Black Stork: Eugenics And The Death Of Defective Babies In American Medicine And Motion Pictures Since 1915; Author: Pernick, Martin S.; Introduction: Pernick, Martin S.; Paperback

Author: Pernick, Martin S.; Introduction: Pernick, Martin S.
Paperback; 14 Halftones
310 pages
Published: December 2000
Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195135393

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. Martin Pernick tells this captivating story -- uncovering forgotten sources and long-lost motion pictures -- in order to show how efforts to improve human heredity (eugenics) became linked with mercy killing, as well as with race, class, gender and ethnicity.In the 1910s, a Chicago surgeon electrified the nation by allowing the deaths of infants he diagnosed as defectives. This text uses the story to illuminate broader questions on how eugenics became linked with euthanasia and social prejudice and how medicine influences modern culture.