Eugenics in neurology and psychiatry in Hungary between the two World Wars
by
Siró B Jr.
Debreceni Egyetem,
Bölcsészettudományi Kar,
Történelmi Intézet.
sirob@tigris.klte.hu
Orv Hetil. 2003 Aug 31;144(35):1737-42.

ABSTRACT

Eugenics became an organized movement in Hungary in 1914 with the establishment of the Section of Eugenics within the Association of Social Sciences (Társádalomtudományi Egyesület). Its secretary, the prominent biologist István Apáthy jr., defined the aims and the place of eugenics within the sanitation as well as the necessary steps of organization which should be taken in Hungary. It was especially some Hungarian psychiatrists: Márk Goldberger, Lajos Naményi, Gyula Donáth and László Benedek, the Hungarian Representative of the Committee of International Eugenical Organisations who after World War I urged eugenical law which envisaged voluntary sterilization. According to the opponents of eliminative eugenics--like Károly Csörsz, one of the first distinguished medical geneticists in Hungary--sterilization had not been scientifically based yet, because the ways and the probability of heredity of nervous and mental diseases, except for Huntington chorea, had not been explored yet. The outstanding neurologist, Karl Schaffer also opposed the sterilization bill worked out by Professor Benedek, so it was rejected by the National Council of Public Health in 1932 and was not discussed by the Hungarian Parliament either. In spite of its illegality, some sterilizations were executed, for example with the consent and the request of parents in the case of mentally retarded female to stop her reproduction. Only positive eugenics was legally supported by the marriage advisory bureau in the capital, but the interest in it was rather limited in interwar Hungary.

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