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Human foetus at 12 weeks

Exceptionally talented individuals hold the power to change the world, so imagine what a whole race of geniuses could achieve. In the 1970s, one man’s vision for sharing genius genes for the greater good became, for a brief moment, a reality.

In his 1936 book ‘Out of the Night’, American geneticist H J Muller outlined a plan for future populations to access “the innate quality” of men like Isaac Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Ludwig van Beethoven and Karl Marx. 

Muller’s scheme involved artificially inseminating thousands of women with semen from a single exceptional man. These mothers, like mares mating with a pedigree stallion, were expected to give birth to children with characteristics inherited from the sperm donor.

H J Muller writing in ‘Out of the Night: A biologist’s view of the future’, 1936

Mankind has a right to the best genes attainable.

Muller wasn’t the first person to suggest that traits of eminent men could be inherited, or that humans should make selective decisions when it comes to reproduction. 

In 1869, the polymath Francis Galton published a landmark study of several hundred “illustrious” Englishmen. Galton concluded that “man’s natural abilities are derived by inheritance” and suggested that several generations of “judicious” marriages could lead to a “highly-gifted race”. 

An Oneida Community couple seek approval to become parents.

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Illustration from ‘Free Love and its Votaries’, 1870

In the same year, young men and women of the Oneida Community in Madison County, New York signed up to an experiment in which parent pairings were subject to approval or deliberate organisation. 

The community, overseen by theologian John Humphrey Noyes, prioritised couplings likely to produce children with highly developed spiritual characteristics. The second factor it valued was intellectual development.

Noyes, Galton and Muller were advocates for eugenics, the deliberate control of reproduction to increase the incidence of desirable characteristics within a population. The concept thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Inspired by the principles of natural selection, published by Charles Darwin in 1859, eugenics was based on the idea that deliberate selection could solve practical challenges, like the management of booming urban populations or the building of new nation states. Such thinking came under fire after it was applied by the Third Reich during the World War II.

Frontispiece from ‘The Eugenic Marriage: A personal guide to the new science of better living and better babies’.

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Frontispiece from ‘The Eugenic Marriage: A personal guide to the new science of better living and better babies’ by W Grant Hague, 1914

In some forms, eugenics focuses on preventing or ending lives that have been classified as unfit. In others, it promotes the proliferation of supposedly positive characteristics, often through voluntary participation. While the aims and methods of these two approaches diverge, they each place a higher value on some human lives than others. Muller and Galton both put genius high on their list of desired characteristics.

Galton’s claim that genius is inherited was based on the assumption that exceptionally intelligent people always succeed. In the 19th century, just like today, that couldn’t have been the case. Women and people of other classes and races had limited access to the opportunities Galton himself benefited from.

Scientists now accept that at least half the diversity we see in intelligence is down to genetic factors. However, we still don’t understand how these factors work. That’s partly because, as we discovered in the first instalment of this story, intelligence is a tricky thing to measure. It’s also such a complex trait that its genetic components probably spread across hundreds of genes.

Of course, you can try to breed a race of geniuses without understanding all the genetic details. But even if you succeed in producing a crop of naturally gifted children, is that enough to guarantee their future success? British psychologist Joan Freeman doesn’t think so. Her research suggests hard work, educational opportunities, emotional support and an independent, courageous spirit are more important. As is a desire to keep learning.

Some of these aspects have genetic components, but environment also plays a role. For instance, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart may have inherited some of his abilities from his composer father, but his parentage also ensured he had access to musical opportunities, one-on-one tuition and a supportive creative environment.

A pedigree chart of genius in the Mozart Weber family. 

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From the Eugenics Society Archive, probably 1930s

Nine years after H J Muller’s death, his idea became a reality when, in 1976, Robert K Graham, a 74-year-old optometrist, set up the Hermann J Muller Repository for Germinal Choice in California. 

