Heredity : its relation to human development

Heredity : its relation to human development

Moody, Loring (author)

Thompson, Elizabeth, 1821-1899

Eugenics

Correspondence

In 1880, Bostonian Loring Moody, familiar with Galton’s work, issued a circular to form an Institute of Heredity, part school, part library, to promote lectures and interest in addressing social ills through eugenic principles. The circular caught the interest of Elizabeth Thompson, a New York philanthropist. She and Moody became correspondents, and this volume reproduces a selection of their letters.

In his letter of October 31, 1881, Moody states, “As a means of eliminating the inherited effects of disorders from posterity, I would have the government establish and maintain good, comfortable, attractive hospital homes for the care, treatment and life residence of all habitual drunkards, confirmed criminals, idiots and incurable lunatics, who should be treated as people suffering from dangerous congenital diseases, liable to propagation through heredity; and so they should be strictly guarded from having any offspring, as far as possible by moral, and the remainder by legal, restraint. So the hereditary transmission of innumerable disorders would soon come to an end.” The Institute of Heredity was founded on November 27, 1880, “to reconstruct and establish the foundations of social order upon natural laws of human life and relations”; it was still sponsoring lectures as late as 1888.

Title page of Heredity: its relation to human development by Loring Moody, which contains corresponsdence between the author and philanthropist Elizabeth Thompson.

Moody, Loring

the Institute of Heredity

1882

Thompson, Elizabeth, 1821-1899 (coauthor)

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Boston Medical Library Rare Books Collection (2.Am.228)

Full text available online here through the Medical Heritage Library

text

1 title page

English

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0001935

Gift of Dr. Algernon Coolidge to the Boston Medical Library, 1883