Venus, Mars and Marston Bates

Most of us think of conservation and ecology as more or less the same thing, with conservation the first step toward the restoration of an ecologically balanced state of nature. But through the first half of the twentieth century, the two words signified quite different things.

In the teens, 20s and 30s, biology textbook authors positioned ecology as a minor sub-discipline of their field and characterized it unflatteringly as a descriptive, womanly endeavor. As Edward Loranus Rice states in An Introduction to Biology (1935), “it would not be wide of the mark to define ecology as the domestic science, or home economics, of animals and plants” (p. 4).

Conservation on the other hand was progressive, manly.

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Samuel J. Holmes’ Library

Samuel J. Holmes was a respected professor of zoology at Berkeley from 1912 until his death in 1964. He was also, and remained throughout his life, an unapologetic eugenicist.

In fairness, life scientists who came of age in the zeros and teens were all steeped in eugenics, and many became fans and promoters. But Holmes, the compiler of A Bibliography of Eugenics (1924), was particularly enthusiastic.

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I speak to you through electrical language: traveling into the nineteenth century with the “nervous icon”

The image on page 401 of George W. Hunter’s 1907 Elements of Biology is strikingly out of place. It is a Greek bronze flattened to a black silhouette. A woodblock engraving in a textbook otherwise illustrated with halftone photographs. A relic of Renaissance anatomy covered by the soot of the Age of Steam. Yet there it stands, owning the page.

The Nervous Icon (as I’ve come to call the image) was a popular feature in biology textbooks into the 1950s. Picked up, rephotographed and copied with apparently little concern for image quality, artistry, copyright or context. It was treated poorly, just plopped in and barely referenced in the later texts in which it appeared.

But something told me there was a story here. I felt as if the Nervous Icon was a courier carrying a secret message from the past.

It turns out that tracing the history of this image – exploring when it was first cut, how it was reproduced, where it appeared, and why it remained popular even as similar classically styled illustrations were retired – reveals surprising connections between the seemingly disparate topics of printing technology, print piracy, electricity, telegraphy, spirituality, abolition, and that most central of nineteenth century anxieties, masturbation. The Nervous Icon’s secret is that, in its hyper-nakedness, it warned of the dangerous interconnectedness of the body, where stimulation, or over-stimulation, of any one part would cause damage to the entire system.

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Evolution of an Icon

The “Nervous Icon” has mesmerized me for nearly three years (see Parts I, II and III).

I first spotted the image in the early textbooks of George W. Hunter, including A Civic Biology (1914), famous as the central exhibit in the Scopes trial. It stood out because it gave off such a curiously anachronistic aura in Hunter’s otherwise proudly “modern” works. Once struck, I started seeing the thing everywhere. I found variations in at least eight competing twentieth century American high school textbooks. And moving back in time, I uncovered dozens of instances published in the century prior.

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The Nervous Icon – Part III

Above are variations of “The Nervous Icon,” an illustration that was copied, retouched, redrawn and reproduced in more than three dozen anatomy, physiology and biology textbooks published between 1845 and 1956. See the Nervous Icon database. Images 1, 2 and 3 digitized by Google. 4 and 5 scanned from the author’s personal collection.

“The Nervous Icon” is my name for an illustration of the human nervous system that found its way into dozens of anatomy, physiology and biology textbooks published between the mid-1800s and the mid-1900s. I began tracing its history in The Nervous Icon – Part I, where I touched on the issues of artistry, copyright, and mechanical reproduction in science textbooks. I followed up a month later in The Nervous Icon – Part II, where I went “over my head” into the history of encyclopedias and the tension caused by the conflict between the assumption that cultural artifacts were the property of the dominating imperialist power and the imperatives of the emerging global marketplace.

