The Gene: An Intimate History - Siddhartha Mukherjee Page 0,243

1 (1904): 1–25.

“if unsuitable marriages from the eugenic point of view”: Andrew Norman, Charles Darwin: Destroyer of Myths (Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword, 2013), 242.

Henry Maudsley, the psychiatrist: Galton, “Eugenics,” comments by Maudsley, doi:10.1017/s0364009400001161.

“He had five brothers,” Maudsley noted: Ibid., 7.

“It is in the sterilization of failure”: Ibid., comments by H. G. Wells; and H. G. Wells and Patrick Parrinder, The War of the Worlds (London: Penguin Books, 2005).

“A pleasant sort o’ soft woman”: George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1960), 12.

In 1911, Havelock Ellis, Galton’s colleague: Lucy Bland and Laura L. Doan, Sexology Uncensored: The Documents of Sexual Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), “The Problem of Race-Regeneration: Havelock Ellis (1911).”

On July 24, 1912: R. Pearl, “The First International Eugenics Congress,” Science 36, no. 926 (1912): 395–96, doi:10.1126/science.36.926.395.

Davenport’s 1911 book: Charles Benedict Davenport, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (New York: Holt, 1911).

Van Wagenen suggested, and “they are totally”: First International Eugenics Congress, Problems in Eugenics (1912; repr., London: Forgotten Books, 2013), 464–65.

“We endeavor to keep track”: Ibid., 469.

“Three Generations of Imbeciles Is Enough”

If we enable the weak and the deformed: Theodosius G. Dobzhansky, Heredity and the Nature of Man (New York: New American Library, 1966), 158.

And from deformed [parents] deformed [offspring]: Aristotle, History of Animals, Book VII, 6, 585b28–586a4.

In the spring of 1920, Emmett Adaline Buck: Many of the details of the Buck family story are from J. David Smith, The Sterilization of Carrie Buck (Liberty Corner, NJ: New Horizon Press, 1989).

Her husband, Frank Buck: Much of the information in this chapter is from Paul Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles: Eugenics, the Supreme Court, and Buck v. Bell (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).

A cursory mental examination: “Buck v. Bell,” Law Library, American Law and Legal Information, law.jrank.org/pages/2888/Buck-v-Bell-1927.html.

Of these, an idiot was the easiest to classify: Mental Defectives and Epileptics in State Institutions: Admissions, Discharges, and Patient Population for State Institutions for Mental Defectives and Epileptics, vol. 3 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1937).

On January 23, 1924: “Carrie Buck Committed (January 23, 1924),” Encyclopedia Virginia, encyclopediavirginia.org/Carrie_Buck_Committed_January_23_1924.

On March 28, 1924: Ibid.

“Moron, Middle Grade”: Stephen Murdoch, IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), 107.

Carrie Buck was asked to appear: Ibid., “Chapter 8: From Segregation to Sterilization.”

On March 29, 1924, with Priddy’s help: “Period during which sterilization occurred,” Virginia Eugenics, doi:uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/VA/VA.html.

“Do you care to say anything”: Lombardo, Three Generations, 107.

“A cross between”: Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race (New York: Scribner’s, 1916).

“the menace of race deterioration”: Carl Campbell Brigham and Robert M. Yerkes, A Study of American Intelligence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1923), “Foreword.”

“The Eugenic ravens are croaking”: A. G. Cock and D. R. Forsdyke, Treasure Your Exceptions: The Science and Life of William Bateson (New York: Springer, 2008), 437–38n3.

“It is better for all the world”: Jerry Menikoff, Law and Bioethics: An Introduction (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2001), 41.

“Three generations of imbeciles is enough: Ibid.

In 1927, the state of Indiana passed: Public Welfare in Indiana 68–75 (1907): 50. In 1907, a new law passed by the state legislature and signed by the governor of Indiana provided for the involuntary sterilization of “confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists.” Although it was eventually found to be unconstitutional, this law is widely regarded as the first eugenics sterilization legislation passed in the world. In 1927, a revised law was implemented and before it was repealed in 1974, over 2,300 of the state’s most vulnerable citizens were involuntarily sterilized. In addition, Indiana established a state-funded Committee on Mental Defectives that carried out eugenic family studies in over twenty counties and was home to an active “better babies” movement that encouraged scientific motherhood and infant hygiene as routes to human improvement. iupui.edu/~eugenics/.

Better Babies Contests: Laura L. Lovett, “Fitter Families for Future Firesides: Florence Sherbon and Popular Eugenics,” Public Historian 29, no. 3 (2007): 68–85.

“You should score 50% for heredity”: Charles Davenport to Mary T. Watts, June 17, 1922, Charles Davenport Papers, American Philosophical Society Archives, Philadelphia, PA. Also see Mary Watts, “Fitter Families for Future Firesides,” Billboard 35, no. 50 (December 15, 1923): 230–31.

In 1927, a film called Are You Fit to Marry?: Martin S. Pernick and Diane B. Paul, The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of “Defective” Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

PART TWO: “IN THE SUM OF THE PARTS, THERE ARE ONLY THE PARTS”

“In the Sum of the Parts”: Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of