Claudius F. Mayer: From Plato to Pope Paul / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 17. (Budapest, 1989)
cations of MOREAU (de Tours), MOREL on degeneracy (1857), Th. RIBOT, Francis GALTON, etc. Prosper LUCAS was the first who tried to establish that the physiological and mental qualities of man are hereditary phenomena. He used a method to prove that, in addition to physical features, intellectual and moral qualities are also inherited in man. 48 3 He showed that all types of defective may be a product of heredity, yet he did not believe in the heredity of acquired characters, which will disapper according to him with the cessation of the original cause. In his book he devoted a special selection to the "rules of treating morbid heredity". 48 4 The treatment included 1. prevention, and 2. repression. Prevention was by checking the seminal transport of the diseases. Some persons are therefore to be excluded from sexual unions; others are to be perferred. He considers the interdiction of consanguinity important. All those must be refrained from sexual union who are personally afflicted with such diseases as epilepsy, insanity, tuberculosis, scrofulosis, etc. ; also those who are not afflicted themselves with such diseases, but their immediate or mediate, direct or indirect ascendants, father, mother, grandfather, grandmother, uncles or aunts suffer from the disease. Persons have to be also eliminated according to their general health condition. Traits of families should be compared. His rule is: "Never cross diseases" ("ne jamais croiser les maladies'''') (On op. 909.). As to the time of marriage, his recommendation is that it should occur neither too soon nor too late (p. 915). 48 5 The repressive type of treatment of an already transmitted, manifested hereditary disease was rather hopeless. One field of knowledge which was fostered by the work of LUCAS was the study of abnormal states which MOREL called degeneracies, 48 6 and which he developed into a discipline of "morbid anthropology, 48 7 the precursor of the LOMBROSO school. 48 8 Extensive studies in the 1860-ies amd 1880-ies in America and elsewhere (Germany, France) 48 9 on hereditary degeneration and insanity brought up again the desirability of various eugenic legalized population checks (restriction of marriage, life-long asylum, castration, sterilization). 49 0 After much controversy over hereditary diseases, 49 1 idiocy, insanity, 49 2 the infamous named families of degenerates, 493 over alcoholism, 49 4 and after a huge literature produced by lawyers, church men, neurologists and psychiatrists, 49 5 the first compulsory sterilization law was enacted in Indiana, U.S.A., on 9 March, 1907. 49 6 Similar laws soon followed in European countries, Denmark (1929), Germany (1934), Sweden (1935), etc. 49 7 Race betterment , racial hygiene, eugenics 49 8 came into of attention of individuals, governments, churches. At the end of the 19th cent, the deep contradiction which exists between modern medicine and racial welfare has been recognized, and it was pointed out that the principle of natural selection —this positive eugenic check in Nature—is suppressed or inhibited in its full operation by keeping the morbid stock in circulation through medical measures. 49 9 Dreamers again proposed to produce a new superior race by exchange of Italian and German boys and girls. 500 Genealogical studies were also made, and conclusions drawn that talent and degeneracy are inherited. 50 1 The so-called "eugenic movement " became stronger during the late 19th and early 20th cent, years, and numerous positive and negative, qualitative and quanti24