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Database Update: Eugenics in College Textbooks

Well, I just spent a fair portion of Thanksgiving morning updating the Textbook History database of Eugenics in College Biology Textbooks. In addition to correcting more than a few embarrassing misspellings and broken links, I’ve added commentary on two later editions of Biology by Claude A. Villee (1967 and 1972), the second edition of General Biology by Gairdner B. Moment (1950), and the first edition of Biology: A Full Spectrum (1973) by Gairdner B. Moment and Helen M. Habermann.

It remains striking how unwilling Harvard professor Villee was to give up on eugenics. Moment too, but Villee far more so. In the 1972 edition of Biology the author comes off as downright cranky about having to abandon the term. But though Villee finally dropped eugenics from the index and text, he didn’t abandon the idea entirely. Where the discussion of eugenics had been in his 1967 text, at the close of the chapter titled “Inheritance in Man,” the author simply substituted two modern sounding but not really so modern sub-sections – “Factors Changing Gene Frequencies: Differential Reproduction” and “Evolution: The Failure to Maintain Genetic Equilibrium” (718). Forget isolation or drift, for Villee, evolution, for better or for worse, was driven by that boogeyman of eugenics, “differential reproduction.” His citing of Earnest. A. Hooton, Carleton. S. Coon (786) and Franz Weidenreich (789) betrayed a continued affection for the concept of “racial development.”

For additional discussion on Villee, see The Eugenic Zombie in a Graveyard of Textbooks, specifically the article’s last section.

A Degenerate in the Classroom: Alfred E. Neuman and the Textbooks He Hid Behind

MAD magazine was a rare treat when I was a young teenager, a little expensive and difficult to acquire on a regular basis, but a standard newsstand pickup ahead of road trips and summer weeks away. At the time, the early 1970s, MAD was hitting its highest circulation numbers. Yet its humor always felt weirdly out of step, recycled, even a bit reactionary. Of course that’s partially why I liked it. It was creepy anthropology, a moist record of the guilty id of my older siblings and younger aunts and uncles, subversive if a little toothless.

The magazine had its culturally relevant bits, like Don Martin’s ononmonpidic explosions and Sergio Aragones’ slapstick marginals, but on balance MAD was weighed down by filler of a sensibility that went out with Eisenhower.

Then there was Alfred E. Neuman.

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The Eugenic Zombie in a Graveyard of Textbooks

During the first decades of the twentieth century, WASP elites in the U.S. got themselves into quite a tizzy about sex and race. Metaphysical threats, like the death of “virgin forests,” the “darkening tide” of immigration and the dreaded “white plague” of Tuberculosis, combined with economic threats, like the new permanent income tax, to create a culture open to and fully capable of funding the promotion of public policies and “scientific” solutions that promised to freeze the status quo. Chief among these solutions was the “science” of eugenics.

Eugenics, with some forced sterilization laws here, a few anti-miscegenation laws there, was pitched as a kind of a cure-all for society’s ills, a permanent solution to the problems of alcoholism, pauperism, venereal disease, sexual licentiousness and the general problem of numbers.

March 30, 1913 announcement of the establishment of a Board of Scientific Directors for the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor. ©The New York Times.

Several well-publicized studies of female college graduates indicated that fertility among upper class whites had fallen below replacement levels. Democracy can be a drag when one is in the minority.

In the teens, eugenics proved a smart path to patronage. According to Daniel J. Kevles, author of In the In the Name of Eugenics, “the science of human biological improvement provided an avenue to public standing and usefulness.” Charles Davenport’s success in securing a major donation from Mary Harriman, widow of railroad baron E. H. Harriman, to fund the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor demonstrated to other researchers and academics how they too might cash in.

Given the hot enthusiasm for the topic, particularly in the years leading up to World War I, it is no real surprise that biology textbook authors got in on the action. But the fact that they stayed on board for the next six decades, is, well, kind of scary!