Graham described the venture as a genius sperm bank. The press, who made its existence public knowledge in 1980, called it the Nobel Prize sperm bank. Neither was quite true.

Though Muller himself had won the Nobel Prize, only three Nobel Laureates contributed to the bank and none fathered a child. Many donors were successful mathematicians, computer scientists and engineers – intelligent people, but not potential candidates for a prize honouring work that delivers great benefits to mankind.

Muller viewed his idea as the most important work of his life. He believed the human race was deteriorating and wanted to take positive steps to prevent humans losing their position as the dominant species on Earth. For Muller, a race of geniuses was the first step in a long-term plan of genetic advances. 

A communist sympathiser who yearned for a more cooperative society, Muller identified two priorities for breeding decisions: high intelligence and “comradeliness”. “The conscious withholding of these gifts from the people at large,” he wrote, would be an anti-social course of action.

Graham, who made a fortune from his invention of shatterproof plastic glasses, provided frozen sperm to women at no cost and asked his donors to contribute out of “enlightened generosity”. However, his aims differed from Muller’s. Graham wanted to produce thousands of children fathered by “the brightest men” in order to drive down the proportion of undesirables in the population. Graham’s bank never implemented Muller’s requirement that donors should have an altruistic streak, and only provided sperm to married couples “of good repute”.

Robert K Graham in ‘The Future of Man’, 1981

Medical science is keeping more of the defective population alive than ever before, while our best brains… do little to correct the decrease in their own numbers.

Muller’s already compromised vision finally came to an end when one of the donors was revealed to be William Shockley. Shockley, a British-born Nobel winner, was known as a co-inventor of the transistor and a racist. He claimed black people were genetically inferior to whites and – among other schemes – proposed voluntary sterilisation ‘bonuses’ for the “genetically disadvantaged”. On discovering Shockley’s involvement, Muller’s widow asked Graham to remove her husband’s name from the project, which she described as a racist mistake.

Schematic image of an egg being fertilised. 

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From ‘Die Fruchtbarkeit in der Ehe und ihre wunschgemässe Beeinflussung’ by Theodore H van de Velde, 1929

Despite these troubles, the genius sperm bank operated for almost 20 years, during which time over 200 children were born. Graham had planned to study them but this never happened. Even if a follow-up study had been completed, it’s likely that couples who sourced sperm from the bank supported their children’s development in many ways, not just by selecting the characteristics of their genetic fathers. 

The most well-documented person to have been conceived with the help of Graham’s genius sperm bank is Doron Blake. In 2001, at age 18, Blake told American journalist David Plotz that a loving family was more important to him than genes. Blake explained that he felt pressured by people’s expectations and didn’t want “to be special”. Making genius people, he said, “was a screwed-up idea”. 

Blake may have been brought into this world with specially selected genes but, like all geniuses, it is the world around him that singled him out as different. 

So, if you had the chance, would you choose a genius baby? Personally, I think we should simply accept the view of Courtney Ramm, another child conceived with sperm from Graham’s bank. “I really believe,” said Ramm in a 2004 interview on CNN, “that there’s genius in every person”.

Anna Faherty is a writer and lecturer who collaborates with museums on an eclectic range of exhibition, digital and print projects. She is the author of the ‘Reading Room Companion’ and the editor of ‘States of Mind’, both published by Wellcome Collection.

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Anna Faherty

@mafunyane

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If you had the chance, would you choose a genius baby?

Author

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Drawing for Johann Caspar Lavater’s ‘Essays on Physiognomy’, around 1794

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Explore this six-part story delving into the mystery of genius and our need to revere brilliant individuals.

Exceptional talent and the trouble with IQ tests

Genius spirits and the mystery of creative inspiration

The enduring myth of the mad genius

Tragic artists and their all-consuming passions

Political brilliance and the power of self-promotion

The quest to breed gifted children

This six-part story delves into the mystery of genius and our need to revere brilliant individuals. It explores what goes on in the genius mind, and considers how to design a genius. 

