John Humphrey Noyes and the stirpicultural experiment
Wyatt, P.R.; Noyes, J.H.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 31(1): 55-66
1976
ISSN/ISBN: 0022-5045 PMID: 770565 DOI: 10.1093/jhmas/xxxi.1.55Document Number: 445897
The Perfectionist religious Oneida Community was founded by John Humphrey Noyes at Putney, Vermont, in 1841. Due to unpopularity of some of its beliefs, the Community was forced to migrate to Oneida, New York, in 1848. The community practiced male continence, complex marriage, community child care, and stirpicultural childbreeding. These 4 aspects of community behavior were aimed at self-perfection within the community and production of healthier and more moral offspring. Male continence was necessary as a method of birth control in a community which practiced sexual communism and as a means of freeing women from family responsibilities. It was evidently successful because there were only 43 births in the community during the period from 1846 to 1869. All adult members participated as a large married family, sharing economic, social, cultural, and sexual benefits of such an arrangement. Communal child care allowed all the other members of the community to contribute to its economic cooperative efforts. A stirpicultural committee controlled the matings within the community with a view to the production of perfect children. The experiment suffered a remarkably low mortality among the children born. Follow-up shows them to have been remarkably healthy. Such success can probably be attributed to a combination of the community care and stirpicultural breeding programs within the Oneida Community.