Eugenics?
Vi didn’t know what that word meant, and she felt a little spark of irritation, of failure—she prided herself on her vocabulary.
She opened the book, and there, on the first page, was a photograph of the author.
Vi recognized him instantly—the doctor in the white coat from the photo on Gran’s desk. She held the book up to the gold-framed photo, compared the faces under the glow of her penlight. It was the same man, no doubt. Same pinched face, round glasses, thin mustache. Gran’s professor. Her mentor.
“Hello, Dr. Wilson G. Hicks,” Vi whispered to the man in the old photo. She was solving mysteries already!
She turned a couple pages and began to skim.
Her mouth went dry. There was a heavy feeling in her stomach.
Good breeding of humans is no different than good breeding of chickens, horses, or cattle. It is possible, with proper planning, to weed the population of feeble-mindedness, criminal behaviors, and all forms of physical and mental malformations. Through controlled and proper breeding, we can eradicate all traits that make human beings unfit; perhaps even do away with crime, with the wretched living in squalor, with the howling mad who fill mental hospitals, with the savages and the gipsies, the prostitutes and the half-breeds and the imbeciles.
Vi flipped pages.
Survival and overall success of the species is dependent on those who are superior weeding out the weak and inferior.
We can—and must—control the inferior through whatever means necessary.
A big part of the book seemed to be about one family in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, a family Dr. Hicks called “the Templetons.” Charts and graphs traced the family back several generations. The Templeton family was full of people arrested for violent crimes, prostitution, gambling, public drunkenness. There was a chart that listed all the “feeble-minded” specimens and “imbeciles” in each generation and how many of the children were illegitimate. Dr. Hicks had created a table showing the monetary outlay by the state, decade by decade, spent on relief for the family, on criminal cases, and on the costs of keeping family members in prison, or institutionalizing those deemed too feeble-minded, insane, or deformed to live at home.
The costs, as you can see, greatly multiply with each generation of Templeton family members, as they continue to pass on, unchecked, their inferior traits and gross deformities. If there was any doubt before, the study of this family shows that idiocy, insanity, and criminal tendencies are hereditary.
It is clear, from a moral standpoint, that families such as the Templetons are an enormous tax to our systems of health care, social welfare, and criminal justice. For the sake of society, compulsory sterilization is both the correct and moral course of action.
Compulsory sterilization.
Vi let the words sink in.
Vi knew what sterilization meant. Cats and dogs had to be taken to the vet to get “fixed” so they wouldn’t make more babies.
Dr. Hicks wanted to do that with humans.
Maybe he had done it with humans. It made Vi feel a little sick to think about.
What kind of doctor would do something like that?
Vi flipped to the end of the book, where Dr. Hicks had written his acknowledgments. Her eye caught on one line:
I am forever indebted to my marvelous assistant, Helen Elizabeth Hildreth, whose research and fieldwork have proven invaluable—I know she will make a fine physician and a noble warrior in our cause.
The world began to spin. Vi put her head down on the desk for a minute, to take a deep breath.
The Gran she knew only wanted to help people. But wasn’t that what Dr. Hicks wanted too? In his own way? Didn’t he think not letting this family have any more babies was helping them?