Searching for Genius

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Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass, Jacques-Louis David, 1802–03

The geniuses we remember are those who somehow capture our imagination. This might be down to luck, design or deliberate manipulation. Napoleon Bonaparte benefited from all three.

In June 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Army were defeated by British and Prussian forces at Waterloo, in present-day Belgium. Almost three decades later, a museum dedicated to Napoleon opened in London’s Piccadilly.

An advertisement for the Napoleon Museum at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. 

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Colour lithograph, around 1843

London musical agent John Sainsbury created his museum to honour Napoleon’s “wonderful character and uncommon genius”, traits Napoleon deliberately promoted. But the French emperor’s own propaganda isn’t the only reason we remember him as a special, talented individual.

English poet Lord Byron, writing in March 1815, three months before Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo

It is impossible not to be dazzled and overwhelmed by [Napoleon’s] character and career.

As a boy, Napoleon was a talented mathematician. When he joined the French Army as an artillery officer, his mental skills helped him rise quickly through the ranks.  

Napoleon had an extraordinary ability to visualise troop locations and recall information about munitions and supplies. Plus, he appreciated how to deploy these resources to gain the best possible outcome on the battlefield. By 24, Napoleon was a general. Three years later he became commander-in-chief of France’s army in Italy.  

When fellow general Henri Clarke travelled to Italy to observe Napoleon’s talents, he reported to the French government that the younger general had sure judgement, stayed calm under pressure and could restructure his plans at great speed, a vital skill in the heat of battle. Clarke also praised Napoleon’s energy and vigour, and the influence he held over his men. He reported that, “There is no one here who does not regard him as a genius, and he really is.”

Napoleon conformed to English polymath Francis Galton’s view of genius as intellect combined with the zeal and grit to overcome obstacles. But he also presented a compelling image to his soldiers, superiors and the public. In fact, Napoleon spent as much time crafting the myth of his own genius – through official documents, speeches, print publications and the arts – as he did on military strategy.

A portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte from around 1800.

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Napoleon Bonaparte. Stipple print based on a painting by Louis-Albert Guislain Bacler d’Albe

In 1796, during the Battle of Lodi, at a small town outside Milan, Napoleon chose to storm a bridge held by the Austrian Army rather than waiting for the enemy’s likely retreat. It was a minor, unnecessary, victory. Napoleon inflated its importance in his official report by claiming to have defeated twice as many opposing soldiers. This looseness with the truth was common; he regularly exaggerated victories and played down setbacks.  

Napoleon’s version of events was shared with the public through two free French-language newspapers, which he set up. Reporting from Italy, each targeted readers with a different political bent. Though the publications had limited circulations, their articles were picked up by Paris papers and Napoleon’s victories became the talk of café society in the French capital. 

The truth is not so important as what people think to be true.

The Battle of Lodi, Napoleon later wrote, was the first moment when he felt “superior” to other men and capable of “executing great things”. Yet, knowing he had to win support from his soldiers, he deliberately addressed them as “brothers” and upped their pay and rations. When he helped artillerymen load a cannon during the heat of battle, Napoleon encouraged the story of his lowly labours to spread among the troops. 

Contemporary paintings of the Lodi skirmish focused not on Napoleon but on groups of soldiers crossing the bridge under fire. Within six months, Napoleon had commissioned artists to tell the stories he wanted the public to see and remember. At a time when painters were expected to represent nature and history truthfully, Napoleon’s artists shaped and promoted his image above all else, while editing the historical record as he demanded.

Jacques-Louis David’s portrait of Napoleon looking “calm on a spirited horse”.

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Written accounts of the time describe the young Napoleon as small, pale and slight – not exactly the stereotypical image of a military or political colossus. Look at a range of paintings of him and you’ll find that his facial features vary. That’s because he was more interested in presenting an idealised image of himself than posing for realistic portraits.

