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 Darwin had been somewhat coy about human origins, not identifying any explicit conclusion on the matter in his book, he had dropped enough hints about human's animal ancestry for the inference to be made, and the first review claimed it made a creed of the "men from monkeys" idea from "Vestiges". Human evolution became central to the debate and was strongly argued by Huxley who featured it in his popular "working-men's lectures". Darwin did not publish his own views on this until 1871. The naturalism of natural selection conflicted with presumptions of purpose in nature and while this could be