Book censorship in the United States On appeal, her conviction was reversed on the grounds that contraceptive devices could legally be promoted for the cure and prevention of disease. The publication of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" in 1859 "unleashed a controversy that resonates even today. In presenting a revolutionary theory of evolution, the British naturalist challenged the biblical creation story and provoked the ire of detractors who accused him of 'dethroning God'. Despite the surrounding controversy, "On the Origin of Species" remained uncensored in the United States all the way into the 1920s, when high school curricula started to incorporate the theory of
On the Origin of Species Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" (1871). Natural selection was expected to work very slowly in forming new species, but given the effectiveness of artificial selection, he could "see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection". Using a tree diagram and calculations, he indicates the "divergence of character" from original species into new species and genera. He describes branches