Margaret Mead TLS with Revelation on Religion & Post Mortem Caesarians

Typed letter signed on letterhead of "National Research Council, 2101 Constitution Ave, Washington, D.C.". Dated "September 17, 1942". 8.5" x 11". Signed by Margaret Mead "Margaret Mead", who added two autograph annotated words to the typescript. Fine condition, with paper clip ghost to the upper corner. Scarce.

An illuminating letter written to Dr. Ackerknecht of Johns Hopkins University. Ackerknecht who fled Nazi Germany and entered the US in 1933 became an influential historian of medicine. He wrote groundbreaking works on the social and ecological dimensions of disease and was a forerunner of contemporary trends in social and cultural History. The explosively curious and acerbic Margaret Mead endures as the world’s best-known and most influential cultural anthropologist. Here the two share a revealing and informative letter stemming from Mead's research. It is believed that Mead also taught at John's Hopkins with perhaps the two meeting. The letter is shown in part below:

"The caesarean post mortem operation performed by Samoans was performed in the belief that an undelivered child born in the womb would become an avenging ghost, displeased with its method of internment. This was no means a white custom, in fact, whites thoroughly disapproved. I witnessed one such operation and there is a highly colored account in the book "The Shadow Stealer" by D. Sloan, which I rather distrust. The motive for the operation was entirely religious … Samoan practice can be related to the sort of thinking found in Bali, where the body of a woman who dies with an undelivered child is left in an open grave temporarily roofed over until - it is said - "the fetus is expelled"…

… In spite of the attitude (illegible) the supernatural in Samoa, the Samoans were exceedingly unreceptive to any form of rational medicine …"

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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