Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

The black stork : eugenics and the death of "defective" babies in American medicine and motion pictures since 1915 / Martin S. Pernick.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: New York : Oxford University Press, 1996.Description: 1 online resource (xv, 295 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrationsContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9780199759743
  • 019975974X
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Additional physical formats: Print version:: Black stork.DDC classification:
  • 179/.7 20
LOC classification:
  • RJ255 .P394 1996
  • HQ755.5.U5 P47 1996
NLM classification:
  • QS 675
Other classification:
  • 15.85
Online resources:
Contents:
1. The Birth of a Controversy. The Public Death of Baby Bollinger. Debates and Investigations. The Doctor and the Parents. Haiselden and History. A Word about Words -- 2. Contexts to the Conflict. Before Baby Bollinger: Infanticide, Eugenics, and Euthanasia. U.S.A., 1915. Taking Sides: Some Rough Images of the Debate -- 3. Identifying the Unfit: Biology and Culture in the Construction of Hereditary Disease. Heredity, Environment, and the Scope of Eugenics: Scientific Conceptions to 1915. Heredity, Environment, and the Scope of Eugenics: Haiselden and Mass Cultural Meanings. Constructing the Socially Defective Crime, Race, and Class. Defects and Desires: Eugenics, Aesthetics, and Sex. Elite Priorities and Mass Culture: Physical and Mental Defects. Degrees of Difference: Normality or Perfection? Opposing Expansive Concepts of Hereditary Defect: Equal Worth or Entering Wedge? Fitness and Objectivity -- 4. Eliminating the Unfit: Euthanasia and Eugenics. From Prevention to Death.
Action note:
  • digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve
Summary: In the late 1910s Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, a prominent Chicago surgeon, electrified the nation by allowing the deaths of at least six infants he diagnosed as "defectives." Seeking to publicize his efforts to eliminate the "unfit," he displayed the dying infants to journalists, wrote about them for the Hearst newspapers, and starred in a feature film about his crusade. Prominent Americans from Clarence Darrow to Helen Keller rallied to his support.Summary: The Black Stork tells this startling story, based on newly-rediscovered sources and long-lost motion pictures, in order to illuminate many broader controversies. The book shows how efforts to improve human heredity (eugenics) became linked with mercy-killing (euthanasia) and with race, class, gender, and ethnic hatreds. It documents how mass culture changed the meaning of medical concepts like "heredity" and "disease," and how medical controversies helped shape the commercial mass media. It demonstrates how cultural values influence science, and how scientific claims of objectivity have shaped modern culture. While focused on the formative years of early 20th century America, The Black Stork traces these issues from antiquity to the rise of Nazism, and to the "Baby Doe," assisted suicide, and human genome initiative debates of today
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
eBook eBook e-Library EBSCO Medical Available
Total holds: 0

Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-280) and indexes.

1. The Birth of a Controversy. The Public Death of Baby Bollinger. Debates and Investigations. The Doctor and the Parents. Haiselden and History. A Word about Words -- 2. Contexts to the Conflict. Before Baby Bollinger: Infanticide, Eugenics, and Euthanasia. U.S.A., 1915. Taking Sides: Some Rough Images of the Debate -- 3. Identifying the Unfit: Biology and Culture in the Construction of Hereditary Disease. Heredity, Environment, and the Scope of Eugenics: Scientific Conceptions to 1915. Heredity, Environment, and the Scope of Eugenics: Haiselden and Mass Cultural Meanings. Constructing the Socially Defective Crime, Race, and Class. Defects and Desires: Eugenics, Aesthetics, and Sex. Elite Priorities and Mass Culture: Physical and Mental Defects. Degrees of Difference: Normality or Perfection? Opposing Expansive Concepts of Hereditary Defect: Equal Worth or Entering Wedge? Fitness and Objectivity -- 4. Eliminating the Unfit: Euthanasia and Eugenics. From Prevention to Death.

In the late 1910s Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, a prominent Chicago surgeon, electrified the nation by allowing the deaths of at least six infants he diagnosed as "defectives." Seeking to publicize his efforts to eliminate the "unfit," he displayed the dying infants to journalists, wrote about them for the Hearst newspapers, and starred in a feature film about his crusade. Prominent Americans from Clarence Darrow to Helen Keller rallied to his support.

The Black Stork tells this startling story, based on newly-rediscovered sources and long-lost motion pictures, in order to illuminate many broader controversies. The book shows how efforts to improve human heredity (eugenics) became linked with mercy-killing (euthanasia) and with race, class, gender, and ethnic hatreds. It documents how mass culture changed the meaning of medical concepts like "heredity" and "disease," and how medical controversies helped shape the commercial mass media. It demonstrates how cultural values influence science, and how scientific claims of objectivity have shaped modern culture. While focused on the formative years of early 20th century America, The Black Stork traces these issues from antiquity to the rise of Nazism, and to the "Baby Doe," assisted suicide, and human genome initiative debates of today

Use copy Restrictions unspecified star MiAaHDL

Electronic reproduction. [Place of publication not identified] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010. MiAaHDL

Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. MiAaHDL

http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212

digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL

In English.

Added to collection customer.56279.3

Powered by Koha