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Heredity and Alcoholism in the Medical Sphere: The Netherlands, 1850–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2012

Stephen Snelders ,
Frans J Meijman  and
Toine Pieters
Stephen Snelders
Affiliation:
Department of Metamedica, VU University Medical Centre, Postbus 7057, 1007 MB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Frans J Meijman
Affiliation:
Department of Metamedica, VU University Medical Centre, Postbus 7057, 1007 MB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Toine Pieters
Affiliation:
Department of Metamedica, VU University Medical Centre, Postbus 7057, 1007 MB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Information
Medical History , Volume 51 , Issue 2 , 01 April 2007 , pp. 219 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2007. Published by Cambridge University Press

References

1 Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen: ein Roman, Stuttgart, Philipp Reclam jun., 2004, p. 14.

2 G Jelgersma, review of De Wegwijzer, PNB, 1897, 1: 287–94, on p. 291.

3 For an overview of the rise of this relationship between alcoholism and degeneration, see W F Bynum, ‘Alcoholism and degeneration in 19th century European medicine and psychiatry’, Br. J. Addiction, 1984, 79: 59–70; Jean-Charles Sournia, A history of alcoholism, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990, pp. 98–114.

4 Craig Heron, Booze: a distilled history, Toronto, Between the Lines, 2003, p. 143.

5 John W Crowley and William L White, Drunkard's refuge: the lessons of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 2004, p. 77. See also William L White, Slaying the dragon: the history of addiction treatment and recovery in America, Bloomington, Chestnut Health Systems, 1998; Sarah W Tracy and Caroline Jean Acker (eds), Altering American consciousness: the history of alcohol and drug use in the United States, 1800–1920, Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 2004; Howard I Kushner, ‘Taking biology seriously: the next task for historians of addiction?’, Bull. Hist. Med., 2006, 80: 115–43.

6 Sheila Faith Weiss, Race hygiene and national efficiency: the eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1987, p. 19; Ian Robert Dowbiggin, Keeping America sane: psychiatry and eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880–1940, Ithaca, Cornell UniversityPress, 1997, pp. ix-x; John C Waller, ‘“The illusionof an explanation”: the concept of hereditarydisease, 1770–1870’, J. Hist. Med. Allied Sci.,2002, 57: 410–48; idem, ‘Poor old ancestors: the popularity of medical hereditarianism, 1770–1870’, in ‘A cultural history of heredity’, Berlin,Max-Planck Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Preprint 247, 2003, vol. 2, pp. 131–44, website:<http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P247.pdf>

7 Gianna Pomata, ‘Comments’, in ‘A cultural history of heredity’, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 146–51, on p. 151.

8 Ibid., p. 150.

9 The standard history of eugenics in the Netherlands is Jan Noordman,Om de kwaliteit van het nageslacht.Eugenetica in Nederland 1900–1950, Nijmegen,SUN, 1989.

10 D J Weatherall, Science and the quiet art: medical research and patient care, Oxford University Press, 1995.

11 For example: S K Hulshoff, review of R Demme, Ueber den Einfluss des Alkohols auf den Organismus des Kindes (Stuttgart, Ferdinand Euke, 1891), NTvG, 1891, 27 (2): 328–30; W Ruysch, report on the Fifth International Congress against Alcohol Abuse in Basel, NTvG, 1895, 31 (2): 551–5, on p. 554; anonymous editorial report, NTvG, 1898, 34 (2): 495–7, on p. 496; Hector Treub, ‘Huwelijk en ziekte’, GB, 1900, 7: 29–48.

12 J Kat, literature review in Centralblatt für Nervenkrankheiten und Psychiatrie, 1902–1903, NTvG, 1904, 40 (2): 107–8, on p. 108. J Kat, medical superintendent of the State lunatic asylum at Medemblik, was one of the founders of the medical doctors' temperance association in 1898.

13 Treub, op. cit., note 11 above. Hector Treub (1856–1920), from 1886 professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Leyden, in 1896 moved to the University of Amsterdam.He was a prolific writer of national and international publications. His brother Willem was a member of the liberal government during the First World War.

14 See Roger J Wood and Vítêzslav Orel, Genetic prehistory in selective breeding, Oxford University Press, 2001; Carlos López-Beltrán, ‘In the cradle of heredity: French physicians and L'Hérédité naturelle in the early 19th century’, J. Hist. Biol., 2004, 37: 39–72.

