The Journal of Heredity 



211 



Why the Babies Die 



INFANT MORTALITY: Results of a 

 field study in Brockton, Mass., based 

 on births for one year, by Mary V. 

 Dempsey. U. S. Dept. of Labor, 

 Children's Bureau Publication No. 

 37. Pp. 82. Washington, D. C, 

 1919. 



Brockton is a center of shoe manu- 

 facture, and a prosperous New England 

 town. The Children's Bureau surveyed 

 it to find why the infant mortality rate 

 was so low (96.7). It ascertained some 

 commonplace things, and some that 

 were unexpected, as that the mortality 



among babies of foreign-born mothers 

 was lower than among babies whose 

 mothers were native Americans. Like 

 most of the studies the Children's 

 Bureau has made on infant mortality, 

 this one is statistically inadequate and 

 misleading. The conclusion is that 

 Brockton's infant mortality rate is not 

 so low as it ought to be, considering the 

 high wages paid to shoe-workers and 

 the good municipal sanitation. The 

 insistence on economic factors, and the 

 failure to deal with biologic factors that 

 might affect infant mortality, render the 

 study of little real value. 



The Inheritance of Blindness 



THE BLIND, their condition and the 

 work being done for them in the 

 United States, by Harry Best, Ph.D. 

 Pp.. 763. New York: The Macmillan 

 Co., 1919. 



Heredity plays an unimportant part 

 in causing blindness, according to Dr. 

 Best. His chapter on heredity, like 

 many other chapters of the book, is a 

 compilation marked by little grasp of 

 the subject, but he concludes that 

 possibly not more than 10% of the blind 

 owe their infirmity to inheritance. 

 Heredity causes blindness, apparently. 



in a dozen or more different ways, of 

 which cataract is the most frequent. 

 The blind do not tend to marry in such 

 large proportion as the normal members 

 of the population. "The likelihood of 

 blind offspring is not necessarily greater 

 when both parents are blind than when 

 one is blind and the other sighted," 

 except in cases of consanguineous mar- 

 riage, of course. From Dr. Best's 

 citations it would seem that there are 

 considerable data available for a study 

 of the inheritance of blindness, but he 

 himself has added nothing to the subject. 



A Compilation 



PROBLEMS OF SUBNORMALITY, 



b\^ J. E. Wallace Wallin, Director of 

 the Psycho-Educational Clinic, Board 

 of Education, St. Louis; with an 

 introduction by John W. Withers, 

 Ph.D., vSuperintendent of Public 

 Schools in the City of St. Louis. 

 Pp. 485. Yonkers-on-Hudson, N. Y. ; 

 World Book Co., 1917. 



Dr. Wallin has diligently brought 

 together an immense amount of mis- 

 cellaneous material relating in a 

 general way to the problems of sub- 

 normal intelligence. He considers ' ' The 

 Changing Attitude towards the Sub- 

 normal," asks "Who is Feebleminded?", 

 outlines his views on the proper educa- 

 tion of feebleminded and backward 

 children, inserts a paper an epilepsy, 



on Subnormality 



summarizes the present state provisions 

 for defective children, and concludes 

 with 46 pages on "The Hygiene of 

 Eugenic Generation. ' ' This last chapter 

 is marked by such a confusion between 

 eugenics and euthenics, and such an 

 uncritical handling of facts and au- 

 thorities, that it has little value. 

 Throughout the book Dr. Wallin wisely 

 insists on proper use and standardiza- 

 tion of mental tests, and condemns 

 attempts to include too large a propor- 

 tion of the population in the category of 

 feebleminded. The book is useful as a 

 source of citations and compendium of 

 facts gathered from the literature, but 

 the reader in using it will have to apply 

 the critical selection to data which Dr. 

 WalHn himself has not applied. 



