseased, thus encouraging their multiplication and perpetuation, while it prevents and discourages the use of scientific knowledge which would enable mothers to avoid bringing into the world children they cannot feed, clothe or care for.

I give herewith the knowledge obtained through study and through more than fourteen years' experience as a trained nurse in U.S.A.

Next, she applied for a job as a nurse-probationer at a small local hospital. Again, though, Margaret’s careless and nomadic rootlessness was telling. Hospital work proved to be even more vexing and taxing than teaching. She never finished her training. In later years, however, she would claim to be a trained and practiced nurse. Nearly forty pages of her Autobiography were devoted to her varied, often heroic, experiences as a seasoned veteran in professional health care. But they were little more than Margaret’s well-realized fantasies.

In fact, her actual exposure to medicine was almost nonexistent: she never got beyond running errands, changing sheets, and emptying bedpans. Like so much else in the mythic fable of her rise to prominence, her career as a nurse was little more than perpetrated fraud.

-- Killer Angel: A Biography of Planned Parenthood's Founder Margaret Sanger, by George Grant

With the help of her older sisters, she attended Claverack College and Hudson River Institute in 1896 and then entered the nursing program at White Plains Hospital in 1900. In 1902, just months before completing the program, she met and married architect William Sanger. Margaret Sanger and her husband had three children and the family settled in Hastings, a Westchester County suburb of New York City.

-- About Margaret Sanger, by The Margaret Sanger Papers Project

My own experience as a mother of three children has modified some of the advice given in books.

It is my intention to present the facts to the reader in the simplest language, leaving out dogmas or religious accompaniment.

While there are various mechanical instruments such as the gold, ideal or wishbone pessary, the uterus button, etc., often used to prevent conception, I will not describe them here, because my experience has taught me that they are likely to cause irritation and trouble to the woman. There is sufficient information given here, which, if followed, will prevent a woman from becoming pregnant unless she wishes to do so. It must not be forgotten that the best results can be obtained only when the woman will see that, in every case, she follows directions. She must not get careless even once, for it needs only one union in twelve months, unprotected, to give a woman a baby each year. Therefore, to protect herself from pregnancy the woman must use care constantly.

While it may be troublesome to get up to douche, and a nuisance to have to watch the date of the menstrual period, and to some it may seem sordid and inartistic to insert a pessary or a suppository in anticipation of the sexual act, it may be far more sordid and the condition far worse than inartistic a few years later for the mother to find herself burdened down with half a dozen "accidental" children, unwanted, helpless, shoddily clothed, sometimes starved or undernourished, dragging at her skirt, while she becomes a wornout shadow of the woman she once was.

It takes but a few years of continued pregnancies to break a woman's health. The drain on the family income is continually increasing and the standard of the whole family is lowered.

Mothers! Do not be oversentimental in this important phase of hygiene. Learn the facts of pregnancy. The inevitable fact is that, unless you prevent the male sperm from entering the womb, you are liable to become pregnant.

Women of the working class should not have more than two children today. The conditions of society do not render possible the proper care of more than this number. The average wage-earner can take care of no more than this in decent fashion.

It has been my experience that women desire only the number of children they can properly care for, but that they are compelled to have them from carelessness or through ignorance of the methods to prevent conception.

It is only the workers who are ignorant of the means to prevent bringing children into the world. It is also mainly their children who fill the child labor records, the factories, mills, jails, hospitals, poor houses. It is the workers' children who compete with their parents in the labor market for their daily bread, thereby reducing the wages of the parents — an inevitable consequence when the supply is greater than the demand.

Women of the world arise! Let us close the gates of our bodies against the diseased, the unfit, and bring to birth only the best, as we know it, which should be, at least, a child with a sound body and a sound mind.

IS THERE A SAFE PERIOD?

There is current among people an idea that conception does not take place at certain times of the month. For instance: the interval between ten days after the menstrual period, and four or five days before the next period. This is not to be relied upon at all, for it has been proven again and again that some women conceive at any time in the month. Do not depend upon this belief, for there is no scientific foundation for it. There is also the knowledge that nursing, after child-birth, prevents the return of the menstrual flow for several months and conception does not take place. It is well not to depend upon this too much, especially after the fifth month, for often a woman conceives again without having "seen anything" or without her realizing that she has become pregnant. She thus finds herself with one at the breast and another in the womb. Use some preventive.

COITUS INTERRUPTUS

Perhaps the most commonly used preventive, excepting the use of the condom is "Coitus Interruptus" or withdrawal of the penis from the vagina shortly before the ejection of the semen. No one can doubt that in theory this should be a perfectly safe method; and we also find authorities who claim it is not injurious to the man, but who object to it on the grounds of lack of satisfaction to the woman.

The claim is that if she has not completed her desire, she is under a highly nervous tension, her whole being is perhaps on the verge of satisfaction when she is left in a dissatisfied state. This, without doubt, does her injury. A mutual and satisfied sexual act is of great benefit to the average woman, the magnetism of it is health-giving.

When it is not desired on the part of the woman and she gives no response, it should not take place. The submission of her body without love or desire is degrading to the woman's finer sensibility, all the marriage certificates on earth to the contrary notwithstanding.

