Paul Julius Möbius

Only myth and cliché have it that a person must be either sane or crazy.

Paul Julius Möbius (24 January 1853 – 8 January 1907) was a German neurologist born in Leipzig. His grandfather was the German mathematician and theoretical astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius.

Quotes

• Ist der weibliche Schwachsinn nicht nur vorhanden, sondern auch nothwendig, er ist nicht nur ein physiologisches Factum, sondern auch ein physiologisches Postulat. Wollen wir ein Weib, das ganz seinen Mutterberuf erfüllt, so kann es nicht ein männliches Gehirn haben. ... Die modernen Närrinnen sind schlechte Gebärerinnen und schlechte Mütter. In dem Grade, in dem die „Civilisation“ wächst, sinkt die Fruchtbarkeit, je besser die Schulen werden, um so schlechter werden die Wochenbetten, um so geringer wird die Milchabsonderung, kurz, um so untauglicher werden die Weiber.
  • The female idiocy is not only present, but also necessary, it is not only a physiological fact, but also a physiological postulate. If we want a woman who completely fulfills her maternal profession, she cannot have a male brain. If it could be made that the female faculties would be developed equally to the male ones, the mother organs would atrophy and we would have an ugly and useless hermaphrodite before us....Modern foolish women are bad breeders and bad mothers. In the degree to which "civilization" grows, fertility decreases. The better schools become, the worse maternity beds become, the lower the milk secretion becomes, in short, the more unfit the women become.
  • Über den physiologischen Schwachsinn des Weibes, rev. ed. (Halle: Carl Marhold, 1903), pt. 1, sec. 1. Translated by Katinka von Rosen, On the Physiological Idiocy of Women (2021), p. 39. Extracts, differently translated, reported in A. L. Jones, The Gender Vendors: Sex and Lies from Abraham to Freud (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), ch. 9, p. 176

• Persons, who have a decided mathematical talent, constitute, as it were, a favored class. They bear the same relation to the rest of mankind that those who are academically trained bear to those who are not.
  • Ueber die Anlage zur Mathematik (Leipzig, 1900), p. 4. Reported in Robert Edouard Moritz (ed.) Memorabilia Mathematica, or, The Philomath's Quotation-Book (New York: The Macmillan Co, 1914), p. 122, no. 809

• It is with mathematics not otherwise than it is with music, painting or poetry. Anyone can become a lawyer, doctor or chemist, and as such may succeed well, provided he is clever and industrious, but not every one can become a painter, or a musician, or a mathematician: general cleverness and industry alone count here for nothing.
  • Ueber die Anlage zur Mathematik (1900) р. 5. Memorabilia Mathematica (1914), p. 184, no. 1107

• Without a medical evaluation you cannot understand anybody. It is intolerable to see men and their actions judged by linguists and other armchair pundits. They have no inkling that more is needed here than moralizing and the average knowledge of people...we have to abandon the prevalent old division into healthy and sick minds. Everybody is pathological to a certain degree...the more so the more elevated his standing....Only myth and cliché have it that a person must be either sane or crazy.
  • Ausgewählte Werke (Leipzig: Barth, 1909) vol. I: v, xi. Extract translated and reported in Francis Schiller, A Möbius Strip: Fin-de-siècle Neuropsychiatry and Paul Möbius (University of California Press, 1982), ch. 11, p. 80

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Paul Julius Möbius on Wikipedia