The exhibit opening today at the National World War II Museum includes a picture from the 1930s showing Dr. Ernst Wentzler, a Berlin pediatrician, examining a child with rickets. Wentzler, who was renowned for his treatment of this bone disease, invented an incubator for newborns that became known as the Wentzler warmer, said Susan Bachrach, the exhibits curator. He also developed ways to treat premature infants and children with birth defects.

But Wentzler had another, darker side, Bachrach said. He was one of three pediatricians who ordered the deaths of thousands of children who didnt meet the Nazi ideal of health because they might have been afflicted with Down syndrome or profound physical or psychiatric problems.

Wentzlers dual nature goes to the heart of Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, a look at the development of the German scientific and medical communities involvement with Nazisms racist policies. There was, Bachrach said, much more to this misuse of science than Dr. Josef Mengeles ghastly experiments with concentration camp inmates.

That was way down the line, Bachrach said. Were trying to show that this came out of mainstream medicine and science. These were not fringe quacks. A fair number of them were not even ardent Nazis.

What they were doing was based on eugenics, a field of study that supports practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population.

The creepy thing about this is that these people thought they had the moral high ground, said Kenneth Hoffman, the World War II Museums education director. They were doing it for the betterment of Germany. They talked about having a healthy society, but they did it at the expense of anyone who didnt meet their standard of perfection.

Deadly Medicine, which was assembled by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, will be on view through Oct. 15. Tulane University School of Medicine is its local sponsor.

It shows the chain of events that got us from this idea of improving the human race to darker and darker steps, said Bachrach, the Holocaust Museums curator of special exhibitions.

The exhibit traces the origins of eugenics to Charles Darwins research into evolution, which showed how species adapt to survive. It also demonstrates how social Darwinists went beyond Darwins research to contend that people they deemed defective shouldnt be allowed to have children.

Eugenics, an offshoot of this way of thinking, became popular in the early 20th century, Bachrach said, and its acceptance wasnt limited to Germany. In 1927, eugenics received the endorsement of the U.S. Supreme Court when it ruled that states could order sterilization for the protection and health of the state. That decision still stands, although states have been loath to resort to sterilization.

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National World War II Museum exhibit shows dark side of Nazi medicine