During several years past, however, I have come in contact with thousands of men and women who have given me their confidence and experience along these lines. The consensus of experience seems to be that there are many men who prefer to practise the method of withdrawal and have been able to control the ejaculation until after the woman's orgasm. If this is done all objections affecting the woman's satisfaction are of course removed. But the fact remains that even in such cases, with the strongest control on the part of the man, we find that pregnancy does take place. This is often due to some slight disposal on the part of the man to a seminal leakage, in which the spermatozoa escape from the male organs without the man's knowledge and before the ejaculation.

A woman physician examined a vaginal passage and found sperm deposits when absolutely no ejaculation had taken place. The results of these inquiries are sufficient for us to say that the practice of withdrawal cannot always be counted upon as a safe preventive.

Again, while in the quest of information regarding this practice, I have had many men say that their nervous system had suffered decidedly bad effects from this method and upon using another, at once an improved condition was felt.

Here we see how very individual all methods of contraception really are. What may give happiness and good results to one may prove injurious to another. But coitus interruptus or withdrawal, is by no means to be counted upon as either the safest or the best method of preventing conception. There are other methods more to be recommended.

A DOUCHE IS A CLEANSER— NOT A PREVENTIVE

Although an antiseptic douche is an important factor in preventing conception, it should not be relied upon as a preventive measure in itself. A douche is a cleanser, but it is not of itself to be advised as a reliable method to prevent conception. When one understands how conception takes place, it can be seen at once that it is quite possible for a woman to be in a state of pregnancy before she leaves the bed, or before she can reach a douche, unless the womb has been previously covered with the rubber pessary, or by the ingredients of a suppository.

Nevertheless, every woman should learn to cleanse herself thoroughly by means of the vaginal douche. Some women object to the use of the suppository because of its lubricant effect; this can be modified greatly by the use of a warm salt douche, taken just previously to inserting the suppository, cleansing the parts thoroughly of any secretion already there.

Every woman should possess a good two-quart douche bag, called a fountain syringe. Hang it high enough to secure a good, strong, steady flow.

Bulb syringes, such as the whirling spray syringes have been found satisfactory by many women for the purpose, especially where there is no bath room or toilet conveniences, as the bulb syringe can easily be used in the privacy of one's bedroom over a vessel. Directions for use come with each syringe.

HOW TO TAKE A DOUCHE

If you have bathing conveniences, go as quickly as possible to the bathroom after the sexual act and prepare a douche. Lie down upon the back in the bath tub. Hang the filled douche bag high over the tub, and let the water flow freely into the vagina, to wash out the male sperm which was deposited during the act.

Do not be afraid to assist the cleansing by introducing the first finger with the tube and washing out the semen from the folds of the membrane. One can soon learn to tell by the feeling when it is sufficiently clean. It is said, that the French women are the most thorough douchers in the world, which helps greatly in keeping the organs in a clean and healthy condition, as well as preventing the male sperm from reaching the womb to mate with the ovum.

When there are no bath room conveniences, a douche can be taken over the toilet, or, when that is impossible, it can be taken over a vessel in a squatting position.

DOUCHES

Many women have been advised by physicians to use an antiseptic douche as a means to prevent conception. I do not advise any woman, who desires to avoid pregnancy, to rely upon a douche for a contraceptive. I wish to emphasize again that a douche used alone is not a contraceptive, because the germ from the male may already have entered the mouth of the womb before a woman can use a douche. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that some method be used to cover the womb.

A douche is a cleanser. It is a means of hygiene rather than a preventive. Do not depend upon a douche to prevent conception. Some women have been successful in using this for many years and then later on, to their surprise, find that pregnancy has occurred. The explanation is as follows:

When the womb is placed high out of the vagina it is not so easy for the germ from the man to reach directly into the womb. In such cases it is possible for a woman to get up and prepare a douche before the germ from the male enters the womb. There are times, however, when a woman has been standing on her feet, washing or ironing or working, and becomes over-tired. Under such circumstances the womb is pulled or dragged down into the canal of the vagina. At such times if intercourse takes place, it is much easier for the seed from the male to enter directly into the womb, unless there is some protection. It is then that a woman who has previously depended upon a douche as a preventive finds it has failed.

My advice is: Never depend upon a douche alone. It should be used after the use of a suppository or before the removal of the pessary.

Cold water douches are not advisable, as there is a tendency to chill and shock the nervous system. A warm or moderate douche is better.

Warm soapsuds as a douche are used by women in France in the rural districts — just plain common soap, as a cleansing douche after the act.

SOLUTIONS FOR DOUCHING

Following are some of the solutions to be used for the douche, which, when carefully used, will kill the male sperm or prevent its entering the womb:

Cresol is said to be the equivalent, chemically, of lysol and is likely to be obtained at a lower cost. Directions are much the same as those for the use of lysol.

Zonite. — This fluid can be obtained at drug stores and is recommended as a douche and for hygienic purposes generally. A quarter of a glassful to two quarts of warm water is enough, though a stronger solution will do no harm.

Chapter X: Lysol and Zonite

Mrs. Robert Smith, married for two months, and living in a small Colorado town, was turning the pages of the Ladies Home Journal. She came to a picture of the Dionne quintuplets. She was a normal young woman and these engaging babies appealed to her. But just the same she found herself hoping that she wouldn’t have a baby until Robert was earning a little more than $28 a week. Their old family doctor had been of no help, and Mrs. Robert Smith had never heard of a birth control clinic, so she clipped the coupon at the bottom of the page and sent for the booklet containing “facts about Feminine Hygiene and other uses of Lysol.”