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Eugenics in 20th Century College Biology Textbooks

[Updated 2011.07.30 to include and weight all editions of Woodruff]

I’d been trying for a couple of months to kick out an article on a curious college biology textbook, The World of Life by Wolfgang F. Pauli (who should not be confused with the more famous physicist, Wolfgang E. Pauli). Published in 1949, The World of Life had long fascinated me, particularly its final unapologetic climax chapter, “Human Genetics and Eugenics” (click image to view). The whole thing just seemed so remarkably wrong; a tortured post-World War II effort to “save” eugenics, as if it were an adorable baby being thrown out with that nasty Nazi bathwater.

But I worried that The World of Life was an exception, a weird one-off a decade or more out of step, not really worth deep examination. Before I could write confidently, I realized I had to know how Pauli’s text fit into the history of college biology education in the twentieth century.

So it was off to AbeBooks (again!), credit card in hand. Before you could say “security code,” I was anticipating the arrival of nearly a dozen book-filled “bubble-lopes.” Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long to find out I was on to something.

The very first of my new acquisitions, Biology: And Its Relation to Mankind (1949) by A. W. Winchester, told me Pauli’s text was no exception. The subsequent arrival of Biology: The Human Approach (1950 – later titled Biology) by Harvard professor Claude A. Villee, a text which identified feeble-mindedness as “the biggest single eugenic problem” (461), suggested a trend: Contrary to received wisdom, biologists did not drop eugenics like a hot stone after World War II. Instead, as I wrote in a previous article, a few college textbook authors “doubled down and began to defend the ideology with more aggressive rhetoric and moments of near-pornographic spectacle.”

Counter-intuitive. Interesting. Compulsion-triggering.

Now, in addition to 82 American high school biology textbooks, I own or have sourced 38 college-level biology textbooks. Though the college collection is considerably smaller and perhaps not quite as complete and coherent as the high school collection, I am fairly confident it is representative.

THE RELATIVE PRIORITY OF THE TOPIC OF EUGENICS IN AMERICAN COLLEGE-LEVEL AND HIGH SCHOOL BIOLOGY TEXTBOOKS 1904 – 1964

The orange trendline traces the relative priority of the topic of eugenics in American college-level biology textbooks published between 1904 and 1964 (based on the table below).* The yellow trendline traces the relative priority of the topic in high school textbooks published during the same era (see related article). Consistently throughout the twentieth century, college texts were as eugenic as their high school counterparts, with a notable increase in the boldness of their presentation of the topic, both in relative and absolute terms, in the years immediately following World War II.

I hope to add a couple context bullet points and write a few longer articles referencing this collection soon (perhaps on topics other than eugenics, which I admit has sort of taken over Textbook History lately). But I thought I’d get this draft database out there, including my somewhat subjective “Eugenics 0-5″ rating. I’ve included links to public domain texts, related articles and available biographical information on authors.

See Database: Eugenics in College Biology Textbooks

Also see Eugenics in 20th Century High School Biology Textbooks.

* The chart above reflects a eugenics score of “1″ for the popular Foundations of Biology by Lorande Loss Woodruff (see page 297), published in 7 editions through 1946 (though only the 1922 and 1937 editions have been directly reviewed). A score of “2″ would not substantially alter the shape of the college trendline, but would amplify it through 1946, thereby decreasing the relative drama of the post-war bump.

