An Investigation of Historical Injustices in South Dakota Medical Journals: 1931-1960

Exploration of the role of South Dakota medical journals in perpetuating historical biases and injustices from 1931 to 1960 continues a line of research that initially considered the period from 1912 to 1930. The Journal-Lancet and the South Dakota Journal of Medicine and Pharmacy as well as South Dakota newspapers (for eugenics only) in the years 1931-1960 were searched using key terms in five categories: Native American, Black American, the intellectual disabilities, gender and sexuality, and eugenics. Relevant articles containing key words were archived in databases (DEVONthink and Claris FileMaker) structured to permit systematic examination of the material. We found that Native Americans continued to be denigrated as savages and incapable of participating in efforts to change reservation environments and reduce disease prevalence, predominantly syphilis and tuberculosis. There was widespread acceptance of the eugenic assertion that individuals regarded as defective, tubercular or feeble-minded inherited their conditions and could pass them on persisted during this period. The belief in the greater fecundity of "defectives" was a presumed risk to the displacement of "normal" people and was the basis for continued efforts at sterilization, removal to institutions, and restrictions on their right to marry. References to eugenics fell off sharply after 1935. Homosexuality was regarded variously as both deviant and a variety of normal behavior. Distinct from the earlier period, references to Black individuals as racially inferior all but disappeared. There was growing recognition, primarily referring to Black communities, of the need to extend medical care to the poor. We conclude that physicians writing in the South Dakota medical journals during this time perpetuated biased views in the categories we studied with a reduction in biases concerning Black individuals, eugenics and the feeble-minded after 1930.