“Your ritual of personal antisepsis,” the booklet told Mrs. Smith, “Must cleanse thoroughly, destroy germ-life, and leave you soothed and refreshed. Obviously, the effectiveness of your practice of feminine hygiene depends on the preparation you employ in your douche. LYSOL is ideal for this purpose.”

Mrs. Smith bought a bottle of Lysol. She was sure that it must be a good product or it would not be advertised in the Ladies Home Journal and other magazines that she and her mother had read for years.

Just what is this Lysol, used by the Mrs. Robert Smiths of our country “as a means to intimate feminine daintiness and peace of mind”? It consists essentially of cresol, a distillate of wood and coal, which has been made soluble in water by treating it with soap. Cresol was discovered through the attempts of scientists to find a substance which would not be so poisonous as carbolic acid and yet as effective in killing germs. It is now recognized to be almost, if not equally, as dangerous as carbolic acid itself; swallowing Lysol has come to be a common – but extremely painful – means of committing suicide.

Lysol is “SAFE,” says the Lehn and Fink Company, makers of this product. It takes more than the word “safe” in capital letters to refute the many cases, in medical literature, of injury and even death from Lysol. The United States Dispensatory reports the death of a woman from using Lysol in a vaginal douche. As long ago as 1911 Witthaus and Becker stated in Medical Jurisprudence, Forensic Medicine and Toxicology that they had collected the reports of eleven poisonings from uterine irrigations with Lysol. Five of the poisoned women died. In the Journal of the American Medical Association (June 29, 1935), Dr. Louis Pancaro tells of the death of a young woman who injected Lysol into her uterus in order to bring about an abortion. Within half an hour of doing so, the girl became delirioius and unconscious, and died two days afterward without regaining consciousness.

Any antiseptic should be considered not only from the point of view of its effect on bacteria, but also from the point of view of its action on the body tissues. Obviously, any antiseptic which does more damage to the body tissues than it does to the invading bacteria is dangerous. Dr. John R. Conover and Dr. John L. Laird in the Therapeutic Gazette for February, 1924, had this to say of the phenol group of antiseptics: “Members of this group while efficient in destroying bacteria are equally deleterious to animal tissues … Phenol and cresol, as well as the modified preparations, Lysol, kreso, izal, creolin, etc., have an irritating and toxic action …”

The mucous membranes of the vagina are considered so sensitive and easily injured that the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical Association will not authorize the advertising of any antiseptic to the public for use on the genito-urinary tract. Yet Lehn and Fink, makers of Lysol, urge frequent vaginal douching with their caustic product.

As pointed out in Chapter 8, douches containing strong antiseptics are a common cause of leucorrhea. Dr. Samuel R. Meaker reports in the Journal of Contraception (March, 1936) that he has seen four or five cases of severe inflammation of the vagina “following the employment of a coal-tar-product widely advertised to the laity for feminine hygiene.” He does not name the product, but the description would fit either Lysol or some very similar product. The woman who follows instructions enclosed with each package of Lysol and douches “several times a week” will not find the treatment “soothing.” But she may discover that the douches have brought on an inflammation of an originally healthy vagina.

If the vagina is already inflamed, and the woman troubled with leucorrhea, douching with a caustic substance such as Lysol is apt to aggravate the condition. Dr. James E. King in the New York State Journal of Medicine for February 11, 1933, said that even doctors sometimes err in this direction in their treatment of leucorrhea. “He [the physician] fails to visualize the irritated vaginal walls and the denuded areas, and prescribes a douche that is irritating. Iodine, Lysol, or some douche powder is often his choice.” Dr. King points out that the use of such agents on inflamed surfaces is so irritating that it actually increases the amount of discharge.

“It is used in delicate childbirth when feminine membranes are most sensitive. Then surely it is safe for normal everyday use.” This, or a similar statement, has appeared in many Lysol advertisements in an attempt to reassure women regarding the safety of the product. A truer statement would be that it has been used in childbirth, but that this use is now largely discredited. Dr. Lawrence P. Garrod, Lecturer in Biology at the St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in England says: “To those familiar with the properties of germicides the use of Lysol in obstetrics has always appeared mistaken. It is the most caustic of all antiseptics in clinical use, with the single exception of phenol, and the limitations imposed by this property on the strengths of solutions employable bring them dangerously near a point at which they are ineffective.” Dr. Garrod, in a study which he made of the efficiency of antiseptics used in midwifery, found that a dye known as brilliant green proved to be over fifty times as effective in killing germs as Lysol. Dr. J.M. Munro Kerr reports that when St. Mary’s Hospital in Manchester, England, substituted Lysol for another antiseptic at childbirth, the fever rate became very much higher.

Many doctors have abandoned the use of antiseptics in the vaginal canal during childbirth, for they have found that frequently the damage to the delicate cells of the vagina and cervix is greater than the damage to the bacteria which may be present. Too often the antiseptics cause the very infection they are supposed to prevent.

Every reader of the popular women’s magazines probably remembers the long series of ads which the Lysol makers ran a year or two ago called “frank talks by eminent women physicians,” which were all based on the inference that women could free themselves of the fear of unwanted pregnancies by using Lysol douches. These advertisements were strikingly similar in some respects. For instance, in all that we have seen the doctors quoted were from foreign countries: Dr. Anne Marie Durand-Wever, “distinguished German gynecologist;” Dr. Anna Baltischurler, “leading gynecologist of Switzerland;” Dr. Clotilde Delaunay, “leading gynecologist of Paris;” Dr. Paul Karniol-Shubert, “one of the most distinguished gynecologists of Austria;” Dr. Louise Foucart-Fassin, “leading gynecologist of Brussels;” Dr. Amparo Monmeneu, “famous gynecologist of Madrid, Spain.” One would think that America had no gynecologists of distinction; or perhaps American names are not sufficiently bizarre to embellish a Lysol advertisement.

