1. The introductory quotation is from Edward M. East, Mankind at the Crowsroads (New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons 1923; reprinted 1928), p. vi. East's role as one of several scientific advisers to the birth control movement is discussed below. Several recent historical studies discuss the transformation of birth control advocacy from a radical cause to a middle-class reform movement. These include: James Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue: The Birth Control Movement and American Society Since 1830 (New York: Basic Books, 1978), recently reprinted with a new preface by the author as The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Linda Gordon, Women's Body, Women's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America (New York: Penguin Books, 1977); David M. Kennedy, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970); Clive Wood and Beryl Suitters, The Fight for Acceptance: A History of Contraception (Aylesbury, England: Medical and Technical Publishing Co. Ltd., 1970); and Richard Allen Soloway, Birth Control and the Population Question in England, 1877?1930 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1982).
2. I discussed the reluctance of scientists to consider these problems in my working paper ?Organotherapy and the Emergence of Reproductive Endocrinology,? presented at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Workshop, ?Historical Perspectives on the Scientific Study of Fertility in the United States,? Boston, December 1977, and May 1978. I have restated this theme in a considerably modified version of that paper, ?Organotherapy and the Emergence of Reproductive Endocrinology,? J. Hist. Biol., 18 (1985), 1?30. For the context of this reluctance, see also Merriley Borell: ?Setting the Standards for a New Science: Edward Schäfer and Endocrinology,? Med. Hist., 22 (1978), 282?290, and ?Origins of the Hormone Concept: Internal Secretions and Physiological Research, 1889?1905,? Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1976. An important new source in this field is Adele E. Clarke, ?Emergence of the Reproductive Research Enterprise: A Sociology of Biological, Medical, and Agricultural Science in the United States, 1910?1940,? Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Francisco, 1985.
3. Sanger's change in social emphasis has been evaluated from several different perspectives by Kennedy, Gordon, and Reed. For divergent historical interpretations of the significance of this transformation, see papers by Gordon Reed, and Elizabeth Fee, in The Margaret Sanger Centennial Conference, November 13?14, 1979, ed. Dorothy Green and Mary-Elizabeth Murdoch (Northhampton, Mass.: The Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College 1982), as well as Reed's new preface to the reprint of his book. Sanger's sustained efforts to recruit scientific support date from the planning of the Sixth International Neo-Malthusian and Birth Control Conference held in New York in 1925. She then helped organize the World Population Conference in Geneva in 1927 and the Seventh International Birth Control Conference held in Zurich in 1930. The impact of these efforts in generating support for laboratory research on birth control is discussed below.
4. See especially Londa Gordon, ?The Politics of Birth Control, 1920?1940: The Impact of Protessionals,? reprinted in John Ehrenreich, ed., The Cultural Crisis of Modern Medicine (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978), pp. 144?184. The present paper extends and complements the analyses of Gordon and other historians by focusing on the specific goals and contributions of the biologists recruited by Sanger and her associates in the birth control movement.
5. The social context that encouraged the scientific study of sexuality and/or birth control is described in Sophie D. Aberle and George W. Corner, Twentyfive Years of Sex Research, History of the National Research Council Committee for Research in the Problems of Sex: 1922?1947 (Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1953), pp. 1?8, and National Council of Public Morals, Medical Aspects of Contraception, being the Report of the Medical Committee appointed by the National Council of Public Morals in connection with investigations of the National Birth-rate Commission (London: Martin Hopkinson & Co. Ltd., 1927).