Herman Bernhard Lundborg (April 7, 1868 – May 9, 1943) was a Swedish

physician A physician, medical practitioner (British English), medical doctor, or simply doctor is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through the Medical education, study, Med ...

and a race biologist.

Biography

Lundborg was born in

Väse Väse is a locality situated in Karlstad Municipality, Värmland County, Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the ...

, Sweden. He graduated in

medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

at the

Karolinska Institutet The Karolinska Institute (KI; ; sometimes known as the (Royal) Caroline Institute in English) is a research-led medical university in Solna within the Stockholm urban area of Sweden and one of the foremost medical research institutes globally. ...

in 1895, and received his doctorate at the

Uppsala University Uppsala University (UU) () is a public university, public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the List of universities in Sweden, oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. Initially fou ...

in 1903. He also

habilitated Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in Germany, France, Italy, Poland and some other European and non-English-speaking countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellen ...

there that year for

psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deleterious mental disorder, mental conditions. These include matters related to cognition, perceptions, Mood (psychology), mood, emotion, and behavior. ...

and

neurology Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix wikt:-logia, -logia, "study of") is the branch of specialty (medicine) , medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous syst ...

, and in 1915 for racial research and

racial biology Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscience, pseudoscientific belief that the Human, human species is divided into biologically distinct taxa called "race (human categorization), races", and that empirical evi ...

. For his doctoral dissertation, Lundborg researched one of the genetic progressive myoclonus epilepsies first described by Heinrich Unverricht in 1891. Besides giving an account of the disease, he traced an affected family back to the 18th century, an analysis unique for that time. He concluded that the family had genetically degenerated because of "unwise marriages". The study has been described as "of considerable historic interest in

human genetics Human genetics is the study of inheritance as it occurs in Human, human beings. Human genetics encompasses a variety of overlapping fields including: classical genetics, cytogenetics, molecular genetics, biochemical genetics, genomics, populatio ...

". Over the years, the form of epilepsy became known as the

Unverricht–Lundborg disease Unverricht–Lundborg disease (abbreviated ULD or EPM1) is the most common form of an uncommon group of Genetics, genetic epilepsy disorders called the progressive myoclonus epilepsies. It is caused due to a mutation in the cystatin B gene (CSTB).J ...

. He was on the editorial board of the ''

Hereditas ''Hereditas'' (not to be confused with another journal called ''Heredity'') is a scientific journal concerning genetics. It has been published since 1920 by the Mendelska sällskapet i Lund (Mendelian Society of Lund). In its long history it has p ...

'' journal, founded 1920, with the scope on genetics. Lundborg was strongly involved with the ideology of

racial hygiene The term racial hygiene was used to describe an approach to eugenics in the early 20th century, which found its most extensive implementation in Nazi Germany (Nazi eugenics). It was marked by efforts to avoid miscegenation, analogous to an anim ...

. In the beginning of the 20th century, the idea that

eugenics Eugenics is a set of largely discredited beliefs and practices that aim to improve the genetic quality of a human population. Historically, eugenicists have attempted to alter the frequency of various human phenotypes by inhibiting the fer ...

could improve the biological basis of society was widely held by academics and lawmakers, particularly in northern Europe and the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. In 1922 Sweden established a eugenic governmental agency, the State Institute of Racial Biology, of which Lundborg was appointed as the head. Under his leadership, the institute began gathering copious statistics and photographs to map the racial make-up of about 100,000 Swedish people. The Swedish writer Maja Hagerman has written a biography on Herman Lundborg and made a documentary about his racial research in Laponia. He died in

Östhammar Östhammar is a Urban areas in Sweden, locality and the seat of Östhammar Municipality, Uppsala County, Sweden with 4,534 inhabitants in 2010. Today Östhammar Municipality is a part of Uppsala County, but the area has historically been a part of ...

In the media

In the novel 'The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared' by the Swedish author Jonas Jonasson, dr. Lundborg is portraited in chapter 4.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lundborg, Herman Bernhard 1868 births 1943 deaths People from Karlstad Municipality Swedish eugenicists Swedish neurologists Burials at Uppsala old cemetery Proponents of scientific racism