Another marked similarity is the sameness of the testimonials from these doctors, even in the phrases they use. Thus the Austrian, Dr. Paula Karniol-Shubert, says of one of her patients: “Sound advice on marriage hygiene was all she needed. And that was all I gave her. In two little words: Use ‘Lysol.’” And Dr. Clotilde Delaunay of Paris says that her advice to her scores of patients “is given in two short words – use ‘Lysol.’” That two doctors of different countries should express themselves in such nearly identical language should certainly be investigated by the Society for Psychical Research as a striking illustration of thought transference.

“The Lysol advertising, playing up the testimonials of foreign physicians, is reminiscent,” says the Bureau of Investigation of the American Medical Association, “of what the Fleischmann people were doing in recent years, and some others long before them. It seems likely that ‘patent medicine’ concerns have to resort to testimonials from foreign physicians because reputable ones in America will not sell themselves out to such schemes. It appears, also, that the foreign physicians’ testimonials are not often found in publications issued in their own countries. Possibly they hope that their fellow countrymen will not see their testimonials in American periodicals.”

In these, and many other advertisements, it is implied that Lysol is a safe contraceptive measure. The same inference is made in the leaflet in the Lysol package when it says: “The douche should follow married relations as a cleansing and antiseptic agent.” We have already pointed out in the chapter on douching that no douche, no matter what it contains, is an effective contraceptive, for frequently the spermatozoa have entered the uterus, made their way into the Fallopian tubes and impregnated the ovum before any douche can reach them. Or they may have found their way into some of the innumerable folds of the vagina. No douche can be depended upon to penetrate all of these folds, despite the very brash and positive assertion that “Lysol has that rare quality of penetrating into ever crevice and furrow of the membranes, destroying germ-life even in the presence of organic matter.”

Even putting aside the fact that the douche is an unreliable contraceptive, Lysol is less effective than many other chemicals. In a study of the spermicidal powers of a group of chemicals, Dr. John R. Baker has found that seventeen are more efficient than cresol in killing spermatozoa. (As said before, Lysol and cresol are essentially the same.) Such a harmless substance as the citric acid of lemons ranks ahead of cresol. Yet the manufacturers of Lysol advertise:

Women are sensitive – shy. Down deep in their hearts they know what’s the matter. But something keeps them from telling – even their doctor – and from listening to her advice when she has guessed the truth. Such a case came to my notice recently. I could see my patient thought it ‘wasn’t nice’ to face the problem of marriage hygiene frankly. So I sent for her husband. ‘I’m sorry I had to send for you,’ I told him. ‘But your wife won’t listen. Now you must teach her what to do.’ I explained about ‘Lysol’ – the antiseptic that can always be trusted. I told him how safe it is – how gentle. I told him that the whole medical world approves, uses, recommends it. He went away comforted. And when I next saw his wife, her fears had vanished like dew in the sun. They had both grown young again.

Such sentimental trash would be laughable were it not for the tragedy of the many women who have become pregnant because they have relied upon antiseptic douches.

Two doors from the home of the hypothetical Mrs. Robert Smith who bought Lysol lived Mrs. David Jones – also a typical American wife. Her attention was caught by the picture of a beautiful and radiant woman proclaiming, “Now I’m so much happier.” Mrs. Jones, who had four children, was also struck by the caption, “It’s never too late for a wife to learn.” She read the advertisement and found that Zonite is both “safe and powerful.” And so she bought a bottle.

What is Zonite which the Mrs. Joneses of the country have been told provides the “ideal combination of strength and safety” needed for the purpose of feminine hygiene? It is essentially sodium hypochlorite in water, a very cheap solution. For many years hypochlorite solutions have been known to be of value in the treatment of infections, but they were also known to have decided drawbacks – they were unstable and deteriorated rapidly, and they contained free alkali, which is irritating to body tissue. During the war two surgeons evolved a hypochlorite solution which has been named after them – the Dakin-Carrel solution, and it was used with success on wounds. Zonite is essentially a double-strength Dakin-Carrel solution.

The Zonite Corporation claims that Zonite “keeps its strength indefinitely.” William H. Zabel has reported the experience of St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago with hypochlorite solutions. St. Luke’s Hospital has tried various processes for making Dakin’s solution, and has also investigated the “concentrated stabilized solutions that are available to be diluted for use.” The judgment formed as the result of this investigation was that “Dakin’s solution, regardless of the method of preparation, loses its efficiency after forty-eight hours, and on longer standing, secondary products form which irritate the wound. Adding chemicals to stabilize the solution interferes with the reaction on micro-organisms.” It is difficult to see in the face of such evidence (confirmed by reports from other scientists) how the claim that Zonite keeps its strength indefinitely can be substantiated. And the chance that a woman can get a fresh bottle of Zonite is extremely small. Quite possibly the bottle has stood on the druggist’s shelf for several weeks, or even longer. At the best it is as old as the time it has taken it to pass through the hands of the manufacturer, the wholesaler, and the druggist.

