The limits of eugenics / by Albert Galloway Keller.

  • Keller, Albert Galloway, 1874-1956.
Date:
[1910?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The limits of eugenics / by Albert Galloway Keller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE LIMITS OF EUGENICS.1 By Albert Galloway Keller, Ph.D., New Haven, Conn., Professor of the Science of Society, Yale University. It is with considerable trepidation that a layman sets out to speak before the members of what is, in many ways, the most imposing and the most noble of the professions. As the savage tribesman maintains a devout silence in the presence of the med- cine- or mystery-man of his group, so is the more civilized man wont to feel a certain abjectness in the presence of the succes¬ sors of those primitive mystery-men; his tendency is to stand deferentially outside the wigwam that encloses the wisdom and the rites, and to greet the explosions from within with pale¬ lipped anxiety, meanwhile murmuring the aboriginal Ameri¬ canism—“Big Medicine!” However, it is not to be denied that the doctor has always been an influential social functionary, from the time he made rain for the crops and sucked bullfrogs out of rheumatic arms, up to these days when he is a prime factor in missionary enter¬ prise and in societal betterment—nay, even writes the best of detective stories and novels, commands armies of the United States, or makes dashes for the Pole. His activities have al¬ ways had a pronounced social character; and so, perhaps, the student of the evolution of society may be permitted to fore¬ gather with him and talk somewhat of the social activities and duties of the doctor without incurring the charge of what the college boys call “butting-in.” To plunge at once, then, into the subject. One of the grand¬ est ideas of the opening century, if it is capable of realization at all, is so capable only on condition that the doctors take the lead. This idea is that of a man-breeding which shall produce thoroughbreds; it is what its sponsor, Francis Galton, first called stirpiculture, and in latter days, eugenics. And the reason why the doctor must lead off in any eugenic campaign is the reason why any guide or pilot goes ahead, namely, because he has the information, and nobody else has any to speak of. 1 Read at the third mid-year meeting of the American Academy of Medicine, New Haven, Conn., November 12, 1909.