This article is part of an invited series by independent historians, focused on biases and injustice that the [New England Journal of Medicine] has historically helped to perpetuate. We hope it will enable us to learn from our mistakes and prevent new ones.
In 1923, Boston City Hospital chose Dr. William Mayo, already famous for the work of his Minnesota clinic, to speak at the inauguration of a new laboratory. Mayoโs thoughts on hospital administration, published in theย Boston Medical and Surgical Journalย (which would be renamed theย New England Journal of Medicineย in 1928), highlighted the common anxieties of his profession and went far beyond the anodyne comments that were usual on such occasions.
Mayo said one goal of public hospitals should be to โreduce the number of people whom it must care for at the expense of the taxpayer.โ A robust sterilization program and limits on immigration of the โdefectiveโ would serve that goal. His search for โthe final solution of the immigration problemโ rested on the assertion that poverty and disease were proof that โthe alien is a public health problem, just as he is a social problem,โ and he saw โalien lawbreakersโ as the cause of rising crime.
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Mayo was suspicious of โpeoples from southern Europe,โ but saved his most pointed bigotry for the Chinese: โThe exclusion of the yellow race from the United States is not a matter of prejudice, but of self-preservation.โย Mayo also supported eugenic sterilization and was proudly identified as โan apostle of the school of eugenics.โ Mayoโs sentiments were not unique: his was just one of the prominent voices in U.S. medicine that normalized advocacy for eugenics in the pages of theย Journal.