15 Bénédict-Augustin Morel (1809–1873), director of the lunatic asylum of Maréville (Meurthe) 1848–1856, from 1856 director of the asylum of Saint-Yon (Seine-Inférieure).

16 Treub, op. cit., note 11 above, p. 34.

17 Franz Wilhelm Lippich (or Lippic) (1799–1845), in 1832 he became district physician in Laibach in the Austrian Empire, in 1834 he was made professor of medicine at the University of Padua, and in 1841 was given the same position at the University of Vienna.

18 Pauline M H Mazumdar, Eugenics, human genetics, and human failings: the Eugenics Society, its sources and its critics in Britain, London, Routledge, 1992, p. 71.

19 Ibid., p. 80.

20 W F Bynum, ‘Chronic alcoholism in the first half of the 19th century’, Bull. Hist. Med., 1968, 57: 160–85, on pp. 175–6.

21 Bénédict-Augustin Morel, Traité des dégénérescences physiques, intellectuelles et morales de l'espèce humaine, Paris, Baillière, 1857; idem,Traité des maladies mentales, Paris, Masson, 1860. On Morel, see Jean-Christophe Coffin, ‘Heredity, milieu and sin: the works of Bénédict Augustin Morel (1809–1873)’, in ‘Cultural History of Heredity’, op. cit., note 6 above, pp. 153–64.

22 J N Ramaer, Dronkenschap en krankzinnigheid. Eene voorlezing, Tiel, Gebr Campagne, 1852,pp. 97–100. Johan Nicolaas Ramaer (1817–1887), from 1841 until 1863 he was physician at the lunatic asylum of Zutphen. In 1863 he moved to the lunatic asylum of Delft where he remained until 1869. In 1872 he became an inspector of mental hospitals, and in 1884 Inspector of the State Superintendence of Lunatics. One of the founders of both the Dutch Society for Medicine in 1849 and the Dutch Association for Psychiatry in 1871, Ramaer had the reputation of being an excellent psychiatrist and was one of the most influential doctorsin the profession.

23 Anon., ‘Erfelijke krankzinningheid’, GC, 1870, 24, no. 10 (6 March); anon., ‘Erfelijke dronkenschap’, 1877, 31, nos 49 (9 Dec.), 50 (16 Dec.), 51 (23 Dec.).

24 L Ali Cohen, Handboek der openbare gezondheidsregeling en der geneeskundige politie, met het oog op de behoeften en de wetgeving van Nederland, Groningen, J B Wolters, 1872, p. 156. This textbook was one of the most important manuals of the hygienist movement in the Netherlands. Levi Ali Cohen (1817–1889) was a general practitioner in Groningen from 1840 until 1865, when he became Medical Inspector for the provinces of Overijssel and Drenthe, and from 1868 also of Friesland and Groningen (i.e., the northern provinces of the Netherlands).

25 Pierre F Spaink, Over alcoholismus, Amsterdam, J H & G van Heteren, 1892, pp. 19–20. Spaink was director of a private mental asylum in Apeldoorn.

26 Jan Broers, Alcoholisme, morphinisme, chloralisme, op zich zelf en in verband met elkaar beschouwd, Beverwijk, D S Slotboom, 1886, p. 125. Broers (1860–1940) specialized in dermatology and started practice in The Hague in 1900.

27 M Niermeijer, ‘Alcohol en alcoholisme’, GC, 1895, 49, no. 31 (4 Aug.); A N J Hanedoes van Almkerk, ‘Alcoholisme en de houding van medici te dien opzichte’, GC, 1900, 54, no. 10 (11 March).

28 A O H Tellegen, ‘Eenige beschouwingen over krankzinnigheid, hare oorzaken en hare behandeling’, PB, 1884, 11: 5–46. Antonius Otto Hermannus Tellegen (1848–1904) became second physician at the Coudewater lunatic asylum at Plasmolen in 1878; from 1885 until 1888 he was first physician at the Voorburg mental hospital at Vught, and from 1892 until 1898 managing director of the lunatic asylum at The Hague. From 1888 he practised as a psychiatrist in The Hague. He was editor of PB.

29 S K Hulshoff, review of R Demme, Ueber den Einfluss des Alkohols auf den Organismus des Kindes (Stuttgart, Ferdinand Euke, 1891), NTvG, 1891, 27 (2): 328–30.

