1909.]
421
THE VIRGINIA MEDICAL SEMI-MONTHLY.
wheat, the pods of which have lain on the damp
ground. The aspergillus fumigatus sometimes
grows upon these articles of food, but the role
which they play in the causation of pellagra
is a minor one.
7. Meteorological conditions, especially in
the great corn belt, have much to do with the
prevalence of pellagra. Many cases are apt to
follow a wet season, while comparatively few
will develop after a dry season. A wet season
furnishes ideal conditions for the growth of
the aspergillus fumigatus. The past season has
been a remarkably dry one; hence we need not
expect a new outbreak of pellagra for some
time to come.
8. The harvesting of corn by machinery——
that is, the use of the corn harvester, some~
_ times called the corn binder—is responsible for
the alarming prevalence of pellagra in recent
years. The corn is bound into bundles and
cannot ripen or mature properly, owing to
exclusion of the air and sun; a favorable envi-
ronment is thus afforded for the growth of the
asperg-illus fumigatus.
10 South Street.
STERILIZATION 0F HABITUAL CRIMINALS?‘
By CHARLES V. CARRINGTON. M. D., Richmond. Va.
Surgeon to the Virginia State Penitentiary, etc.
The proposition of the sterilization of
habitual criminals, as a prevention of crime,
is so new to most of us that the novelty of the
suggestion will, I hope, engage your thoughtful
attention. Then the positive merit of the en-
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forcement of the suggestion, by law, will, I
think, so appeal to you all that in the near
future I will have your assistance, individually
and collectively, as the Medical Society of Vir-
ginia, when I endeavor to secure the passage
of a law by our next Legislature that will re-
quire the sterilization of certain classes of our
criminals. I have the rough draft of such a
law now, but it is such a new subject, this
sterilization of a man, criminal or otherwise,
and is so hedged about with foolish sentiment
and ideas of cruel and unusual punishment,
that I admit it will be up-hill work to educate
the average legislator to the full knowledge
that no single measure for the prevention of
crime would be more far-reaching in its deter-
rent effects, first, and preventive effects,
‘Read during- the fortieth annual session of the
Medical Society of Virginia, held at Roanoke, Octo-
ber 5-8, 1909.
second, than a law which provided for the
sterilization of certain classes of criminals.
Stop the breed is the whole proposition.
One of our oldest proverbs is, “An ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and this
may be taken as the text for my paper. Pre-
vention is the cry of the ageb-or to put it bet—
ter, of the ages.
Jenner, with vaccination, was one of our
greatest and earliest preventors of a loathsome
disease. We have to-day. anti-vaccination
societies, made up of the uneducated and hyper-
sensitive, cruel, and unusual punishment
talkers. And were we to wander into the realms
422
[December 24,
THE VIRGINIA MEDICAL SEMI-MONTHLY.
I have been surgeon to the penitentiary for
over ten years, a long enough time to see
father and then sons come to the prison, and by
looking back over the records I learned that
the grandfather had also been an inmate. Now
this hideous reproduction of criminals, from
father to son and to grandson, should be
stopned; it is right and proper that it should
be, and it will be in time-in a very short time,
too—if you doctors of Virginia will awaken
to the importance of this proposition as a crime
preventer, and tell your Representatives in the
House and Senate that from a medical and
surgical standpoint it is a good measure.
A good doctor has enormous weight in dis-
cussing such a subject with a thinking member
of the Legislature, and when you sift the whole
matter out the talk of cruel and unusual punish-
ment does not amount to anything. I mention
this, because this is the single argument I have
heard urged against the measure, and such an
argument can only have force from a senti-
mental standpoint.
The criminal has by reason of his acts for-
feited the rights of citizenship, and as a further
punishment he is'sent to the penitentiary at
hard labor, etc., and as a still further punish-
ment, if he is a rapist, murderer, burglar, or
guiltv of arson or train-wrecking, he should be
prevented from reproducing his species. That
especial breed should be stopped.
I am not discussing here in this paper what
criminals should or should not be sterilized.
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Of course, a law that provided for sterilization
should be most carefully drawn, and only
habitual criminals, third termers, and those
guilty or heinous and revolting crimes, degen-
erates and such like, should come within the
purview of the law.
Sterilization is a very slight operation; you
simply resect the vas deferens, and it is gen-
erally done with cocaine anesthesia. A small
nick is made through the skin of the scrotum,
near the pubes, and after an assistant has
forced the vas, with the accompanying vessels
into the line of the cut, pick up the vas with
forceps, resect it, tying off each end, then close
the wound; one stitch generally sufiices, and
apply a collodion dressing. Your patient can
usually go to work the next day. I have only
sterilized four convicts during the time I’ve
been surgeon to the Virginia penitentiary.
The first one has given splendid and convinc-
ingly good results from the operation. He was
a negro sent to the penitentiary for murder,
with a long sentence. He had only been at
the prison a short time when he was adjudged
to be insane, and was sent to the asylum at
Petersburg. While there he is said to have
killed a fellow inmate and seriously injured
a nurse. Later he was retm'ned to the peni-
tentiary as cured; had a relapse and was
bandied back and forth between the asylum
and the prison several times, as he became
better or worse. Finally he escaped from the
asylum, and when recaptured was returned to
the penitentiary.