Among the Spartans all newly born children were subject to a careful examination or selection. All those that were weak, sickly, or affected with any bodily infirmity, were killed. Only the perfectly healthy and strong children were allowed to live, and they alone afterwards propagated the race.
Ernst Haeckel, Sir Edwin Ray Lankester, L. Dora Schmitz (1906). “The History of Creation: Or The Development of the Earth and Its Inhabitants by the Action of Natural Causes. A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of Evolution in General, and of that of Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck in Particular. From the 8th German Ed. of Ernst Haeckel ... The Translation Rev. by E. Ray Lankester”
