HEREDITY OF GEORGE NICHOLS. ratory and the Eugenics Education George Nichols, born July 4, 1778, Society were nominated to the International Commission of Eugenics for It was anrepresentation thereon. in Salem, served for a while as clerk, and at seventeen sailed on a merchant vessel "to see the world." He continued to go to sea as supercargo, and later as captain and part owner until he was twenty-six years old. He then went into commerce and prospered; but lost all his ships in the War of 1812 by privateers, and was ruined. Later he went into the auction and brokerage business. He died in 1865. nounced that Dr. MacDonald was the new Secretary of the Liverpool Heredity Society. EUGENICS IN INDIA. The The Indian Eugenics Society was organized at Lahore on Monday, June 20, 1921. The Secretary reports over 150 members with branches at Lahore Love of the sea was a prevailing and Simla. It has issued fifteen leafpassion. He early learned to spend lets in the Indian and English lanmuch time in the sea near Salem and guages, and has supplied over twenty he states that he always had a strong lectures and papers. Among the memdesire to pursue a seafaring life. bers of the society are representatives There was a marked love of adventure. of the Panjab Legislative Council and His father was a retired sea captain Indian Legislative Assembly. but with the marriage of George to General Secretary is Gopalji AhluSarah Peirce this trait was lost to the walia, Imperial Hotel, Lahore, India. George Nichols had some liter- The first leaflet bears the date of ary capacity and wrote his autobiog- July 9, 1921, and begins with Galton's The aims of raphy. His brother, Ichabod, wrote definition of eugenics. some famous religious books. George's the Society are listed as follows: (1) son George became a literary critic. To urge the importance of a critical He had good judgment in business, and this trait has been handed down through three generations of descend sons. ants. Martha Nichols. A Salem Shipmaster and Merchant: The Autobiography of George Nichols. Boston, Four Seas Co., 1921. 127 pp. EUGENICS EDUCATION SOCIETY. study of problems relating to race improvement from Indian point of view and having regard for Indian traditions and present conditions. (2) To spread a knowledge of sex and heredity so far as that may affect the improvement of the race. (3) To modify and direct matters relating to human parenthood according to eugenical ideals. (4) To further Eugenic teaching at home, in the school and elsewhere. EXPERIMENTAL CONTROL OF HEREDITY. At a meeting of the Council of the Eugenics Education Society held at 11, Lincoln's Inn Fields, Nov. 1, 1921, there were present Major Darwin, in the chair, Lady Chambers, Sir Robert Armstrong Jones, Miss E. Corry, Mr. Dr. A. R. Middleton (Amer. Soc. of Fisher, Dean Inge, Miss Kirby, Mr. Lidbetter, Prof. E. W. MacBride, Mrs. Zoologists at Toronto) finds that Potten, Mrs. Neville-Rolfe and Mr. paramecia kept in 0.2 per cent. norFleischl. The treasurer read a favor- mal saline (and food) divide faster able financial report. Major Darwin than those kept in distilled water (and If after a time gave a report on his visit to the Con- food) as a control. ress in New York. The Galton Labo- the saline cultures are put in a 0.1 In THE CRÔ-MAGNON MAN IN SWEDEN. 1921, per cent. salt solution they continue their rapid division for 10 days subsequent to 10 days in the 0.2 per cent. the September-October, saline; for 60 days subsequent to 30 number of Natural History, N. C. Neldays in the 0.2 per cent. saline. The son, of the staff of the American modification of the fission rate due to Museum of Natural History, in the "Recent Activithe strong saline solution persists in course of a paper on the weak solution-the induced modi- ties of European Archæologists" says fication of the division rate is in-" that the tall, narrow-skulled people herited. ". . . It is estimated that he (the Cro-Magnon man) arrived in southern Sweden about 15,000 years ago. of present-day Sweden are direct de scendants of the highly gifted, narrowHEREDITARY BLOOD QUALITIES. skulled Cro-Magnon men of PalæolithIn the Journal of Immunology for ic France and central Europe is the September, Dr. R. Ottenberg tells of opinion expressed by Oscar Montelius the work done by von Dungern and of the National Museum, Stockholm. Hirschfeld and others on the agglu- His views on this and related topics The tinogens A and B of red cells. are set forth in the April number of results of these investigations are ap- the Antiquarian Journal of Lonplied to the question of disputed pater- don. The article, unfortunately, hity. If the child's blood is the cor- is too brief to be convincing; but a rect group for the alleged parents, statement of such importance coming then the child could be their offspring, from one of Europe's foremost veteran but need not necessarily be. But, on archæologists compels attention. the other hand, if the child's group is wrong for the two asserted parents, then one can say with absolute certainty that the child must have a ". . . No direct proof is offered by parent other than one of those as- Montelius that it was, in fact, the Crôserted. The same evidence can be Magnon man who brought these culused, either to prove the illegitimacy tural traits to the Baltic shores. It of the