Database: Eugenics in College Biology Textbooks

Title	Date	Author(s)	Publisher	Eugenics 0-5
An Introduction to General Biology	1904	Sedgwick, William T. (M) MIT; Wilson, Edmund B. (M) Columbia	Henry Holt and Company, New York	0 No mention
Biology	1912	Conn, Herbert William (M) Weslyan	Silver, Burdett, Boston	0 No mention
The Principles of Biology	1913	Hamaker, J. I. (M) Randolph-Macon Woman's College	P. Blakiston's Son and Company, Philadelphia	0 No mention
Biology	1914	Calkins, Gary N. (M) Columbia	Henry Holt and Company, New York	0 No mention
Elementary Priciples of General Biology	1914	Abbott, James Francis (M) Washington University	Macmillan, New York	3 First college text to describe eugenics. Disclaimed only slightly: "So far as statistics may be depended upon, it would seem that the proportion of defectives, comprising all sorts of persons who, on account of physical, moral, or mental abnormalities, are a burden to society, is steadily and rapidly increasing" (241).
Biology	1917	Calkins, Gary N. (M) Columbia	Henry Holt and Company, New York	0 No mention
A Text-Book of General Biology	1918	Smallwood, William Martin (M) Syracuse	Lea & Febiger, Philadelphia	3 Includes Kallikaks and eugenics. Text closes with discussion of behavior.
General and Professional Biology	1922	Menge, Edward J. (M) Marquette	The Bruce Publishing Company, Milwaukee
General Biology	1922	Burlingame, Leonas Lancelot (M); Heath, Harold (M); Martin, Ernest Gale (M); Peirce, George James (M) Columbia	Henry Holt and Company, New York	5 - Propagandistic and extremely influential. Eugenics chapter written by Lewis M. Terman. Text closes with "It is clear, however, that the sooner serious general attention is paid to racial betterment through eugenics the better it will be for mankind, both in the near and long distant future" (554).
Foundations of Biology	1922	Woodruff, Lorande Loss (M) Yale Bio	Macmillan, New York	1 - Cautionary. '37 edition includes important anti-eugenic statement pp. 407-09.
Life and Evolution	1926	Holmes, Samual Jackson (M) University of California	Harcourt, New York	5 - Propogandistic. See pp 411-427. Book's final and climatic chapter. Note particularly citations on 427.
College Biology	1930	Barrows, Henry R. d. 1935 (M) New York University	Richard R. Smith, New York	4 Propogandistic. Chapter XVIII - Applied Genetics - ends with subsection on Eugenics. Somewhat edited in 1936.
Fundamentals of Biology	1932	Haupt, Arthur W (M) UCLA		4 Propogandistic.
General Biology	1933	White, E. Grace (F) Wilson College Bio	The C. V. Mosby Company, St. Louis	5 Propogandistic. See pp 270-283
Man and the Nature of His Biological World	1934	Jean, Frank Covert (M); Harrah, Ezra Clarence (M); Herman, Fred Louis (M); Colorado State College of Education and Powers, Samual Ralph (M) Columbia	Ginn, Boston	5. Entire narrative leads to the eugenic climax. Influenced by Burlingame (1922). Closes with "Hereditary differences should always have weight in deciding one's vocation" (426). Authors would update text in '44 and '52. Very conscious of latest stats and confirming opinion, including reference to Villee '50 in '52 Jean.
An Introduction to Biology	1935	Rice, Edward Loranus (M) Ohio Wesleyan University Bio Debated Bryan in '25, advised Darrow at Scopes	Ginn, Boston	Cautionary. 1. "Progress must be gradual and conservative" (564)
General Biology	1936	Mavor, James Watt (M) Union College	Macmillan, New York	2 Somewhat cautionary. See pp 599-601
Elements of General Biology	1936	Barrows, Henry R. d. 1935 (M) New York University	Farrar & Rinehart, New York	3 Supportive. 317-18. But claims of "an encouraging amount of success" and the likelihood to "enact and support some such laws and regulations É" (262-63) edited from original (1930).
Human Biology	1940	Baitsell, George Alfred (M) 1885-1971 Yale Bio	McGraw-Hill, New York	3 Promotional. (Quotes Holmes: "three generations ..." 426)
Man and the Living World	1940	Stanford, E. E (M) College of the Pacific, Stocton Junior College	Macmillan, New York	4 Propogandistic. See all of Chapt. XXX - "Genetics and Human Heredity" ÐÊpp. 698-730.
Biology	1940	Parshley, Howard M (M) Smith College Bio	John Wiley & Sons, New York	2 Cautionary. "Ideal rather than practical possibility." Cites SJ Holmes and Huntington's Tomorrow's Children