30 W Ruysch, report on the Fifth International Congress against Alcohol Abuse in Basel, NTvG, 1895, 31 (2): 554. Maurice Paul Legrain (1860–1939) was co-author, with Valentin Magnan, of the influential treatise on degeneration: Les dégénérés (état mental et syndromes épisodiques), Paris, Rueff, 1895.

31 Editorial report, NTvG, 1898, 34 (2): 495–7, on p. 496. The Scottish physician Robert Farquharson (1836–1918) practised at St Mary' s Hospital in London and was a member of the House of Commons.

32 Z (probably B G van der Hegge Zijnen), ‘De afstammelingen van een alcoholist’, GC, 1899, 49: no. 40 (1 Oct.).

33 Rafael Huertas, ‘Madness and degeneration, I. From “fallen angel” to mentally ill’, Hist. Psychiatry, 1992, 3: 391–411, on pp. 394–5.

34 On the debatable idea that Weismann disproved the inheritance of acquired characteristics, see Peter J Bowler, The non-Darwinian revolution: reinterpretating a historical myth, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988, pp. 115–18.

35 W Koster, ‘Ontwikkelingsleer en ziektekunde’, NTvG, 1886, 22 (1): 341–9. Willem Koster (1834–1907) became professor of anatomy at the University of Utrecht in 1862 but had to retire for health reasons in 1888. After that he devoted himself to medico-social studies, for instance a study on the laws of heredity and the increase in mental deficiency published in 1900.

36 ‘De overerving van zenuw- en zielsziekten’, GC, 1887, 41: nos. 22 (29 May), 23 (5 June), 24 (12 June).

37 ‘De overerving van verworven eigenschappen’, GC, 1889, 43: no. 43 (27 Oct.).

38 H Zwaardemaker, review of J F van Bemmelen, De erfelijkheid van verworven eigenschappen ('s-Gravenhage, n.p., 1890), NTvG, 1891, 27 (1): 418–20. Hendrik Zwaardemaker (1857–1930) was an army medical doctor from 1882 until 1897, then became professor of physiology at the University of Utrecht 1897–1927. He was internationally well-known for his experimental physiological research.

39 W Koster, ‘De toeneming der krankzinnigheid’, NTvG, 1893, 29 (2): 293–311, on pp. 306–7.

40 For similar developments in France, see Patrice Pinell, ‘Degeneration theory and heredity patterns between 1850 and 1900,’ in Jean-Paul Gaudillère and Ilana Löwy (eds), Heredity and infection: the history of disease transmission, Routledge, London, 2001, pp. 245–59.

41 J L C G A Le Rütte Jr, ‘Het vierde internationale congres tot wering van het misbruik van sterken drank’, PB, 1892, 11: 220–1. Auguste Forel (1848–1931), Swiss psychiatrist, was professor of psychiatry and director of the lunatic asylum at Burghölzi 1877–1898. After 1898 he devoted himself to private research and became an authority on wide ranging subjects such as hypnotism, ants, and alcoholism. Forel was one of the most important spokesmen of the European temperance movement.

42 On these views, see Claus Finzen, ‘Der Alkoholismus als Problem der Degeneration um die Jahrhundertwende’, MD thesis, University of Kiel, 1977, p. 31.

43 Ibid., p. 33.

44 J van Rees, ‘De invloed van de alkohol op het kind vóór de geboorte (erfelijkheid)’, in J van Rees, Theodor Ziehen, A Don, Het kind en de alcohol, Amsterdam, Hoofdbestuur der Ned. Onderw. Propaganda-Club voor drankbestrijding, 1902, pp. 1–8. Jacobus van Rees (1854–1928) was a histologist and worked with Weismann in Freiburg from 1883 until 1885. In 1886 he became lector of physiology at the University of Amsterdam, in 1889 extraordinary professor, and retired in 1924. A disciple of Tolstoy, he participated in the founding of a Tolstoyan community in Blaricum in 1899 that broke up after a few years. He was a prominent member of the temperance movement.

