Euthenics is the study of the improvement
of human functioning and well-being by improvement
of living conditions.
Affecting the "improvement" through altering
external factors such as education and the
controllable environment, including the prevention
and removal of contagious disease and parasites,
environmentalism, education regarding employment,
home economics, sanitation, and housing.Rose
Field notes of the definition in a May 23,
1926 New York Times article, "the simplest
being efficient living".
A right to environment.The Flynn effect has
been often cited as an example of euthenics.
Another example is the steady increase in
body size in industrialized countries since
the beginning of the 20th century.
Euthenics is not normally interpreted to have
anything to do with changing the composition
of the human gene pool by definition, although
everything that affects society has some effect
on who reproduces and who does not.
== Origin of the term ==
The term was derived in the late 19th century
from the Greek verb eutheneo, εὐθηνέω
(eu, well; the, root of τίθημι tithemi,
to cause).
(To be in a flourishing state, to abound in,
to prosper.—Demosthenes.
To be strong or vigorous.—Herodotus.
To be vigorous in body.—Aristotle.)
Also from the Greek Euthenia, Εὐθηνία.
Good state of the body: prosperity, good fortune,
abundance.—Herodotus.The opposite of Euthenia
is Penia, Πενία ("deficiency" or "poverty")
the personification of poverty and need.
== History ==
Ellen H. Swallow Richards (1842–1911; Vassar
Class of '70) was one of the first writers
to use the term, in The Cost of Shelter (1905),
with the meaning "the science of better living".
It is unclear if (and probably unlikely that)
any of the study programs of euthenics ever
completely embraced Richards' multidisciplinary
concept, though several nuances remain today,
especially that of interdisciplinarity.
=== Vassar College Institute of Euthenics
===
After Richards' death in 1911, Julia Lathrop
(1858–1932; VC '80)—one of Vassar's most
distinguished alumnae—continued to promote
the development of an interdisciplinary program
in euthenics at the college.
Lathrop soon teamed with alumna Minnie Cumnock
Blodgett (1862–1931; VC '84), who with her
husband, John Wood Blodgett, offered financial
support to create a program of euthenics at
Vassar College.
Curriculum planning, suggested by Vassar president
Henry Noble MacCracken in 1922, began in earnest
by 1923, under the direction of Professor
Annie Louise Macleod (Chemistry; First woman
PhD, McGill University, 1910).According to
Vassar's chronology entry for March 17, 1924,
"the faculty recognized euthenics as a satisfactory
field for sequential study (major).
A Division of Euthenics was authorized to
offer a multidisciplinary program [radical
at the time] focusing the techniques and disciplines
of the arts, sciences and social sciences
on the life experiences and relationships
of women.
Students in euthenics could take courses in
horticulture, food chemistry, sociology and
statistics, education, child study, economics,
economic geography, physiology, hygiene, public
health, psychology and domestic architecture
and furniture.
With the new division came the first major
in child study at an American liberal arts
college."For example, a typical major in child
study in euthenics includes introductory psychology,
laboratory psychology, applied psychology,
child study and social psychology in the Department
of Psychology; the three courses offered in
the Department of Child Study; beginning economics,
programs of social reorganization and the
family in Economics; and in the Department
of Physiology, human physiology, child hygiene,
principles of public health.The Vassar Summer
Institute of Euthenics accepted its first
students in June 1926.
Created to supplement the controversial euthenics
major which began February 21, 1925, it was
also located in the new Minnie Cumnock Blodgett
Hall of Euthenics (York & Sawyer, architects;
ground broke October 25, 1925).
Some Vassar faculty members (perhaps emotionally
upset with being displaced on campus to make
way, or otherwise politically motivated) contentiously
"believed the entire concept of euthenics
was vague and counter-productive to women's
progress."Having overcome a lukewarm reception,
Vassar College officially opened its Minnie
Cumnock Blodgett Hall of Euthenics in 1929.
Dr. Ruth Wheeler (Physiology and Nutrition
– VC '99) took over as director of euthenics
studies in 1924.
Wheeler remained director until Mary Shattuck
Fisher Langmuir (VC '20) succeeded her in
1944, until 1951.The college continued for
the 1934–35 academic year its successful
cooperative housing experiment in three residence
halls.
Intended to help students meet their college
costs by working in their residences.
For example, in Main, students earned $40
a year by doing relatively light work such
as cleaning their rooms.In 1951, Katharine
Blodgett Hadley (VC '20) donated $400,000,
through the Rubicon Foundation, to Vassar
to help fund operating deficits in the current
and succeeding years and to improve faculty
salaries."Discontinued for financial reasons,
the Vassar Summer Institute for Family and
Community Living, founded in 1926 as the Vassar
Summer Institute of Euthenics, held its last
session, July 2, 1958.
