[Research] History- "A simple and painless procedure"

[Cint]

In a book I read, "Better For All the World", it speaks of the movement that began in the early 20th century, about racial purity for all the world. Here is an excerpt from the book, discussing what a woman with epilepsy in Virginia went through:

On a cloudy afternoon on October 19, 1927, as a chilly autumn wind swept down off the Blue Ridge Mountains, rattling the windows of the infirmary at the Virginia Colony for Epileptics and Feeble-Minded, Dr. John H. Bell jotted a few notes about an operation he had performed earlier that day. He was superintendent of this sprawling institution, a campus of regimented brick dormitories and rolling farmland set amid the bluffs overlooking Lynchburg.
This morning's procedure was simple, and dozens of such operations had taken place here over the years. But for this patient he wrote with particular care, since it was a case that might draw a bit of attention.
"Patient sterilized this morning under authority of Act of Assembly in 1926, providing the sterilization of mental defectives, and as ordered by the Board of Directors of this institution," he wrote. "She went to the operating room at 9:30 and returned to her bed at 10:30, recovered promptly from the anesthesia with no after effects. One inch was removed from each Fallopian tube, the tubes ligated and the ends cauterized by carbolic acid followed by alcohol, and the edges of the broad ligaments brought together with continuous suture. Abdominal wound was united with layer sutures and the approximation of the closure was good."

A few paragraphs later it says:

It was a momentous day. It had taken over three years ti test and litigate Carrie's case, but less than an hour to cut and ligate her Fallopian tubes. But for Dr. Bell, this operation was far more than a legal victory. As a "test case", it had been a carefully orchestrated lawsuit meant not only to sterilize
Carrie against her will, but also to protect a bold but controversial social policy he believed would improve the welfare if the nation. today was the beginning. It was cold, but outside the window, Dr. Bell could look out over the Colony and consider the long battle he and other reformers and been fighting for decades.

The court's majority opinion was written by Oliver Wendall Holmes. He wrote: "It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principal that sustains compulsory vaccinations is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.....Three generations of imbeciles are enough."

Sounds to me like Oliver Wendall Holmes was the imbecile!! It is better for all the world that he is gone as is his ridiculous idea.

I have epilepsy and I have two "normal", grown, educated children of which I am very proud of!