Napoleon to Jacques-Louis David, around 1799

What do you need a model for? Who cares whether or not the busts of Alexander resemble him? It is enough if we have an image of him which conforms to his genius.

By the time French artist Jacques-Louis David painted Napoleon and his troops crossing the Saint Bernard Pass in the Alps in 1800, the general had overthrown the French government to become First Consul. Napoleon instructed David to show him “calm on a spirited horse”, a stance that emphasised his strength and his genuine ability to overcome challenges.

The painting positioned Napoleon away from – and much larger than – the artillerymen he had once fought alongside, as if he was a superior being. By echoing earlier portraits of other great leaders in history, it suggested this unelected leader had a legitimate right to his role. 

The reality of Napoleon’s alpine journey was a little less impressive. Napoleon is thought to have followed his soldiers over the Alps on a mule, an animal much more suited to navigating steep and narrow mountain paths. However, David’s stylised painting was so well-received that four other versions were commissioned. Four years later, the artist was honoured with the title ‘First Painter of the Emperor’.

Napoleon also aligned his image with the Roman emperors who ruled Western Europe centuries before. He instigated his appointment as ‘Emperor of the French’ in 1804, and was often shown in classical dress, wearing a laurel wreath like the Caesars of ancient Rome. He adopted the eagle, a Roman motif, as a personal symbol of strength and power.

Napoleon as King of Italy, wearing a Roman-style laurel wreath, gold-embroidered clothes and eagle symbols.

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Portrait of Napoleon

Within four years of the Battle of Lodi, Napoleon had built up such a compelling myth of himself as hero, saviour and man of the people that artists and writers spontaneously reinforced it. Poems, plays, songs, pamphlets and newspaper articles all presented Napoleon as the great preserver of French liberty.

Theologian Richard Whately writing in ‘Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Buonaparte’, 1819

Generally speaking, we may say it is on the testimony of the newspapers that men believe in the existence and exploits of Napoleon Bonaparte.

English and French alike sought out souvenirs of Napoleon. Getting close to something owned or touched by him offered, as collector William Bullock wrote in an advertisement for the London display of Napoleon’s carriage in 1816, “an immediate connection” with great events and “almost immediate contact” with Napoleon himself. 

Perhaps this was why the commander of British forces at Waterloo (the Duke of Wellington) and the British Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel both paid visits to John Sainsbury’s Napoleon Museum. This enormous collection of paintings, sculptures and letters included personal effects such as a monogrammed wine bottle used by Napoleon the morning after the Battle of Waterloo, a pen with which he wrote his memoirs, and a piece of wallpaper from the room where he died. 

‘Napoleoniana’ like this even caught the interest of Henry Wellcome, who acquired Napoleon’s toothbrush and a lock of his hair. These were almost certainly categorised as ‘relics’, a term that traditionally describes the belongings or remains of a saint, but which Wellcome applied to items owned by notable people. 

A relic of genius. Collected by Henry Wellcome, Napoleon’s toothbrush has a silver gilt handle and bristles made of horsehair.

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Napoleon’s toothbrush

Napoleon set out to perform the role of the heroic genius, but he was also in the right place at the right time. The French were already honouring great men in the place of kings and saints, while the French Revolution, which began when Napoleon was 19, had opened up new routes to political greatness. The uprising also demonstrated the power of the pamphlets, artworks, music and festivals Napoleon would later employ. 

Even when Napoleon’s fortunes changed after Waterloo, his banishment to the remote South Atlantic island of St Helena coincided with an era where the image of the lonely, tortured or suffering genius held great sway. Napoleon’s story demonstrates that genius relies not just on talent, or even on public relations, but also on time and place.

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Napoleon at Saint Bernard, Jacques-Louis David, 1802–03

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How do you convince people you’re exceptional? Meet the ultimate self-styled genius.

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Tuberculosis represented as the head of the Greek monster Medusa. An advertisement for a Swiss exhibition, 1913

In the 19th century, genius was closely linked with tuberculosis. The debilitating disease was thought to fuel writers like Robert Louis Stevenson, even as it consumed them.

