“The Presence of a Monstrosity”: Eugenics, Female Disability, and Obstetrical-Gynecologic Medicine in Late 19th-Century New York

Abstract

This article analyzes the connection between eugenics, the professionalization of American medicine, and the development of the specialties of obstetrics and gynecology. Drawing upon the records of a physician practicing in New York City at the turn of the century, it examines how his evaluation and treatments of female patients’ bodies and their infants’ bodies constituted the growing emphasis on the dangers of disability to American society. Underlying the fear of defectiveness and degeneration was the fear that working-class women’s sexuality and immorality might be among those defects, and would facilitate their passage to future generations. The essay concludes that while medical authority was not absolute, the records of John Milton Mabbott reveal a transition point in the history of American medicine, where scientific medicine and the emergence of theories of inheritance, like eugenics, helped to legitimize physicians’ expert opinion.

Keywords

• medicine
• disability
• obstetrics
• gynecology
• eugenics
• United States