Zabel reports that Dakin’s solution can be made with an electrolytic cell for about four cents a gallon. Zonite, also manufactured by an electrolytic process, sells for 30 cents for a two and one-half ounce bottle and 60 cents for the six-ounce size. According to Zabel’s cost estimate, and allowing for Zonite’s double strength, the bottle retailing at 60 cents contains about one-half cent’s worth of the solution.

All doctors know that if Dakin’s solution is to be used successfully it must not contain caustic alkali, and its strength must be maintained within a very narrow range. If it is too weak, it is ineffective; if too strong, it seriously irritates the tissues. Many doctors do not use Dakin’s solution because it is difficult to get just the right strength. It seems almost unnecessary to say that the woman who measures her Zonite with a tablespoon and who makes a rough estimate of the water by merely filling up her douche bag is not able to improve on the doctor’s technique.

What about the claims of Zonite that it is non-irritating? In treating wounds with Dakin’s solution it is necessary to cover the surrounding normal tissue with gauze soaked in Vaseline in order to protect it. Any antiseptic that may injure the skin may certainly irritate the mucous membranes of the vagina. Dr. Robert A. Lambert has reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine that Dakin’s solution is among the antiseptics which are more injurious to tissue cells than to bacteria. Any woman who douches often with Zonite is running a risk because douching frequently with any antiseptic may be harmful. By killing or injuring the protective Doderlein bacilli, and by possibly irritating the mucous membranes, she is inviting an attack of vaginitis. When the Zonite Products Corporation states that “the douche has become a fixed part of the feminine toilet, recognized as a wholesome, healthful routine;” when they claim that Zonite when used as indicated in the vaginal douche is “non-irritating” and “exercises no harmful effect on the delicate membranes and tissues of the vaginal tract,” they are guilty either of ignorance or a callous indifference to the health of the countless women whom they are trying to enlist as steady buyers.

“Nearly every woman at one time or another is afflicted by leucorrhea (‘whites’), characterized by a whitish, viscous discharge. A Zonite douche will help to relieve the inflammation and to disinfect and cleanse the affected parts. When convenient, a tampon of absorbent cotton may be used. This should be moistened well with the solution…” says “Facts for Women,” the booklet put out by the Zonite Corporation. We have already pointed out the dangers of self-treatment of leucorrhea. Use of the tampon, which would keep Zonite in prolonged contact with the mucous membranes, is particularly unwise. “Caution,” read the Zonite leaflets. “Do not let Zonite come in contact with dyed fabrics; the active principle is a powerful bleaching agent.” Yet no caution is given regarding the possible injury resulting from the introduction into the vagina of a tampon saturated with a solution of the same powerful bleaching agent.

The Zonite people at the present time are basing their appeal to women on the inference that Zonite is a good contraceptive. “Many a home is peaceful and happy … when fear and doubt no longer cloud the young wife’s outlook.” The continuous barrage of such statements justifies a final reminder that the douche is not a reliable contraceptive measure. One advertisement reads: “There are sensitive women everywhere who do not trust the superficial information that is going around about feminine hygiene. These deep-natured women want the whole truth from the scientific standpoint. They must depend on themselves to sift out the read facts.” It is to be hoped that enough has been said to make women, deep-natured or otherwise, realize that for the facts they must go elsewhere than to the Zonite Products Corporation.

-- Douching with Lysol and Zonite, Chapter X, in Facts and Frauds in Woman's Hygiene, by Rachel Lynn Palmer and Sarah K. Greenberg, M.D., The Sun Dial Press, New York, 1936

Salt Solution. — Mix four tablespoonfuls of table salt in one quart of warm water and dissolve thoroughly. This is good, and cheap.

I douched with salt water yesterday as I suffer with terrible thrush, now I'm feeling swollen and a bit discormfort. I'm not sure if I did the right thing.

OUR EXPERT SAYS: This is not ideal. You could try one or two drops of tea tree oil in your bath. Otherwise use Canesten pessaries.

-- Douching with salty water, by health24.com

Vinegar Solution. — Many peasants in Europe use vinegar as an antiseptic almost exclusively. One glassful to two quarts of water is the strength usually desired. Douche afterward with clear water.

Acetic acid being the sperm-killing agent in vinegar, may also be used and with the certainty of more uniformity than can be depended upon in the various grades of vinegar. A good solution is one and a half teaspoonfuls of 36 per cent acetic acid to two quarts of warm water.

Plain Water Douche. — This will sometimes remove the semen quite effectively without the aid of an antiseptic. But as the semen can hide itself away in the wrinkled lining of the vaginal cavity, the plain water will only impede its progress for a time. Some ingredient which will kill the sperm is to be more relied upon.

Some women use the douche before the sexual act as a preventive. If this is done, any astringent such as boric acid, alum, citric acid, hydrochlorate of quinine used in the solution will do. Only a pint of solution is needed for this purpose, following the act a larger douche is used as a cleanser. This can also be done with the regular antiseptic douche.

Part 2 of 2

THE USE OF THE CONDOM OR "COVERS"

These are made of soft tissues which envelope the male organ (penis) completely and serve to catch the semen at the time of the act. In this way the sperm does not enter the vagina nor the womb.

