The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-06-13
By Dr. C. Ashton Palmer,

J of the Eugenic Society of Great Britain.
 THE insane and degenerate kings
 and queens of Europe must be
 made to furnish lessons for the guidance of humanity and the produc- ton of better children in future.
 That is the solemn conclusion of the eugenists of Europe and America, in- spired by the tragedy of tine war. They have begun a merciless, scientific an alysis of the tainted ancestry of the rulers of Europe. They will tabulate all the cases Of insanity all the defects. all peculiarities of personal behavior as far back as historical records go. They will show how the defects have been handed down from generation to generation, how they have been intensified by inter- marriage, and what are the possibilities of eliminating them by introducing fresh blood and by other favoring conditions.
 Scientists look at this subject mainly from two points of view: In the first place, they feel that the slaughter ana miseries of the present war have been brought about largely by the rule Of IT, responsible kings of tainted ancestry. Therefore, the kings and their ancestries and their actions should be clearly held up for the judgment of civilized nublic opinion.
 In the second place, royal families of- fer an infinitely better opportunity for the study of eugenics than any other families. Their records have been kept much longer than those of other families and they are full of authoritative de- tails, since all historians have combined to record every striking peculiarity of royal parsonage.
 One of the most valuable contributions to this subject has been made by an American scientist Dr. Frederick Adams Woods, of the biological depart. ment of the Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, author of Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty"
 Dr. Woods brings out the fact that the Hapsburgs, the ruling family of Austria, are the most heavily burdened with in- canity and taint of all the rulers con cerAed in the present crisis. They are the inheritors of what he strikingly terms "the frightful Bourbon-Hapsburg psychoneurosis.'
 From the days of the melancholiac monster. the Emperor Charles, to the mysterious death of the degenerate Crown Prince Rudolph, in our own time, the history of tiic house of Hapsburg mas been one long drama of blood and mad ness, and the consequences to humanity are still showing themselves.
 One of the most prolific sources Or in- sanity was Queen Joanna the Mad, of Spain, who married Philip of Austria and became the mother of the Emperor Charles V. Of Austria and Spain, and of his brother Ferdinand l., who succeeded him on the throne of Austria, while Charles V.'s own direct descendants sue ceeded in Spain. Joanna had many mad ancestors, including Pedro the Cruel, monster who butchered his own relatives before the eyes of his court and tortured worlen to death because they did not ic- cept his attentions readily.
 The Emperor Charles V. married lsa- bella of Portugal, who was niece of his mad mother Joanna ana "a granoaaugn' tor of John the imbecile and Isabella the insane Thus by intermarriage ths heavy family taint was intensified in the rulers of Austria and Spain and in that of the Bourbons with whom the flaps burgs intermarried for centuries. In