45 P F Spaink, review of Deutsche Wochenschrift, 1894, no. 52, NTvG, 1895, 31 (1): 324–7, on p. 324.

46 For analyses of the British “gin craze”, one of the first modern drug scares, see Jessica Warner, Craze: gin and debauchery in an age of reason, New York, Random House, 2002; Patrick Dillon, The much-lamented death of Madam Geneva: the eighteenth-century gin craze, Boston, Justin, Charles, 2003.

47 Nicolaas Bernard Donkersloot (1813–1890) participated in 1831 as military medical officer in the campaign against the Belgian insurgents. In 1835 he became a surgeon and obstetrician in Amerongen, and took his MD degree in 1843 in Utrecht. In 1847 he was the founder and, until his death, editor of GC. Between 1859 and 1880 he was medical superintendent of the lunatic asylum at Dordrecht, and from 1880 had a psychiatric practice in The Hague. With Ramaer, he was one of the founders of the Dutch Association for Psychiatry and editor of PB 1883–1885.

48 N B Donkersloot, Loterij en jenever. Twee rampen over Nederland, Tiel, H C A Campagne, 1854.

49 Ali Cohen, op. cit., note 24 above, pp. 155–60.

50 L Ali Cohen, report on research, NTvG, 1863, first series, 7: 664–5; second series 1865, 1 (1): 523–33. On nineteenth-century therapeutic use of alcohol, see Harry W Paul, Bacchic medicine: wine and alcohol therapies from Napoleon to the French paradox, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2001.

51 Anon., report on Fourth International Congress against Alcohol Abuse in The Hague, NTvG, 1893, 29 (2): 321–3.

52 W Ruysch, report on the Fifth International Congress against Alchohol Abuse in Basel, NTvG, 1895, 31 (2): 551–2. Wilhelm Pieter Ruysch (1847–1920) worked at the Ministry of the Interior from 1884. He succeeded Ramaer in 1887 as Inspector of the State Superintendence of the Insane. In 1902 he became Chief Inspector of Public Health, and in 1912 President of the Health Council, the most important medical advisory committee of the government. From 1897 until 1904 he was president of the social-democratic temperance league de Volksbond tegen drankmisbruik (People's League against Alcohol Abuse).

53 P F Spaink, review of report on the influence of alcohol on children by the Department of Amsterdam of the Nederlandsche Onderwijzers-Propaganda-Club, NTvG, 1895, 31 (1): 92–3; idem, review of Deutsche Wochenschrift, 1894, no. 52, NTvG, 1895, 31 (1); 324–7, on p. 326.

54 Jacob Carel van der Stel, Drinken, drank en dronkenschap. Vijf eeuwen drankbestrijding en alcoholhulpverlening in Nederland, Hilversum, Verloren, 1995, p. 156.

55 Hanedoes van Almkerk, op. cit., note 27 above. Hanedoes van Almkerk was medical superintendent of the first asylum for alcoholics in the Netherlands, Hoog-Hullen, founded in 1891, and one of the co-founders of the medical doctors' temperance association in 1898.

56 Anon., report of the general meeting of the Nederlandsche Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Geneeskunde, NTvG, 1901, 37 (2): 152–4, on p. 153.

57 Editorial, GC, 1870, 24: no. 23 (5 June); anon., ‘Beteugeling der dronkenschap’, ibid., 1880, 34: nos. 40 (3 Oct.), 41 (10 Oct.), 42 (17 Oct.), 43 (24 Oct.), 44 (31 Oct.).

58 [N B Donkersloot], ‘Het alkoholisme, zijn verspreiding, werking op het persoonlijk en maats-chappelijk organisme, en de middelen om het te bestrij-den’, GC, 1879, 33: nos. 5 (2 Feb.), 6 (9 Feb.), 7 (16 Feb.).

59 D [N B Donkersloot], review of C S Adama van Scheltema, Volksonderwijs over alcohol, n.p., n.d., GC, 1879, 33: no. 26 (29 June); editorials, GC, 1888, 42: nos. 5 (29 Jan.), 49 (2 Dec.).

60 C W Bollaan, review of P F Spaink, Over alcoholismus (Amsterdam, van Heteren, 1892), GC, 1892, 46: no. 38 (18 Sept.); Niermeijer, op. cit., note 27 above; editorial on absinthe, CG, 1894, 48: no. 12 (25 March).

61 Van der Stel, op. cit., note 54 above, pp. 68–9.

62 Koster, op. cit., note 35 above.

63 Tellegen, op. cit., note 28 above, pp. 18–25. On the survival of this practice in the United States, see Martin S Pernick, The black stork: eugenics and the death of “defective” babies in American medicine and motion pictures since 1915, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996.