In 1880, Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson fell seriously ill while staying in California. When he began to spit blood, it was a sure sign he had consumption, so-called because it appeared to eat away patients’ withering bodies.

Robert Louis Stevenson photographed around 1893.

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Robert Louis Stevenson, around 1893

Today we know the condition as tuberculosis, or ‘TB’, an infectious bacterial disease that often targets the lungs, which gradually deteriorate. Stevenson called his illness “Bluidy Jack”.

Seven years earlier the writer had been sent to the south of France to boost his failing health. At the age of 23, he weighed just 53kg, well under what we’d consider healthy for a man of his height (178cm) today. In California, a fisherman described Stevenson as the thinnest man he had ever seen. Years later, he was likened to a bundle of sticks in a bag.

Stevenson harboured a persistent cough, was prone to fevers and spent long periods of his life confined to bed. Yet he produced some of the most vivid examples of English literature, including the adventure story ‘Treasure Island’ and the novella ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’.

Stevenson wasn’t alone in producing great and lasting work despite suffering from a chronic wasting disease. English writer Emily Brontë, who died of tuberculosis aged 30, was said to grow stronger mentally as she declined physically. And when English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s health declined in 1817, he claimed to possess “unnatural and keen excitement”. Both appeared to experience what Scottish physician Andrew Duncan observed in consumption patients two years later: a “peculiar flow of spirits, and uncommon quickness of genius”.

The lungs of a young man who died of TB. 

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Plate V from Samuel George Morton’s ‘Illustrations of Pulmonary Consumption…’, 1834

Centuries before, the Greeks named this state of high spirits spes phthisica. First-century physician Aretaeus advised that patients with bleeding in the lungs felt little pain. Despite being seriously ill, they might believe recovery was possible, leading to feverish urges to accomplish things.  

Spes phthisica, then, is a state that drives creative production. It is the state American professor Jeanette Marks specifically credited for the power and passion exhibited in Emily Brontë’s novel ‘Wuthering Heights’.

Jeanette Marks in ‘Genius and Disaster’, 1925

It has been said that a man is what his microbes make him, and in nothing, it would seem, is this more true than with the man of genius.

Other theories suggested patients’ feverishly high temperatures could generate creative energy, as might toxins released by the disease. At the other extreme, some people believed enforced leisure time, and patients’ separation from society, provided uninterrupted opportunities for introspection and idea generation. 

This may have been the case with Stevenson, whose poem ‘The Land of Counterpane’ depicts a bed-bound child imagining the objects around him coming to life. The writer was so delicate as a boy that he was often kept home from school. At night, his childhood sleep was interrupted by fever and vivid dreams.

Whatever the mechanism that supposedly linked consumption and creative genius, 19th-century literary and artistic types positively desired to contract the disease. French writer Alexandre Dumas wrote of the 1820s: “It was the fashion to suffer from the lungs; everybody was consumptive, poets especially; it was good form to spit blood after each emotion that was at all sensational, and to die before reaching the age of thirty.”  

Many writers, composers and artists conformed to Dumas’s tragic plot. English poet John Keats died of consumption aged just 25, as did Russian painter Marie Bashkirtseff, who chronicled the progression of her disease in a bestselling published diary.

Marie Bashkirtseff in ‘The Journal of a Young Artist’, 1880

I cough continually! But…, far from making me look ugly, this gives me an air of languor that is very becoming.

Great artists were, it was thought, more susceptible to illness than ordinary people, since they alone prioritised their minds and creative abilities over their bodies. The pale, emaciated look of ‘a consumptive’ became highly fashionable. Invalids were “interesting”, as English poet Lord Byron said after announcing he “should like to die of consumption”.

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The pale and interesting invalid

In the 1880s Stevenson found himself cast in this glamorous invalid role. Frail in body yet producing prolifically, he was widely considered a genius, destined to die young like a Romantic poet. 

