Claudius F. Mayer: From Plato to Pope Paul / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 17. (Budapest, 1989)

ture.

34

4 Hereditary pathology became a special subject,

34

5 and observations of heritable sickness or defect increased.

346-35

3 Various doctor dissertations also studied questions of heredity.

35

4 Although some physical stigmata were still believed to be God's admonition for penitence,

35

5 practical advices were given about who should mate

356-35

7 and how to procreate wise sons.

35

8 In the 17th cent, it was suggested that deaf-mutes should not marry

35

9 because they beget children like themselves.

360 Consanguineous marriages were considered disadvantageous for heredity,

36

1 and in his Anatomy of Melancholy, BURTON brought up again the old argument in favor of human eugenics.

36

2 A kind of eugenic breeding was the effort of the 18th cent. Prussian Army to recruit and to mate gaints for bodyguards.

36

3 The idea of asexual laboratory production of man has been entertained for many centuries. In the hermetic writings of PARACELSUS (1520) a procedure was described for the generation of homunculi,

36

4 while BACON's Nova Atlantis depicts Salomon's House, a scientific research center where experiments are made with artificial variations of species.

36

5 A certain fashionable Hungarian physician who practiced in Pozsony around 1744 advertised sympathetic metallotherapy for changing the sex of fetuses in utero from girls to boys.

36

6 With the advancement of theoretical genetics, and experience in plant and animal breeding, some scholars proposed that environmental influences (nurture) may have an influence upon inherited characteristics in such a sense that one might wear any passion out of a family by culture, as skilful gardeners blot a color out of a tulip that hurts its beauty.

36

7 VII. POPULATION WORRIES OVERPOPULATION, DEPOPULATION, DEGENERATION Human populations had its ups and downs throughout history, especially in the last centuries,

36

8 characterized by intensive and excessive warring.

36

9 Population problems involved many phases of individual lives and human genetics,

37

0 and stimulated publications all over the world.

37

1 The earliest reliable estimate of world population is from 1650, when mankind totalled about 545 million souls.

37

2 In the 18th cent., when countries changed from agrarian into manufacturing states, their population rapidly increased, especially in England.

37

3 At the century's end, France was also one of the most densely populated European countries, and her population pressure might have been a factor in the French Revolution.

37

4 Rapid increase in people caused proletarization, and unreasonable increase in vice and crime.

37

5 The birth rate of the lower levels of society was the highest.

37

6 Even the French Revolution was alarmed by an excessive population.

377-37

8 A French physiocrat in the early 19th cent, assured the American government that they should not be afraid of any overpopulation.

37

9 Hundred years later, in the 1920-ies, fears of overpopulation started also in the U.S.

380-38

2 Remedies for overpopulation have been suggested by many in the past three centuries.

38

3 The following remedies were suggested: 1. positive checks: wars,

38

4 pestilence, famine, unwholesome occupation, etc., and 2. preventive or negative checks: moral restraint 19