Man and the Biological World	1942	Rogers, J. Speed; Hubbell, Theodore H. (M); Byers, Francis C. University of Florida	McGraw-Hill, New York	4 Propogandistic and highly deterministic. Very concerned with rates of reproduction by class (chart p. 282). Text focused on evolution, race and "the individual's capacity for mental, physical, and moral development É" (283).
General Biology for College	1942	Moment, Gairdner B. (M) Goucher College Bio (PDF)	D. Appleton-Century, New York	0 Anti-eugenic. Great "Gould-like" quote: "In one sense, heredity is predominant. We develop into humans, not starfish or lemurs, because of our heredity. In another, equally valid, sense, environment is predominant. Every living thing can exist only in a suitable environment and is continually reacting to it. Both together make us what we are" (413).
Biology The Science of Life	1943	MacDougall, Mary Stuart (F) Agnes Scott College; Hegner, Robert (M) Johns Hopkins	McGraw-Hill, New York	1 Discusses inheritance with charts (see note), and mentions eugenics in passing (846), but focuses on disease prevention and environmental improvements.
Man and His Biological World	1944	Jean, Frank Covert (M); Harrah, Ezra Clarence (M); Herman, Fred Louis (M); Colorado State College and Powers, Samual Ralph (M) Columbia	Ginn, Boston	5 Repeats and revises '34 text, adds additional supporting references. Entire narrative leads to the eugenic climax. Closes with "Hereditary differences should always have weight in deciding one's vocation" (547).
Biology and its Relation to Mankind	1949	Winchester, A. M (M) John B. Stetson University	D. Van Norstrand Company, New York	4 Harshly (and casually) eugenic.
Life Science	1949	de Laubenfels, M. W (M) 1894-1960 University of Hawaii (later Orgegon State College)	Prentice-Hall	4 Deterministic and racist. Devotes one of 28 chapters (25) to the topic, titled - Eugenics: The Special Problem of Breeding. "The destiny of a person, animal, or plant exists inside the zygote, chiefly in the chromosomes" (329). Egypt's rise can be traced to "consanguineous marriage by preference" (336). Compares differential births to cancer (338).
The World of Life	1949	Pauli, Wolfgang F (M) Bradford Junior College	Houghton Mifflin, Boston	5 Remarkably eugenic. Attempts to introduce topic under cover of "reform" (and fails). Topic serves as climax for the narrative. "É it has been argued that any program of negative eugenics, by segregation and sterilization, would be futile, and hence that we had better do nothing about the mater at all. This like the lazy man's argument that since he can never eradicate the last weed out of his garden Ð and even if he did, new ones would appear anyway Ð he might as well do no weeding at all!" (580).
College Zoology	1949	Hunter, George W. III, Hunter, F. R.	W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia	3 Strong, but significantly soft-pedaled relative to George W. Hunter's high school texts.
General Biology for College	1950	Moment, Gairdner B. (M) Goucher College Bio (PDF)	D. Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York	2 A hard to judge work. Gairdner in this significant update to his almost anti-eugenic 1942 text of the same title introduces key principles of the modern synthesis. The author's ecological bent prepared him for the transition to populational thinking. However, in an apparent pitch for relevancy, Gairdner placed increased stress "on the human import of biological facts and principles" (vi), which forced a long discussion of human inheritance and heredity, and brought the author's opinions on genetic determinism relative to topics such as I.Q. to the fore (see 559). Eugenics discounted and supported simultaneously (560).
Biology	1950	Villee, Claude A. (M) Bio	W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia	4 Though not the text's narrative focus, eugenics serves as the climax to unit on genetics and precedes text extensive section on evolution. Author references R. R. Gates, S. J. Holmes, H. J. Muller among others. Extremely popular textbook revised through 8 editions. Eugenics strongly promoted through 4th edition (at least), 1962. (Quotes Holmes: "three generations ..." 461). Author pridefully cites California's "success" with a program of eugenic sterilization (and would continue to do so through '62)