The story Stevenson’s stepson later published about the ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ supports this image. Stevenson supposedly wrote the novella over three days, working non-stop in bed. After tossing the manuscript on the fire – because his wife criticised it – he then spent the next three days in “feverish industry…, writing, writing, writing” a new draft.

Such Romantic tales were at odds with the constraints of medical treatment. Consumptives were despatched to sanatoriums or other locations in warm climates and expected to take rest, air and sun at prescribed times. Overstimulating activities like writing and painting were out of the question.

Beds lined up outside the Brockley Hill Sanatorium for Tuberculosis.

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Photograph from ‘The Romance of the British Voluntary Hospital Movement’, 1930

During a spell in the French Riviera town of Hyères, Stevenson was not permitted to speak. Kept in a dark room with his right arm bound against his body, there was no way he could write. Aged just 33, he was told to consider himself an old man and to conduct himself accordingly. 

The only true respite available to consumptives came from medicinal drugs, including opium and cocaine. These substances undoubtedly affected some patients’ creative output. Stevenson used both, as well as morphine. Though we don’t know the exact cause of his inspiration, Stevenson wrote the ‘Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ while staying on England’s south coast, at a time when he regularly experienced terrifying morphine-induced nightmares. 

In retrospect, the number of 19th- and early 20th-century artists and writers who suffered from TB is unsurprising. The disease was rife at all levels of European and American society, with up to one in four of the population dying from it.

Consumption may have been alluring to some, but the consequences were dire and deadly.

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Watercolour, 1912

Any serious study of the link between genius and TB is, however, hampered by the fact that we now know many of those considered consumptive, including Robert Louis Stevenson, may have suffered from other lung diseases. 

Whatever the underlying cause, the reality for Stevenson was that bouts of poor health forced him to stop working. Reduced to twiddling his fingers, he lamented “the profound ennui and irritation of the shelved artist”. Likewise, Marie Bashkirtseff wrote in her diary that she was “indifferent to everything” while confined to bed. On one such occasion, Bashkirtseff recounted, her artistic mentor compared her to an autumn landscape: desolate, deserted and enveloped in fog. 

Unsurprisingly, when New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield began to cough up blood in 1918, she immediately feared she wouldn’t be able to write: “How unbearable it would be to die – leave ‘scraps’, ‘bits’… nothing real finished.” 

Perhaps it was simply visions of mortality, then, that prompted consumptives’ frantic bursts of creative activity during intermittent periods of respite and clarity. Whether or not consumption caused or enhanced genius, the disease had an undeniable allure for some.

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Does having a debilitating disease help or hinder creative genius?

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Vertical cross section of the human brain, 1844

At the turn of the 20th century, medical experts and the public alike thought great writers and artists must surely be touched by madness. To test this theory, French writer Emile Zola embarked on a major psychological project.

In 1896, Emile Zola donated his brain to science. This was no posthumous bequest, destined for dissection by medical students. Zola was very much alive at the time. The novelist laid open his “glass cranium”, he said, so the physical and psychological nature of a writer could be investigated. 

For almost a year Zola was scrutinised by young French psychiatrist Édouard Toulouse and a team of crack medical men. Toulouse applied methods usually forced on asylum patients to a man he considered intellectually above the norm. 

The study explored Zola’s medical history, vital signs, memory and vocabulary. One expert debated the likely source of Zola’s facial wrinkles, while another collected the writer’s attitudes towards women. Zola’s work habits were assessed, as was the organisation of his workspace. Some investigators used the relatively new technology of photography to capture and communicate information about the writer.

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Examining Emile Zola

Zola was, Toulouse concluded, “a neuropath” with an unbalanced nervous system. According to medical thinking at the time, if the nerves carrying sensations around the body became too taut or too relaxed, mental or physical illness might result. Poets, artists, musicians and other creative people were thought to have particularly elevated nervous sensibilities – to be ‘highly strung’, if you will – a state that could lead to mental imbalance or instability.

