of tb passed from cows to humans through raw milk).
letter writer is typically a mother who cannot, financially
For Jones, these papers—which are held in the
or physically, afford to have any more children, and who
University Archives—proved to be a goldmine: letters be-
is seeking sterilization as a last resort. By the 1970s, the
tween Myers and veterinarians demonstrate that he devel-
typical letter writer is a young, childless man or woman
oped his system for testing and controlling tb in humans
seeking sterilization in order to preserve his or her life-
by adapting the method veterinarians had developed for
style: “childless by choice.”
fighting tb in cattle: first, testing by means of a small in-
For Dowbiggin, the archives also reveal attitudes that
jection of tuberculin (a liquid containing a small amount
are not expressed in official documents. While combing
of the bacterium that causes tb), then making epidemio-
through the avs records, he discovered a small, yellowed
logical maps of each county to account for ever y animal.
newspaper clipping from the 1950s. It featured a photo-
Part of Jones’ agenda, she says, is to persuade people that
graph of a proud mother posed with the nine of her 17
physicians, vets, and public health workers must work to-
children who became priests and nuns. In the margin was
gether to deal with our vulnerability to animal diseases.
a hand-written note: “How depraved can people get?”
And these letters between Myers and veterinarians dem-
Whoever wrote this note, says Dowbiggin, must have be-
onstrate that there’s a fruitful histor y of collaboration.
lieved that the woman was “depraved” both for having
“It’s all about the process. That’s what the [collection] did for me—in a hugely generous setting, it allowed me to look at other people’s process.” – Daniel Powers
such a big family and for having so many nuns and priests
Population Moderation
among her children. In the 1950s, the birth control move-
Ian Dowbiggin, histor y professor at the University of
ment saw the Catholic Church as its main adversar y, and
Prince Edward Island, has made seven trips to Minnesota
Dowbiggin believes this remark is a window into the rela-
in the last six years to comb through Andersen Library’s
tionship between the two groups. While fairly typical of
Social Welfare Histor y Archives. He is interested in the
the anti-Catholic sentiments that cropped up in the move-
history of population control, and for his forthcoming
ment at that time, it reveals how those sentiments mani-
book on this subject, he’s pored over the records of the
fested themselves on a personal, individual level.
Association for Voluntar y Sterilization (avs), a group
For these researchers, and countless others who fill
that, from the 1950s to 1970s, helped break down barri-
Andersen Library’s reading rooms on any given day, pri-
ers in the medical community and change attitudes and
mary sources are their bricks and mortar—the fundamen-
policies about sterilization. (Now, says Dowbiggin, about
tal building blocks of their research. But the privilege and
three in ten families worldwide use sterilization for birth
thrill of the primary source does not belong exclusively
control.)
to them—Andersen Library (like most special collections)
The
physical
documents
in
this
archive
helped
does not require that one be associated with a university
Dowbiggin understand birth control trends: he realized,
to use it. In fact, anyone with a scholarly or personal in-
for example, while poring over the hundreds of letters in
terest is welcome to don a figurative mask and flippers
the avs archives from people seeking referrals for steriliza-
and dive in, whether one’s interest is bovine tb, Wanda
tion, that the reasons people chose sterilization changed
Gag, or any of the millions of other items waiting, like
radically from the 1950s to the 1970s. In the 1950s, the
sunken treasure, to be explored.
www.lib.umn.edu
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