The man responsible for the invention of the pill that was to deaden men and women from the waist down was
J. Edgar Nation, a
Grand Rapids Michigan druggist, and the Father of
Ethical Birth Control. He invented the pills never intending them to be taken by humans. His mission was to introduce morality to the
John Ball Park Zoo monkey house so that it could be a thing a Christian man could bring his family to on a sunny Easter morning.
”He and his eleven kids went to church one Easter. And the day was so nice and the Easter service had been so beautiful and pure that they decided to take a walk through the zoo, and they were just walking on clouds.”
“Good morning Mr. Nation,” I said to him. “It certainly is a nice morning.”
“And a good morning to you Mr. Howard,” he said to me. “there is nothing like an Easter morning to make a man feel clean and reborn and at one with God’s intentions.”
“And so we went on to the monkey house together, and what do you think we saw?
We saw a monkey playing with his private parts!”
“No!”
“Yes!
And J. Edgar Nation was so upset that he went straight home and he started developing a pill that would make monkeys in the springtime fit things for a Christian family to see.”
As a denizen of West Michigan and in fact a resident of the city of Grand Rapids, I have a special appreciation for this little bit of
fictional history.
West Michigan was settled by
Dutch outcasts,
religious zealots that were driven from the
Netherlands due to their steadfast intent on turning life into a dull, colorless, intolerant and fanatical devotion to their flavor of
Christ worship. The supposed
innovation of Mr. Nation’s pill, as well as his
motivation behind inventing it is a rather biting and accurate depiction of many residents of this area.