64 Treub, op. cit., note 11 above, pp. 44–5.

65 Gerbrandus Jelgersma (1859–1942) worked as a prosector at the Meerenberg psychiatric asylum and as a private lecturer in criminal anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. In 1894 he became medical superintendent of the sanatorium for nervous diseases at Arnhem, and in 1899 professor in psychiatry and neurology at the University of Leiden. He wrote a three-volume textbook of psychiatry (1911–12) and was the first to introduce Freud's theories to Dutch academic debate.

66 G Jelgersma, review of De Wegwijzer, PNB, 1897, 1: 287–94.

67 J Ph Elias, ‘Degeneratie’, MW, 1899, 6: 137–40, 149–51, 249–50, 267–9, 278–86.

68 On the relationship between eugenic policies and the state, see the comparative literature review on Britain, the United States, Germany, Sweden, Russia, and the Netherlands in Stephen Snelders and Toine Pieters, ‘Van degeneratie tot individuele gezondheidsopties. Het maatschappelijk gebruik van erfelijkheidsconcepten in de twintigste eeuw’, Gewina, 2003, 26: 203–15.

69 Anon., NTvG, 1889, 25 (1): 563; anon., ibid., p. 636; Spaink, op. cit., note 25 above, p. 72.

70 P Wellenbergh, report on visit to German asylums, PB, 1888, 6: 96–103. Pieter Wellenbergh (1848–1916) was a psychiatrist at various mental hospitals from 1877 until 1887, after which he started a psychiatric practice in Amsterdam. Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing (1840–1903) was professor of psychiatry and director of the lunatic asylum in Graz 1873–1889. Between 1889 and 1902 he was director of the psychiatric hospital in Vienna.

71 Spaink, op. cit., note 25 above, pp. 16–17, 26.

72 Hanedoes van Almkerk, op. cit., note 27 above.

73 Anonymous communication regarding a meeting of the Vereeniging ter bevordering van het herstel van drankzuchtigen, NTvG, 1901, 37 (1): 1333.

74 Broers, op. cit., note 26 above, p. 30.

75 W Ruijsch, letter to the editors, NTvG, 1895, 31 (2): 709–15, on p. 714.

76 Van Deventer, ‘Eenige opmerkingen over de psychiatrische behandeling van krankzinnigen’, PB, 1888, 6: 27–8.

77 ‘Erfelijke krankzinnigheid’, GC, 1870, 24: no. 10 (6 March).

78 Van Rees, op. cit., note 44 above.

79 Finzen, op. cit., note 42 above p. 31.

80 Andrew Scull, The most solitary of afflictions: madness and society in Britain, 1700–1900, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993, p. 383.

81 Broers, op. cit., note 26 above, p. 30; Spaink, op. cit., note 25 above, p. 71.

82 Walter Scott, Letters on demonology and witchcraft, Ware, Wordsworth Editions, 2001, p. 19. On British medical approaches to alcoholism in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Roy Porter, ‘The drinking man's disease: the “pre-history” of alcoholism in Georgian Britain’, Br. J. Addiction, 1985, 80: 385–96.

83 Bynum, op. cit., note 3 above, p. 63.

84 Anonymous communications, NTvG, 1857, i: 355, 594.

85 For example, editorials, GC, 1870, 24: no. 3 (16 Jan.); GC, 1878, 32: no. 1 (6 Jan.); GC, 1880, 34: no. 25 (27 June); ‘Beteugeling der dronkenschap’, GC, 1880, 34: no. 41 (10 Oct.); J Hanlo, untitled, NTvG, 1884, 20 (1): 203; anon., MW, 1895, i: 646.

86 Van der Stel, op. cit., note 54 above, pp. 189–94.

87 Greta Jones, Social hygiene in twentieth century Britain, London, Croom Helm, 1986, pp. 5–10.

88 Dorothy Porter, ‘“Enemies of the race”: biologism, environmentalism and public health in Edwardian England’, Victorian Studies, 1990/91, 34: 159–78, on p. 165.

89 Warwick Anderson, The cultivation of whiteness: science, health, and racial destiny in Australia, New York, Basic Books, 2002, pp. 1–7.