In this chapter of A Textbook of Embryology by Harvey Ernest Jordan and James Ernest Kindred, published in 1926, the authors trace the roots of eugenics in scientific study and argue that eugenics is relevant to studying the formation and development of an embryo because heredity is the most fundamental aspect of “human racial improvement.” Jordan, a professor of histology, embryology, and genetics at the University of Virginia, made the medical school a leader in eugenics, a pseudoscience that promoted the idea that humans could be bred selectively bred like plants or animals for the betterment of society.
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