In 1936, the journalist Hannah Lees published “Two Million Tightrope Walkers,” drawing attention to the significant number of people in the United States estimated to have diabetes. Focusing on how people with diabetes should live, she emphasized the importance of recording the exact values of everything they ate and avoiding all “riotous living” lest they be unable to keep careful measurements of calories, insulin, and sleep. Employing two meanings of measured – as counted and as moderate – Lees was doing more than communicating how someone might control their disease; she was also calling for a “controlled and self-reliant citizenry.” Indeed, Lees insisted that diabetics who followed a regime of measurement “make a good deal better citizens than the average.” Drawing on the writings of Lees and other social commentators, I explore the link between biometrics, citizenship, and diabetes in the United States in the interwar years. In particular, I look at how this disease came to symbolize both the regimes of discipline thought to be necessary in a society moving to consumption as its economic motor, and the fears of what could happen if consumption ran amok. Biometrics, I argue, offered clinicians and patients a potent tool for measuring deviance and, potentially, for restoring a person to the “norm.”

中文翻译：

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生物识别和公民身份：两次世界大战期间美国的糖尿病测量

1936 年，记者汉娜·李斯 (Hannah Lees) 发表了《两百万走钢丝的人》，引起人们对美国估计患有糖尿病的人数之多的关注。关注糖尿病患者应该如何生活，她强调了记录他们所吃的所有食物的确切数值并避免所有“喧闹的生活”的重要性，以免他们无法仔细测量卡路里、胰岛素和睡眠。使用衡量的两种含义——计数和适度——Lees 所做的不仅仅是传达某人如何控制他们的疾病；她还呼吁建立一个“受控制和自力更生的公民”。事实上，李斯坚持认为，遵循测量制度的糖尿病患者“比一般人更成为公民”。借鉴 Lees 和其他社会评论员的著作，我探索了两次世界大战期间美国生物识别、公民身份和糖尿病之间的联系。特别是，我研究了这种疾病如何象征着在将消费作为经济动力的社会中被认为是必要的纪律制度，以及对如果消费失控会发生什么的恐惧。我认为，生物识别技术为临床医生和患者提供了一种衡量偏差的有效工具，并有可能使人们恢复“常态”。