DEFECTIVE CHILDREN ASCRIBED TO BAD ENVIRONMENT 



The girl at the left was born before her parents left their home in Italy, and is a happy 

 and normal child. The two microcephalic boys were born after the family had lived in New 

 York. Dr. Schlapp has observed hundreds of such families, that have come to America with 

 one or more normal children, but whose first children born in this country, where their 

 parents were living under congested city conditions in New York, were defective. Later 

 children of the same families are likely to be normal. Dr. Schlapp maintains that the 

 defectives are the result of an alien and unnatural environment that disturbs the balance of 

 the endocrine secretions of the mother. If the modern industrial city is an environment so 

 ill suited to the people living in it that such eflfects can be induced, the facts need to be 

 known. The mothers of the definitely defective children usually suffer severely from home- 

 sickness or other emotional disturbances, but it is believed that children who are not reckoned 

 as defectives may fall below normal heredity as a result of the adverse conditions of urban 

 existence. Support and care of defectives and deficients is becoming one of the great burdens 

 of civilization, and is rapidly growing heavier. If these unfortunates represent only the ex- 

 tremes of a general deterioration that is going on, the outlook for progress under urban 

 conditions is indeed somber. — Editor. (Frontispiece.) 



