Nicolae Paulescu despre degenerarea rasei | [Nicolae Paulescu on Racial Degeneration]

Abstract

Anthropological research has always fascinated the scientific world because a profound understanding of the human being requires the correlation of information obtained through biological, psychological, and sociological research. In the European interwar period (1918-1939), the biological dimensions of the understanding of life dominated scientific investigations, and anthropological methods were used at the time by some of the best Romanian scientists. In this communication, we will analyze a paper published in 1928 by Nicolae Paulescu, Professor of Physiology at the School of Medicine in Bucharest, a scientist well-known in Romania and elsewhere. His research attempts to demonstrate the degeneration of an entire ethnic group and evaluates the causes of degeneration and the lesions indicating degeneration (lesions of the cerebral cortex, brain weight, brain malformations). With regard to brain weight, Paulescu presents data obtained from Francisc Rainer, then Professor of Anatomy at the same medical school. The data are interpreted by Paulescu to support his theory that a minority population from Romania is degenerated. This study has never been mentioned in the monographs describing Paulescu’s life and work published before and after the fall of the Communist regime in 1989. We have performed the appropriate statistical analyses of the data contained in Paulescu’s study and have concluded that his interpretation is biased, simplistic, and faulty. The findings will be discussed in the scientific and political context of the first decade after World War I.