offspring or (circumstances be- is pointed out merely that the stature ing reversed) to prove the innocence and skull form of the Cro-Magnon of a corespondent asserted to be the man-said to be the only inhabitant father of a given child. In infants of central Europe during the Upper and very young children the test can Paleolithic-were much like those of be relied on only if it shows definite the present Nordic stock, typical esgroup characteristics, which it does pecially of the central inland dis in the majority of cases. The test tricts of the Scandinavian peninsula. can be easily done with a few drops The connection between these two of blood obtained from a painless peoples receives further confirmation prick with a small needle. Consider through the fact that archæologic ing this, and the importance of the and linguistic studies in Sweden both questions often at issue, it seems as indicate, it is said, that though some legal means could be de- people ever inhabited the southern and vised by which the persons concerned central portions of the region mencould be compelled to allow the ex- tioned. Thus the oldest skulls discovamination at the hands of a represen- ered are held to be dolichocephalic, and tative of the court. (Jour. Am. Med. the geographic place names are con Assoc., Dec. 17.) sidered to be of Swedish derivation." no other EUGENICAL NEWS. Published monthly by THE EUGENICS RESEARCH ASSOCIATION, 41 North Queen St., Lancaster, Pa. Subscription fifty cents per year, postage free in January 1922. ACCESSIONS TO ARCHIVES. BIOGRAPHIES, 3. GENEALOGIES, 1. RECORD OF FAMILY TRAITS, 11. Miss Aldridge: Description, 21. Prof. Dr. Lad. Haskovec of Prague, Czechoslovakia, one of the leading factors of the eugenics movement abroad, is a member of the Eugenics Commission seated at Liège, Belgium. This Commission has been organized by the "Institut International d'Anthropologie" of Paris. Dr. Haskovec's collaborators are: Prof. Winiwarter of Liège, Dr. Frets of Rotterdam, and Dr. Krizenecki. Dr. John Joseph Kindred, who has been interested in Eugenical studies for some years, and who has contributed a few articles on this subject, is, as a member of the House of Representatives, U. S., from the Second New York (Queens Borough) District, giving close attention to National Legislation relating to medical and welfare matters. His speech on "Medical Treatment and Hospitalization of ExService Men Suffering from Insanity and Nervous Diseases; Benefits to Them to be Conferred by the Sweet Bill-H. R. 6611" attracted favorable Whittier School: Description, 198; attention among the members of the charts, 17; individuals, 381. December, 1921. BIOGRAPHIES, 2. RECORD OF FAMILY TRAITS, 2. PERSONAL NOTES. U. S. Congress and also among physicians. BLEECKER VAN WAGENEN. Bleecker Van Wagenen, business man and philanthropist, died at his country home, Bellows Falls, Vermont, on Dr. Mabel Hattersley Pearson, '10, the 11th of November, 1921, at the age is physician to the students at Bryn of seventy-four years. Mr. Van Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pa. Wagenen represented the finest type At the Eastman School of Music, of American business men. He was Rochester, N. Y., a research Depart- equally devoted to his business and to ment in the psychology of music is humanitarian interests. For many being organized by Dr. Hazel M. Stan-years he was a member of the firm of Dodd. Mead & Company, publishers, Mr. G. H. Knibbs, formerly of the and in later years was its president. Statistical Office of the Commonwealth He was a member of the Board of of Australia, has resigned his position Trustees of the Training School at to accept a directorship of the Insti- Vineland, New Jersey, and took an tute of Science and Industry. His active interest in the scientific studies present address is 314 Albert Street, of the Eugenics Record Office. He conE. Melbourne, Victoria. tributed largely to the support and ton. THE BROKEN HILL SKULL. publication of studies of the Committee on Sterilization. In 1912 he An ancient human skull has recently reported the progress of this committee's investigation to the First International Congress of Eugenics in London. In 1914, Bulletins 10A and 10B of the Eugenics Record Office, which consisted of the report of the Committee's work up to that date, were published. Mr. Van Wagenen gave not only of his means, but also devoted his own time and efforts to eugenical studies. He is the type of man who Neanderthal man, that peculiar spemakes scientific research possible. been found in the Broken Hill Mine, about 650 miles north of Bulawayo, South Africa. Sir Arthur Keith writes in the Illustrated London News, November 19, 1921, "The Rhodesian fossil skull does not represent a type of man which is new to anthropologists; every feature of this skull proclaims the ancient African of whom it formed part to have been first cousin to cies of humanity which lived in Europe throughout a certain phase of the Ice Age. The revelation now made in northern Rhodesia extends the habitat of this ancient and In extinct type of humanity far into We now seem to be tracing Africa. Neanderthal man toward his cradleland, for in many of its features the Rhodesian skull is more primitive than European specimens of the same type. WOMEN IN INDUSTRY. The position of women in industry has a bearing upon differential fecundity and survival of offspring. Bulletin Number 3 issued by The Women's Bureau of the U. S. Department of Labor, entitled Standards for the Employment of Women in Industry," short, clean-cut standards of employment conditions are proposed. 