The condoms are obtainable at all drug stores at various prices. There are some of skin gut and some of rubber tissue. While the rubber condom is best known, there is found to be least objection to the use of those made of soft skin gut. The skin condom is made more durable and more agreeable to use, if kept in denatured alcohol. Alcohol sterilizes and toughens the membrane. The condom should be washed before and after putting it into the jar of alcohol and should be kept tightly corked. It is almost impossible to keep skin condoms satisfactorily if they are dried. If properly adjusted they will not break. Fear of breaking is the main objection to their use. If space has not been allowed for expansion of the penis, at the time the semen is expelled, the tissue is likely to split and the sperm finds its way into the uterus. The woman becomes pregnant without being conscious of it. If on the other hand care is given to the adjustment of the condom, not fitting it too close, it will act as a protector against both conception and venereal disease. Care must be exercised in withdrawing the penis after the act, not to allow the condom to peel off, thereby allowing the semen to pass into the vagina.

It is desirable to discard the condom after it has been once used unless certain precautions are taken. If it is to be used again care must be taken to wash the condom in an antiseptic solution before drying it and placing it away for further use. A weak solution of Zonite is excellent for the condom.

The condom should be well lubricated with oil before penetration. While any lubricant will do, it is more convenient to use the Lactic Acid Jelly or the commonly known KY jelly. Smear it well over the condom before insertion. It should always be tested for holes or breaks before using.

The condom is one of the most commonly known preventives in the United States. It has another value quite apart from prevention in decreasing the tendency in the male to arrive at the climax in the sexual act before the female.

There are few men and women so perfectly mated that the climax of the act is reached together. It is usual for the male to arrive at this stage earlier than the female, with the consequence that he is further incapacitated to satisfy her desire for some time after. During this time the woman is in a highly nervous condition, and it is the opinion of the best medical authorities that a continuous condition of this unsatisfied state brings on or causes disease of her generative organs, besides giving her a horror and repulsion for the sexual act.

Thousands of well-meaning men ask the advice of physicians as to the cause of the sexual coldness and indifference of their wives. Nine times out of ten it is the fault of the man, who through ignorance or selfishness and inconsiderateness, has satisfied his own desire and promptly gone off to sleep. The woman in self defense has learned to protect herself from the long hours of sleepless nights and nervous tension by refusing to become interested in the act.

The condom will often help in this difficulty, and repulsion from which it takes some time to this subject, no idea of the physiology of intercourse, who upon any contact of the semen have a disgust and repulsion, from which it takes some time to recover. Much depends upon the education of the girl, but more depends upon the attitude of the man toward the relation.

THE PESSARY— RUBBER WOMB CAP

One of the best means of prevention is the pessary or the rubber womb cap. These come in various forms and sizes, the Dutch Mensinga with its ten or twelve sizes, the Matrisalus, used also in Holland and Germany, the French cap-shaped, the Haire pessary used largely in England and the Mizpah largely used in U.S.A. While the French and Mizpah pessary (see cut) may be conveniently used in many cases with satisfaction, I now find the Mensinga and Ramses (both diaphragm pessaries) more reliable and more generally adjustable than the cervical or cap pessary.


French Pessary

The chief objection to the use of the pessary is the difficulty of adjusting it. It is very important that the proper size be prescribed for each individual case. This can only be done after a thorough gynecological examination. The condition of the perineum and the position of the cervix must be ascertained before the proper size can be recommended. This should be done by a physician and then the woman should be instructed how to introduce and remove it herself. It takes but a few minutes for the woman to learn how to do this.

The pessary can be inserted in the evening and allowed to remain in place until the following morning when it should be removed.

Before removing it, she should take part of a warm water douche and continue the douche after the pessary is out.

This method is the most practical of any known.

In my estimation a well fitted pessary is one of the surest methods of preventing conception. I have known hundreds of women who have used them for years with the most satisfactory results. The trouble is women are afraid of their own bodies, and are of course ignorant of their physical construction.

They are silly in thinking the pessary can go up too far, or that it could get lost, etc., etc., and therefore discard it. It cannot get into the womb, neither can it get lost. The only thing it can do is to come out. And even that will give warning by the discomfort of the bulky feeling it causes, when it is out of place.

Before inserting a pessary inject into the cap a small amount of lactic acid jelly or a small quantity of bicarbonate of soda. This will act as a cement to help seal the mouth of the womb for the time being and thus doubly insure prevention.

Lactic acid gel is a registered medical device consisting of a colourless viscous gel administered through an intravaginal tube applicator. Known side effects of lactic acid gel include vaginal irritation, e.g. redness, stinging and itching. In rare cases an allergic skin reaction, e.g. severe redness, swelling or burning, may occur.

-- Metronidazole versus lactic acid for treating bacterial vaginosis (VITA): protocol for a randomised controlled trial to assess the clinical and cost effectiveness of topical lactic acid gel for treating second and subsequent episodes of bacterial vaginosis, by Lindsay Armstrong-Buisseret, Clare Brittain, Miruna David, Gillian Dean, Frances Griffiths, Trish Hepburn, Louise Jackson, Joe Kai, Alan Montgomery, Tracy Roberts, Sukhwinder Thandi & Jonathan D. C. Ross

Finger touching mouth of womb, a — womb; b — mouth of womb.

In inserting the French or Mizpah pessary it is well to get in a position which will make the entrance easy. One foot resting on a low chair opens the parts considerably, also a squatting position brings the uterus lower and makes the fitting of the pessary easier. Do not use vaseline or oils on rubber, they decay it. Glycerine or soap rubbed on its surface makes it smooth enough to slip easily into place.

