Principles of Eugenics.
[Health issues]. Eames, Blanche. Principles of Eugenics. A practical treatise. New York: Moffat, Yard, and Company, 1914.
12mo.; brown cloth; stamped in black.
First edition. Citing everyone from Emerson to Darwin, including Havelock Ellis and David Starr Jordan, and relying heavily on scripture, Eames investigates the topic of eugenics. Social problems such as intemperance, prostitution, and the white slave trade indicate that prenatal care and childrearing need to be given more attention so that the next generation will not suffer the consequences of society’s present indulgence in vice. Tobacco, alcohol, and drugs are among the “race poisons” that threaten healthy heredity, since, according to Eames, certain addictions and behaviors can be passed genetically.
Eames also advocates sex education in public schools in a chapter entitled “Instruction in Sex Truths.” Ignorance about sex can lead young men and women to experiment on their own, which produces disastrous results. Parents should therefore not be “prudish” in their answers when their children ask, “Where did I come from?” If parents refuse to be honest with their children when it comes to questions about sex, young boys will continue to seek answers in “houses of shame,” (p. 45) and the phenomenon of young unwed mothers will continue.
Not all of Eames’s recommendations are as progressive, In her final chapter, “Continence,” she endorses sexual abstinence, even after marriage, when procreation is not the desired result. She encourages men and women to “rise above their perverted instincts” in order to protect their offspring from “the awful tendency to sensuality” (p. 86). More than anything else, the human race is threatened by “reckless abandonment to the impulse of the moment and careless indifference to the morrow,” (p. 88) and only through individual self-control can mankind secure its permanence on earth.
In every chapter, Eames relates most of her arguments back to examples in the Bible, which somewhat compromises her “scientific” approach to the problems she addresses.
Blanche Eames does not appear in the standard references, but she dedicates this volume to “Mary E Teats, a pioneer worker in eugenics.”
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