The idea that great writers, artists and composers share a tendency towards insanity was at its height when Zola submitted himself to Toulouse’s examination. As artists gained freedom to be more organic, spontaneous and imaginative than in the past, they were perceived, like the insane, as something other than ‘normal’.

Writer Ambrose Bierce in ‘The Devil’s Dictionary’, published between 1881 and 1906

MAD – affected with a high degree of intellectual independence; not conforming to standards of thought, speech and action… at odds with the majority; in short, unusual.

This painting by Louis Wain shows a cat on its hind legs. Wain’s depictions of cats became increasingly abstract after he was certified insane.

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Gouache, 1925/1939

In 1838, French psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Esquirol highlighted “great analogies” between creative people with active imaginations and the insane. Two decades earlier, German physician Anton Dietrich attributed the disturbed mental state of Russian poet Konstantin Batiushkov to the “limitless dominance” of the writer’s imagination over other aspects of his mind. This, said Dietrich, suppressed the poet’s judgement and enabled absurd thoughts to go unchecked. 

For some, such disturbances could open up new creative directions. For example, English artist Louis Wain’s well-known depictions of cats appeared to transform into increasingly abstract patterns as his illness progressed. Mental ill health might also provide, as English writer Virginia Woolf once wrote, what was previously dispensed by the gods: inspiration.

Madness is terrific I can assure you, and not to be sniffed at; and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about.

Despite any number of anecdotal examples like this, repeated studies since Zola’s time have failed to generate compelling evidence of a significant link between creativity and madness. 

Eight years after Zola’s contribution to the scientific study of superior intellect, British physician Henry Havelock Ellis published the results of his own research into about 1,000 creative geniuses. Only 4 per cent exhibited any form of mental illness. A century later, at the end of a 25-year study, American psychiatrist Albert Rothenberg concluded that there is no specific personality type associated with outstanding creativity. 

If there is no link between madness and creative genius, why does the idea remain so pervasive? 

One reason is that writers and artists of the Romantic era into which Emile Zola was born valued imagination more highly than reason and judgement. Mental instability, therefore, could be a badge of honour. 

The Romantics valued imagination more highly than reason and judgement, and mental instability was sometimes seen as a badge of honour.

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‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’, 1796

Rather than railing against a diagnosis that described him as unbalanced, Zola welcomed Toulouse’s conclusion. In a letter introducing the published results of the investigation, Zola thanked the psychiatrist for debunking his popular image as a coarse, money-hungry labourer. By positioning the writer alongside sensitive intellectuals and creative geniuses, Toulouse had endorsed Zola’s self-perception as an artist “trembling and suffering at the slightest breath of air”, who embarked daily on a fresh battle against his own inner doubts. 

In the 20th century, New Zealand writer Janet Frame embraced the association her own diagnosis of schizophrenia opened up with geniuses like artist Vincent van Gogh. Frame adopted what she termed “schizophrenic fancy dress”, speaking and behaving in ways associated with the condition. Even when her diagnosis was thrown out, she initially clung to it, feeling that “the ‘privilege’ of having schizophrenia” brought her closer to great artists than her work did. 

In a similar vein, 19th-century essayist Charles Lamb felt that ordinary people could only reconcile the extraordinary works produced by geniuses if they viewed their creators as mad. In this context madness replaces earlier beliefs that creativity was driven by possession and divine inspiration. But, rather than placing geniuses in a privileged position, it stigmatised them. 

American psychologist Judith Schlesinger suggests this delivers a feelgood message for ordinary people. If you can never reach the heady heights of a creative genius, at least you can reassure yourself you won’t have to face their mental challenges.

There’s a fine line to tread between creativity and psychosis.

Searching for Genius

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Anna Faherty

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Anna Faherty

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Wellcome collectionWellcome Collection

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