This was the first and last session for the
institute's new director, Dr. Mervin Freedman."
=== 
Elmira College ===
Elmira College is noted as the oldest college
still in existence which (as a college for
women) granted degrees to women which were
the equivalent of those given to men (the
first to do so was the now-defunct Mary Sharp
College).
Elmira College became coeducational in all
of its programs in 1969.
A special article was written in the December
12, 1937 New York Times, quoting recent graduates
of Elmira College, urging for courses in colleges
for men on the care of children.
Reporting that "preparation for the greatest
of all professions, that of motherhood and
child-training, is being given the students
at Elmira College in the Nursery School which
is Conducted as part of the Department of
Euthenics."Elmira College was one of the first
of the liberal arts colleges to recognize
the fact that women should have some special
training, integrated with the so-called liberal
studies, which would prepare them to carry
on, with less effort and fewer mistakes, a
successful family life.
Courses in nutrition, household economics,
clothing selection, principles of foods and
meal planning, child psychology, and education
in family relations are a part of the curriculum.The
Elmira College nursery school for fifteen
children between the ages of two and five
years was opened primarily as a laboratory
for college students, but it had become so
popular with parents in the community that
there was always a long waiting list.The New
York Times article notes how the nursery had
become one of the essential laboratories of
the college, where recent mothers testified
to the value of the training they received
while in college.
"Today," one graduate said, "when it is often
necessary for young women to continue professional
work outside the home after marriage, it is
important that young fathers, who must share
in the actual care and training of the children,
should have some knowledge of correct methods."
=== 
Today ===
Many factors led to the movement never getting
the funding it needed to remain relevant,
including: vigorous debate about the exact
meaning of euthenics, a strong antifeminism
movement paralleling even stronger women's
rights movements, confusion with the term
eugenics, the economic impact of the Great
Depression and two world wars.
These factors also prevented the discipline
from gaining the attention it needed to put
together a lasting, vastly multidisciplinary
curriculum.
Therefore, it split off into separate disciplines.
Child Study is one such curriculum.
Martin Heggestad of the Mann Library notes
that "Starting around 1920, however, home
economists tended to move into other fields,
such as nutrition and textiles, that offered
more career opportunities, while health issues
were dealt with more in the hard sciences
and in the professions of nursing and public
health.
Also, improvements in public sanitation (for
example, the wider availability of sewage
systems and of food inspection) led to a decline
in infectious diseases and thus a decreasing
need for the largely household-based measures
taught by home economists."
Thus, the end of euthenics as originally defined
by Ellen Swallow Richards ensued.
== Relationship with eugenics ==
According to Ellen Richards, in her book Euthenics:
the science of controllable environment (1910):
The betterment of living conditions, through
conscious endeavor, for the purpose of securing
efficient human beings, is what the author
means by Euthenics.
"Human vitality depends upon two primary conditions—heredity
and hygiene—or conditions preceding birth
and conditions during life."
Eugenics deals with race improvement through
heredity.
Euthenics deals with race improvement through
environment.
Eugenics is hygiene for the future generations.
Euthenics is hygiene for the present generation.
Eugenics must await careful investigation.
Euthenics has immediate opportunity.
Euthenics precedes eugenics, developing better
men now, and thus inevitably creating a better
race of men in the future.
Euthenics is the term proposed for the preliminary
science on which Eugenics must be based.
== Debate, misconceptions and opposition ==
Debate over misconceptions about the movement
started almost from the beginning.
In his comparison "Eugenics, Euthenics, And
Eudemics", (American Journal of Sociology,
Vol. 18, No. 6, May 1913), Lester F. Ward
of Brown University opens the second section
regarding euthenics lamenting:
Is there, then, nothing to do?
Are we to accept that modem scientific fatalism
known as laissez faire, which enjoins the
folding of the arms?
Are we to preach a gospel of inaction?
I for one certainly am not content to do so,
and I believe that nothing I have thus far
said [about eugenics] is inconsistent with
the most vigorous action, and that in the
direction of the betterment of the human race.
The end and aim of the eugenists cannot be
reproached.
The race is far from perfect.
Its condition is deplorable.
Its improvement is entirely feasible, and
in the highest degree desirable.
Nor do I refer merely to economic conditions,
to the poverty and misery of the disinherited
classes.
