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

FROM PLATO TO POPE PAUL PAGES FROM THE HISTORY OF POPULATION PROBLEMS AND UTILIZATION OF HUMAN GENETIC KNOWLEDGE CLAUDIUS FRANCIS MAYER "

Man kann nichts Kluges, nichts Dummes denken

, Was nicht die Vorwe¡t schon gedacht

." (GOETHE) I. INTRODUCTION While the History of genetics as a whole is a fascinating field of study, historical investigation into human genetic practices is, of course, the most alluring and the most rewarding.

1 I appreciate it therefore very much that Your Congress invited me to participate in a presentation trilogy aimed at a panoramic display of human breeding practices in the past, the present, and imaginary future. My assignment was to leaf through the pages of the past, and to gather information on the ways and means the human race employed in modifying the size and trait of its progeny through the ages. Reports of historians, works of ancient, medieval and modern scholars, physicians, playwrights, poets, philosophers, anthropologists, sociologists, travellers, politicians, and codices of laws were our sources in finding the practices of civilized peoples.

2 Backwards, toward the dawn of history, however, the years run in an infinitely long row, and since the ordinary sources of history do not stretch that far, other methods have to be used, such as observations of primitive peoples still living in their paleolithic or neolithic period, to reconstruct the breeding practices of the human race as far back as perhaps the Pithecanthropus. Soon after the start of this investigation, it became clear to me that most the means and genetic practices which 20th-century individuals use for the modification of the size and/or quality of their progeny, just as well as the various population checks set up by modern states, the intricate marriage prohibitions erected, the latent and overt oppressions and persecutions of national, ethnic, racial or religious minorities by pan-nationalistic genocide government, have their predecessors in prehistoric times. As man-made aids of natural selection, they have continued to operate throughout the history of mankind in weeding out the worst and preserving the fittest. Infanticide, abortion, contraception, castration, celibacy, nuptial age regulations, family grants, tax reductions for fecundity, job security, euthanasia for the unfit, genocide for national planning, and other selective breeding practices have a very long history. The collection of data fairly representative for the human genetic 5