The First International Eugenics Congress / by Edgar Schuster.

  • Schuster, Edgar.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The First International Eugenics Congress / by Edgar Schuster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL EUGENICS CONGRESS. By Edgar Schuster, M.A., D.Sc. Introduction. The following account of the proceedings of the Congress is strictly limited in its aim. An endeavour has been made to give a summary of most of the papers read, arranged in such a way as to show their bearing on certain problems, the study of which forms a considerable part of the science of eugenics. It is, perhaps, superfluous in the pages of this Review to repeat Gabon’s classical definition, namely, that “ Eugenics is the study of agencies, under social control, which may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.” We do so in order to point out that it should be interpreted as describing the aim of the science and not as limiting its scope. In practice the agencies affecting future generations must be investigated without reference to the possibility of subjecting them to social control, and since we know as little of this possibility as we do of the agencies referred to themselves, its study constitutes an important branch of the science, and in the classification here adopted of the problems discussed at the congress it forms one of the main subdivisions.