1916 — Standardized Genomes and Careers

Here's in article in the vein of S's on Eugenics written by a psychiatrist Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton (I was curious as to whether any IQ tests were developed by him but didn't find any references). He has a long editorial on how the new knowledge gained from the study of eugentics should be used to sort boys into colleges and careers (he says nothing of young girls of course). He even proposes a system where an unbiased board is formed and children from the ages of 6-16 present themselves once a year to exhibit their development and talents. The board at the end of the age of 16 would then provide a report to parents or guardians of the boy to help sort the child into a career that he is capable at.

The doctor's editorial highlights the rigidity of the scientific and medical perspective on heredity during this historical period. It plays into much of the racial stereotypes of the period and marks a boom in IQ test development. The standardized exams of today are very much a remnant of this mode of thought, however, now they are viewed as exams to prove one's merit and not one's genetic make-up necessarily. Even so, I feel a problem still persists where people do not acknowledge the remarkable plasticity of the brain to learn new knowledge and skills. The sifting of students itself dissuades them of reaching their numerous potentials. The information gleaned from knowledge-based exams should be used to identify weaknesses and customize a person's education. Students should have the resources to pursue whatever their interests suggest, not that dictated by an exam or administrator.

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1914 — Dance Dance Revolution

I appreciate that the medical profession felt obligated to diagnose and classify social trends as ailments. This strange article describes the new epidemic of the "tango-foot" dance and quotes from a medical study on the topic:

"So far as the present dancing mania has been transmitted from individual to individual, and is continually spreading, we are justified in designating it as a psychic epidemic."

The doctor then goes on to describe the sore foot many dancers of the tango-foot experience. He then warns of historic epidemics of dancers being trampled or kicked to death. The explanation of the break-out in the dancing "mania" is of course described in Freudian terms:

"Puritan prudery and Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy have for centuries acted the part of the ostrich and refused to acknowledge the existence of the sexual impulse."

However, we must give it up to the doctor for having a liberal outlook on the new dancing trend. He views the new dances as beneficial to society, even a treatment for social anxiety disorder.

"I know of two timid and shut-in persons who were completely changed by the new dances. They no longer fear to meet persons of the opposite sex and are thinking seriously of matrimony."

If the Pfizers and Astrazencas of today existed back then, prescriptions for Tango-Relief would have had a successful market. Well, as backwards as everything reads. There's an underlying ring of truth in the ol' doctor's perspective. Dancing does the body and soul good.

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1871 — A Little Story of Married Life

Looks like overblown weddings that send people into the poorhouse are not just a phenomenon limited to our generation. Here is the tale of a young woman who gets married and soon afterwards her poor dad is slapped with a bill for:

"A variety of silk and other dresses, petticoats, jackets, mantles, vails, headdresses, embroideries, trimmings, laces and an immense variety of other things...There was also certain mysterious devices called "dress protectors" to be used on going to India. All these things the enterprising young lady had ordered through an extensive personal correspondence with the London mantua maker and without the trifling formality of a consultation with her parents..."

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1902 — The First Seedless Oranges

After a lull in finding interesting articles from yester-year I decided to type in my hometown of Tustin, Orange County, California, wondering what a first utterance of my hometown in the New York Times might be: oranges, sure.

"On Jan 22, 1878, two of the new oranges were cut open and critically tasted by a little company of orange growers at Riverside. A new star of first magnitude rose that day in the horticultural firmament."

However I didn't anticipate learning the name of the man who brought oranges to Orange County, Luther C. Tibbets, nor did I realize that the seedless Navel Orange was the source of the southern Californian Orange-rush and that while people came in droves, and made fortunes, Tibbets himself died penniless.

"Mr. Tibbets reasoned that the first trees came from the Government at Washington, and that therefore they belonged to the public."

Luther C. Tibbets: Orange County's first liberal.

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