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THE STRUGGLE FOR RACEHMPROVEMENT
IN SWEDEN
BY
Professor J. VILH. HULTKRANTZ and Dr. E. BERGMAN
UPPSALA
IN SWEDEN - AS EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD - IT IS
first during the last decades in reality, that one has arrived at the know»
ledge that our elforts to protect the race against degeneration and raise
its level only by an improvement in the environment (euthenics) are tolerably
fruitless, and that the most effective means of reaching this goal is by a favourable
selection of the parents, through whom good qualities can be transmitted to the
next generation (eugenics). Thus it is of importance to seek to hinder, as far
as possible, the reproduction of inferior individuals, and to increase the nativity
among the better stock instead, as well as to prevent immigration of inferior, and
emigration of the fittest individuals. It is the discovery of the laws of heredity
together with the favourable results of modern breeding of plants and animals
which has brought about this inversion of our ideas of the race^problem.
In the Swedish legislation from older times though, there is to be found an
interesting example of clear insight respecting the right way for race*betterment.
In the preamble to a law promulgated in the year 1757 forbidding marriage to
those having falling sickness it says: »And inasmuch as, according to the humble
report issued by Collegium Medicum, the most experienced medical men from
the oldest times have agreed, that a true falling sickness called epilepsia idiopa*
thica, is reproduced by the parents in the children and children’s children; and
as daily experience attests that scarcely any are burdened with this grave malady,
so long as none of their forefathers, on the father’s or on the mother’s side, have
been afflicted with falling sickness––––1 for this reason and because We find the
only means of rooting out gradually the true falling sickness, to be, to forbid
marriage altogether for the persons, be they men or women, who are troubled
herewith, it is Our gracious will and command» etc. — Statutes which could work
in an eugenic direction are certainly to be found among some ot the older laws,
such as the Mosaic, but in the Swedish statute just mentioned it seems to be
the first time that the intention of protecting coming generations has been du
stinetly pronounced, and it is therefore we have given this detailed quotation.
The hopes, that by these means epilepsy could gradually be rooted out, have
unfortunately not been realized, chiefly on account of the difiiculties met with in
carrying out the law rigorously. Epilepsy is still rather common in Sweden.
The number of those having falling sickness is very probably at least 7,000. With
the enrolment of conscripts during the last years, something over 2 per thousand
of the men examined have been rejected on account of this malady.
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