It's a good idea to avoid perfumed soaps, gels and antiseptics as these can affect the healthy balance of bacteria and pH levels in the vagina and cause irritation. Use plain, unperfumed soaps to wash the area around the vagina (the vulva) gently every day. The vagina will clean itself inside your body with natural vaginal secretions (discharge).

-- Keeping your vagina clean and healthy, by NHS.uk

After the pessary has been placed into the vagina deeply, it can be fitted well over the neck of the womb. One can feel it is fitted by pressing the fingers around the soft part of the pessary, which should completely cover the mouth of the womb.

If you do not feel the head of the womb through the rubber then the pessary is not on right. It should be moved backward a little or forward until the head can be felt covered. If you still cannot feel it then remove and use some other preventive, or take it to your physician and ask for instructions. The uterus may be turned or tipped back so far that a pessary could not cover the cervix.

If it is properly adjusted there will be no discomfort, the man will be unconscious that anything is used, and no germ or semen can enter the womb.

A douche is to be taken either immediately after the act or the following morning. Take part or about a quart of antiseptic douche BEFORE the pessary is removed; after removing it continue the douche and cleanse thoroughly. If a douche is inconvenient allow the cap to remain in place at least 12 hours after the act and then remove without douching.

There are some well-meaning advocates of birth control who have more theories than practical knowledge, who urge or advise that the pessary be left in the body for several days and claim that in this way a douche is not necessary.

The theory may work well in women who belong to the class where standing long hours on the feet is not necessary and where a daily bath in a tub of clear water helps to keep the parts clean. But my experience in the nursing field among working women has given evidence that the pessary cannot remain in place long when a woman stands on her feet, as in washing or ironing. The strain pulls the muscles of the womb down into the vagina and the pessary loses its hold and position. Also the constant contact of the rubber with the natural secretions causes an odor to emanate from the parts, which is not pleasant. It is not advisable to wear the pessary all the time. Take it out after using, and wear it only when needed. A little experience will teach one that to place it is a simple matter.

Wash the pessary in soapy warm water, rinse and dry well and place away in the box. One should last two years, if cared for.

I consider the use of the pessary one of the most convenient, as well as the cheapest and the safest method of prevention. Any nurse or doctor will teach one how to adjust it.

The use of the pessary has many advantages over other methods of prevention. There are few women whose generative organs are in a healthy, normal condition, but who cannot find one of the various kinds of pessaries to fit her convenience.

While the pessary can be used only in cases where the womb is in its normal position — the sponge can be used to great advantage even when the womb is tipped back or out of its usual position.

The usual sponge used for the purpose of preventing conception has a tape attached to it. These are to be had at nearly all drug stores. They should be soaked in an antiseptic solution for a few minutes before coitus and then introduced into the vagina far up as they can be placed. Some physicians have recommended the use of the cotton plug, instead of the sponge, to be soaked in an antiseptic solution. Some of the peasants in Europe use the sponge soaked in vinegar for the same purpose and find it satisfactory. In this country a boric acid solution has been used with satisfactory results. Of course this requires a saturated solution, as, for instance, one teaspoonful of the powder to a cup of water stirred until dissolved.

Possible side effects and risks

Although boric acid suppositories are generally safe for adults to use, minor side effects are possible. You may experience: burning at the insertion site; watery discharge; redness in the vaginal area.

-- Can You Use Boric Acid for a Yeast Infection?, by healthline.com

Sponges and cotton plugs can be recommended as safe, if followed by an antiseptic douche before the removal of the plug or sponge, thus preventing the sperm from entering the womb. The problem is to kill the male sperm upon entering the vagina, or to wash it out or to kill it directly afterwards. A weak solution of zonite may also be used for cotton plugs and sponges, also carbolated vaseline.

It is virtually certain that the physical pressure of douching can facilitate ascension of pathogens.

-- Vaginal Douching: Evidence for Risks or Benefits to Women's Health, by Jenny L. Martino and Sten H. Vermund

Any objection to the use of the small tape sponge can be overcome by the use of a large sponge, divided into parts three or four inches in diameter and a half inch in thickness. Cut into parts while new — boil for ten minutes, as the sponge is never considered hygienically clean until boiled. Push one part up into the vagina as far as it will go, pack it tight around the mouth of the womb so that it covers completely. Douche thoroughly before and after its removal. Always keep these sponges in a solution of vinegar half and half.

One of the cheapest methods of birth control is the use of a large sponge.

SUPPOSITORIES OR SOLUBLE PESSARIES

These are becoming more generally used than any other method of prevention. There is reason to believe these can be greatly improved upon, and the results obtained far more satisfactory than is at present prevalent in England especially.

These may be found at any reliable pharmacy. The majority of them are made from cocoa butter or gelatine, which makes it necessary that they be deposited in the vagina several minutes before the act, in order for them to melt. Special ingredients negate the effect of the male seed.

Birth control forced lovers of the past to get creative. The Talmud, the ancient Jewish how-to guide to life, recommended lemon-juice soaked sponges inserted just prior to intercourse. Speaking of citrus and sex, Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798), that notorious Italian lover and leaver of legend, was known to use a half-lemon as a cervical cap to prevent pregnancy in his many partners.

