TLS signed “Wm. H. Taft,” one page, 7 x 6.25, personal letterhead, July 8, 1913. Letter to noted economist and Yale professor Irving Fisher, in full: "I have yours of July 4th. You can put me down for a Director in your Life Extension Institute, if I can do any good. I suppose it will involve my taking a share of stock, and that is about the measure of my financial capacity." In very good to fine condition, with a rusty paperclip impression to the top edge, and the lower portion of the letter trimmed off.
The Life Extension Institute, of which Fisher was a founder, was an American organization formed in 1913 with the philanthropic goal of prolonging human life through hygiene and disease prevention. Its organizational officers included many celebrity-philanthropists such as William Howard Taft, Alexander Graham Bell, and Mabel Thorp Boardman, but also genuine medical experts including William James Mayo, Russell Henry Chittenden, and J. H. Kellogg and a 'Hygiene Reference Board' of dozens of nationally recognized physicians of that era such as Mazyck Porcher Ravenel and Major General William Crawford Gorgas. The institute was also a proponent of eugenics, which included the sterilization of grossly 'unfit' individuals.
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