Man and His Biological World	1952	Jean, Frank Covert (M); Harrah, Ezra Clarence (M); Herman, Fred Louis (M); Colorado State College and Powers, Samual Ralph (M) Columbia	Ginn, Boston	5 Entire narrative leads to the eugenic climax. Minor text and reference edits and additions relative to Jean '44.
Biology	1956	Brown, Relis B. (M) Lawrence College	D. C. Heath, Boston	1 Quite cautionary. Eugenics indexed and defined, its aims "laudable," but dismissed as impractical, with improvement to the environment suggested as the quickest path to human improvement. "Who is to say whether the race would be better or worse off with more people having musical talent, artistic ability, or mechanical aptitude?" (239)
Biology and its Relation to Mankind	1957	Winchester, A. M (M) Colorado State College	D. Van Norstrand Company, New York	1 Though deterministic thrust remains, the word eugenics, a central feature in '49, eliminated in '57. Notable retreat from visual spectacle (though author would return somewhat to "scare tactics" in '64.
Biology	1957	Villee, Claude A. (M) Bio	W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia	4 Author cites Frederick Osborn's Preface to Eugenics, increases word count in eugenics section by 25%. Remarkably anachronistic relative to peers. Comparable only to the high school textbook Modern Biology in its tone-deafness.
Life	1957	Simpson, George Gaylord; Pittendrigh, Colin S.; Tiffany, Lewis H	Harcourt, New York	1 First "modern" text. Influenced BSCS texts. Eugenics banished, though states "Under present conditions man's future biological evolution is more likely to be degenerative than progressive. (798)
Biology	1962	Villee, Claude A. (M) Bio	W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia	4 Continues to cite Frederick Osborn and S. J. Holmes. Also cites Buck v. Bell, but removes "imbeciles" quote, still present in '57. Updated to include, "the recent discovery of safe and effective oral contraceptives may be applied to this problem ..." (507). A
Biology and its Relation to Mankind	1964	Winchester, A. M (M) Colorado State College	D. Van Norstrand Company, New York	1 Eugenics, a central feature in '49, eliminated by 2nd edition ('57). '64 introduced "scare picture" of a Down's teenager (labeled a "mongoloid)" with a frightening skin condition (551).
Biology	1967	Villee, Claude A. (M) Bio	W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia	4 Continues to cite Frederick Osborn and Buck v. Bell, but drops mention of S. J. Holmes. Scheinfeld still serves as cover. Villee remains steadfast in his opinion that "one of the largest eugenic problems is that of the mental defectives," and that "the average intelligence of the population is decreasing from generation to generation" (570).
Biology	1972	Villee, Claude A. (M) Bio	W. B. Saunders, Philadelphia	3 Villee finally(!) cleanses his text of any explicit reference to eugenics. However, in its place, and to close the chapter titled "Inheritance in Man: Population Genetics," the author substitutes two sub-sections - "Factors Changing Gene Frequencies: Differential Reproduction" and "Evolution: The Failure to Maintain Genetic Equilibrium" (718). Villee's citing of E. A. Hooton, C. S. Coon (786) and Franz Weidenreich (789) betray continued adherence to concepts of "racial development." Text could easily be classed as a "4," if one is willing to read, and not even too carefully, between the lines.
Biology: A Full Spectrum	1973	Moment, Gairdner B. (M) Goucher College Moment, Gairdner B. (M) Goucher College Bio (PDF); Habermann, Helen M (F) Goucher College	The Williams & Wilkins Company, Baltimore	2 A surprisingly late date to find eugenics indexed and the topic of genetic screening discussed under the label. Authors torn on the topic; speak of both negative and positive eugenics; consider modern "humane" negative eugenic measures for eliminating "horrible" conditions coded by dominant genes non-problematic (vs. Spartan exposure or Nazi gas chambers, p. 180). But also suggest that "afflictions" caused by recessive genes may serve as "gadflies to achievements of great benefit to the human race," noting the cases of Homer, Edison, Steinmentz and Byron (181).