66 "It cannot be said that this discovery of fossil man has taken the anthropological world by surprise. HEREDITARY DISEQUILIBRATION. From time to time during the last Before the Toronto meetings of the fifty years numerous travelers and American Society of Naturalists Dr. local archeologists have reported the C. R. Griffith, University of Illinois, find of Paleolithic stone implements reported that rats, either male or in South Africa, in workmanship not female, forced to live for three months unlike the implements found in the in a cage that rotated rapidly, when gravel and terrace deposits of Europe. released whirled in the opposite direc- The presence of such flint implements tion for several weeks. Some of them is a sure indication that man is an eventually showed a disequilibra-arcient inhabitant of South Africa." tion," a tumor developed in the inner Dr. A. Smith Woodward concludes ear, and the rat died. A male rat that the new Rhodesian man is a later thus treated and then mated, out- development than Neanderthal man; side of the revolving cage, with un- of more recent geological date. He treated females, produced offspring a states that the leg bones found with large proportion of which when a few the skull "are in all respects those months old showed "disequilibration," of an ordinary modern man." Hence otic tumors and premature death. In this fossil man doubtless stood persome way the tendency to form otic tumors (apparently induced by the whirling) had become an "inherited" character. 66 fectly erect. The most striking features of the skull are (1) immense transverse ridges over the eye sockets; (2) an extraordinarily broad palate with typically human teeth, some of which show decay; (3) the long and massive face; (4) a brain case whose capacity is not far below that of the modern Englishman. WAR AND EUGENICS. (Abstract from Eugenique, Nov., 1921.) Dr. Papillault, in an interesting lecture held at a meeting of the Société Française d'Eugénique, proves through statistical figures obtained during and after the Great War that the laws of eugenics have been confirmed by the events of the terrible crisis. Did not the different races, the Turks, the Armenians, the Russians, the Germans and the English act during the war just as they would have acted thousands of years ago, thereby showing that stable heredity dominates environment and education? CHAULMOOGRA OIL AND LEPROSY. Because leprosy is one of the few diseases which is chronic and disastrous enough to be institutionalized by the several states and territories, any progress of medical science in treating this ailment has a bearing upon na tional eugenics. Recently the new treatment by the ethyl esters of chaulmoogra oil has given rise to optimistic and extravagant claims in regard to the possibility of this remedy in cur- The war, like all exogenous causes, ing leprosy. The United States Public shocks, fatigue, traumatism, infection, Health Service feels called upon to etc., acts seriously only on mentalities advise caution. In a recent announce- which are already prepared or unbalment it says, "the ethyl esters of anced, defective or weak. War somechaulmoogra oil, the use of which has times reveals latent psychopathic largely supplanted the oil itself, con- troubles, which would have manifested stitute a most valuable agent in the themselves sooner or later. treatment of leprosy. In treating young persons and those in the early stages of the disease, the improvement has been rapid and striking; in older persons and older cases it is less so. Of the cases paroled from the leprosy stations in the Hawaiian Islands so far about eight per cent. have relapsed and returned for treatment. This was to be expected; and on the whole the results have been so favorable as to make treatment of the disease hopeful. But only time can tell." According to available statistics the number of insane in French hospitals has decreased during the war. Delinquencies among the adolescent have increased, but this was due to the familial conditions. Where the father had to leave the home, the young boy was left in charge of the family, playing the rôle of the man and soon falling an easy prey to temptations. The number of suicides in France during the war was not abnormal, thus proving that suicide originates from a In the Public Health Reports for mental and mostly hereditary defect November 11, 1921, the statement is rather than from a state of despair. made that the ethyl esters of chaul- Eugenicists, Dr. Papillault claims, moogra oil are superior to the oil do not pretend to put a halt to social itself in that (1) the former may be reforms, but try to show that the administered practically to all pati- amount of money spent for the educaents, and (2) their use, when injected tion of the defectives is a loss to subcutaneously, is not accompanied by the pain, discomfort, and other untoward effects attendant on the use of a chaulmoogra oil. society. He advocates that such inadequates, many of whom are a grave menace to society, should be prevented from reproduction. |