Harry J. Haiselden

Harry John Haiselden (1870 to 1919) was an American physician who served as chief surgeon at the German-American Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. Born in Plano, Illinois, he graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1893, trained as resident and then assistant to the surgeon Christian Fenger, and took over as chief surgeon and hospital president when Fenger died in 1902. He is remembered chiefly for a public controversy that began in November 1915, when he advised the parents of an infant born with severe birth defects not to authorize surgery that he judged could have saved the child, and the baby died days later. Haiselden defended the decision publicly as a matter of eugenics, which drew support from some reformers and sharp condemnation from others, and he later wrote and starred in the 1917 silent film The Black Stork about the case. The Chicago Medical Board eventually removed him from practice over his eugenics lectures and the film.