The always crafty ancient Egyptians had methods of their own. The Ebers Papyrus (circa 1550 BCE) describes a virtual plethora of pessaries, with ingredients as varied and sweet-sounding as acacia root and honey, to more stomach-churning inserts soaked in donkey’s milk or crocodile dung. Onion juice applied to the foreskin was also recommended. These last few were likely quite effective forms of birth control in that they also served to repel one’s partner so completely that sex was nearly impossible. The lovers in ancient China fared even worse -- women sometimes drank hot mercury as their birth control method of choice. Presumably, this worked well too -- if maternal death can be considered a way to prevent pregnancy.

-- Contraception: silly to sensational. The long evolution from lemon-soaked pessaries to the Pill, by Jackie Rosenhek, 8/14

One of the objections to the suppository is the greasy feeling the cocoa butter gives. This can be overcome by douching the parts thoroughly before the suppository is inserted.

While some women object to the suppository because of the lubricant effect, other women who have a tendency to a "dry vagina" approve of the suppository because of this tendency and effect.

It is advisable, in the use of suppositories, which are always to be injected before the sexual act, that immediately after the completion of the act a mild antiseptic douche be used to cleanse out the secretions. This is a procedure in the use of all suppositories, and while it is true that a douche is troublesome, it is certain to give better results in preventing pregnancy, than to depend upon the suppository alone.

JELLIES

Medicated jellies are being used quite extensively at the present time either alone or in conjunction with pessaries. This combination constitutes the most reliable method.

Jellies usually consist of a spermaticidal substance incorporated in a water soluble base. The chemicals most usually employed for that purpose are chinosol, acetic acid, lactic acid and boric acid.

Jellies are supplied in collapsible tubes to which a glass or hard rubber nozzle may be attached. By compressing the bottom of the tube either by hand or by means of a key accompanying the tube, the jelly is forced up into the glass nozzle. The nozzle is introduced into the vagina and a definite amount of the jelly (about half a turn of the key) is deposited within the vagina around the neck of the womb. The jelly destroys the motility of the sperm cells and prevents them from entering the womb. Jelly should be injected prior to coitus. A warm water douche should always be taken in the morning to cleanse the vagina from the jelly and secretions.



SOME QUESTIONS OFTEN ASKED

1. What is the best preventive?

A. There is no one preventive to be recommended for everyone in every case. There are good and harmless preventives, any one of which can be made safe, according to the intelligence applied in using them.

I would advise the use of a recommended suppository or contraceptive jelly for the first few months in the case of a bride, until the parts are in a condition where a pessary may be inserted and worn with comfort. Sometimes it is advisable to use suppositories during the early months of marriage, using the pessary only after children have been born.

2. Is a douche necessary after the use of the suppository?

A. To be certain of good results, I would advise a douche as soon as convenient, under all conditions.

3. Are any of these methods recommended injurious to the health of the man or woman?

A. The only method which physicians claim may be injurious to one or both is the continued practice of withdrawal. This method is not generally recommended, though it is practiced largely in France and England.

4. Which method is safest?

A. All are safe if you use care and intelligence in applying them.

5. Which the least troublesome?

A. The pessary can be recommended as the least troublesome, as after it is inserted it may be left to cover the cervix until the next day.

6. Is there a safe period?

A. There is no absolutely safe period between the menstrual periods where intercourse can take place without pregnancy occurring, at least not for all women. Some women claim this period exists in themselves, but unless you know this positively I would not advise a woman to depend upon it.

7. How soon after menstruation ceases should intercourse occur?

A. This should be left as in all cases, to the natural desire of the woman.

8. Does nursing a baby prevent pregnancy?

A. It is claimed that pregnancy does not so easily occur during the nursing period, especially during the first three or four months. There are many women, however, who have conceived, immediately giving birth to another baby eleven months after the other. I would not advise depending upon this at all. Use some preventive at once and control intelligently the time for the next baby's arrival, instead of leaving it to chance.

9. Does fear of pregnancy affect the child?

A. Fear affects everything. We do not yet know the effect upon the human race which the fear of pregnancy has caused.

10. Is it harmful to take drugs during the first few weeks after menstruation has stopped?

A. It is considered especially harmful, not only to the mother, but to the child in cases where the drugs have not the desired effect. It stands to reason that a drug which is powerful enough to eject the fertilized ovum out of the uterus must have power to affect other organs. We often find children wetting the bed up to a late age, as well as suffering from other organic weaknesses, which may be traced back to the mother's frantic attempt to "come around."

11. Should the woman or the man take the precautions?

A. Either or both, but preferably the woman. The methods to be used by the man — withdrawal and the condom — have their objections for many people. While it is true that the employment of either of these methods lessen the trouble for the woman, they also deprive her of that great sacred closeness or spiritual union which the full play of magnetism gives when not checked by fear, as in withdrawal, or interfered with, as in the use of the condom.

Some sensitive men object to the use of these methods, as also do many women. It is for each couple to decide. Many men prefer to use the condom in consideration of the woman, to lessen her trouble in douching.

12. Should a woman have joy in the union?

A. Yes.

13. Why does she not?

A. Either because her mind is occupied with fear of the results, or because of the awkwardness and ignorance of the man.

14. Can this be overcome?

A. Yes; first, by using a contraceptive which gives confidence so there shall be freedom from fear of pregnancy; second, by making the husband understand that a greater love and joy is created in the relation when the union is consummated only when the woman desires it naturally.

I have given in the foregoing pages the most commonly known means of prevention. Personally I recommend every poor woman who has had at least one child to use a well fitted pessary and learn to adjust it.

Books by Margaret Sanger

READ: "Woman and the New Race" $1.00
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