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[[file:nihms569103f2.jpg|thumbnail|left|275px|Martin Kallikak and his healthy and degenerate line]]
Birth control and race suicide were already topics of public concern when, in the 1890s, Dr. Harry Sharp performed the first vasectomy in the United States at the Indiana State Reformatory (the salpingectomy had already been in practice in Europe for about a decade). Between 1899 and 1907, Sharp carried out vasectomies on some 200-800 male inmates at various institutions in Indiana.<ref>Paul Julius,“‘Three Generations of Imbeciles Are Enough’: State Eugenic Sterilization Laws in American Thought and Practice,” Unpublished manuscript, Washington, D.C.: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, 1965.</ref> While Sharpe believed the vasectomy could help cure degeneracy—especially excessive masturbation—proponents of the early eugenics movement recognized that his medical advancement opened the door for practical compulsory sterilization.
The eugenics movement has its origins in the middle of the 19th century. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution—described in On the Origins of Species—provided a framework for physicians, social scientists, and polymaths alike to discuss some of the changes that were occurring in a rapidly industrializing world. People like Herbert Spencer used “Social Darwinism” to explain why giant corporations emerged (because they were better suited to) and why some people were poor while others grew immensely wealthy. Sociologists, like Robert Dugdale, were interested in how they could better society, and later eugenicists like Henry Goddard used intelligence tests to show that immigrants to the United States were less intelligent than native-born whites. Together these men applied science to the most vexing issue they saw: the inevitable degeneration of the white race due to immigration and unintelligent breeding.