The intellectual state of the world is deplorable,
and its improvement is clearly within the
reach of society itself.
It is therefore a question of method rather
than of principle that concerns us.
Ward later noted about the organic environment
that:
Darwin has taught us that the chief barrier
to the advance of any species of plants or
animals is its competition with other plants
and animals that contest the same ground.
And therefore the fiercest opponents of any
species are the members of the same species
which demand the same elements of subsistence.
Hence the chief form of relief in the organic
world consists in the thinning-out of competitors.
Any species of animals or plants left free
to propagate at its normal rate would overrun
the earth in a short time and leave no room
for any other species.
Any species that is sufficiently vigorous
to resist its organic environment will crowd
out all others and monopolize the earth.
If nature permitted this there could be no
variety, but only one monotonous aspect devoid
of interest or beauty.
Whatever we may think of the harsh method
by which this is prevented, we cannot regret
that it is prevented, and that we have a world
of variety, interest, and aesthetic attractiveness.
Vassar historians note that "critics faulted
the new program as a weakening of science
and a slide into vocationalism.
The influential educator and historian of
education, Abraham Flexner—one of the founders
of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study—attacked
the program, along with other "ad hoc" innovations
like intercollegiate athletics and student
governments, in Universities, American, English,
German (1930)."
In the summer of 1926, Margaret Sanger created
a stir when she gave a radio address, called
"Racial Betterment", in the first Euthenics
Institute, where she praised attempts to "close
our gates to the so-called 'undesirables'"
and proposed efforts to "discourage or cut
down on the rapid multiplication of the unfit
and undesirable at home", by government-subsidized
voluntary sterilization.
(from The Selected Papers of Margaret Sanger,
vol. 1 (2003), Esther Katz, ed.)
Eugenicist, Charles Benedict Davenport, noted
in his article "Euthenics and Eugenics," found
reprinted in the Popular Science Monthly of
January 1911, page 18, 20:
Thus the two schools of euthenics and eugenics
stand opposed, each viewing the other unkindly.
Against eugenics it is urged that it is a
fatalistic doctrine and deprives life of the
stimulus toward effort.
Against euthenics the other side urges that
it demands an endless amount of money to patch
up conditions in the vain effort to get greater
efficiency.
Which of the two doctrines is true?
The thoughtful mind must concede that, as
is so often the case where doctrines are opposed,
each view is partial, incomplete and really
false.
The truth does not exactly lie between the
doctrines; it comprehends them both.
What a child becomes is always the resultant
of two sets of forces acting from the moment
the fertilized egg begins its development—one
is the set of internal tendencies and the
other is the set of external influences.
What the result of an external influence—a
particular environmental condition—shall
be depends only in part upon the nature of
the influence; it depends also upon the internal
nature of the reacting protoplasm.
Incest, cousin marriage, the marriage of defectives
and tuberculous persons, are, in wide circles,
taboo.
This fact affords the basis for the hope that,
when the method of securing strong offspring,
even from partially defective stock—and
where is the strain without any defect?—is
widely known, the teachings of science in
respect even to marriage matings will be widely
regarded and that in the generations to come
the teachings and practice of euthenics will
yield greater result because of the previous
practice of the principles of eugenics.
In a New York Times op-ed dated October 24,
1926, entitled "Eugenics and euthenics", in
response to an op-ed entitled "Bright Children
Who Fail" which appeared the previous October
15, student of child psychology, Joseph A.
Krisses observes:
== Quotations ==
"Not through chance, but through increase
of scientific knowledge; not through compulsion,
but through democratic idealism consciously
working through common interests, will be
brought about the creation of right conditions,
the control of the environment."
(Ellen H. Swallow Richards)
"Right living conditions comprise pure food
and a safe water supply, a clean and disease
free atmosphere in which to live and work,
proper shelter and adjustment of work, rest,
and amusements."
(Ellen H. Swallow Richards)
"Probably not more than twenty-five percent
in any community are capable of doing a full
days work such as they would be capable of
doing if they were in perfect health" (Ellen
H. Swallow Richards)
"Men ignore nature's laws in their personal
lives.
They crave a larger measure of goodness and
happiness, and yet in their choice of dwelling
places, in their building of houses to live
in, in their selection of food and drink,
in their clothing of their bodies, in their
choice of occupations and amusements, in their
methods and habits of work, they disregard
natural laws and impose upon themselves conditions
that make their ideals of goodness and happiness
impossible of attainment."
(George E. Dawson, The control of life through
Environment)
"It is within the power of every living man
to rid himself of every parasitic disease."
(Louis Pasteur)
== See also
