FEEBLEMINDEDNESS 



A Ser'ous Problem to Eugenists — Two-thirds Due to Heredity— Many Grades of 



Arrested Development, Shading Imperceptibly Into Normal 



Population— Manner of Inheritance. 



A Rkview bv the Edituk. 



T() THE euj^enisi, no problem is 

 more immediate and serious 

 than that of feeblemindedness. 

 Ever since eugenics became a 

 recognized science, its followers have de- 

 voted to feeblemindedness what many 

 have thought was an altogether dispro- 

 portionate amount of time. With added 

 knowledge, the problem has increased 

 rather then decrea.scd in complexity and 

 urgency. It is still far from being 

 settled, but the past year has seen 

 studies which do much to dispel the fog ; 

 and among these the most noteworthy 

 by far is the work' of Dr. H. H. Goddard, 

 director of the research laboratory of 

 the Training School at Vincland, New 

 Jersey, for feebleminded boys and girls. 

 As a result of five years of research, Dr. 

 Goddard is able to ])resent detailed 

 pedigrees of 327 children in the institu- 

 tion, nearly all of them representing at 

 least three generations. They are sufifi- 

 ciently complete, it appears, to furnish 

 material from which anyone who cares 

 to investigate can draw his own con- 

 clusions. 



Feeblemindedness has been defined as 

 "a state of mental defect existing from 

 birth or from an early age and due to 

 incomplete or abnormal development in 

 consequence of which the person af- 

 fected is incapable of performing his 

 duties as a member of society in the 

 position of life to which he is born." It 

 is, in other words, merely a state of 

 arrested mental develoi^ment (with some 

 physical aVjnormalities in the lower 

 grades), and is thus easily distinguished 

 from insanity, which is a disordered 



rather than an arrested de\-elopment of 

 the mind. The feebleminded are for 

 convenience classed as idiots, imbeciles 

 or morons, according to the point at 

 which their development was arrested, 

 the idiot being one whose mental age is 

 two years or less, as measured by such 

 a test as the Binet scale.- An imbecile 

 may have a development of from three 

 to seven years, mentally, while the 

 term "moron" in the United States 

 designates one whose mental age is 

 from eight to twelve years. As a fact, 

 the moron class shades off imperceptibly 

 into the normal bulk of society. 



DEFECTIVES NUMEROUS. 



The amount of feeblemindedness in 

 the community is much larger than 

 anyone suspects who has not investi- 

 gated conditions. In the United States 

 Goddard thinks there arc between 

 300,000 and 400,000 feebleminded per- 

 sons, but the distribution is very irreg- 

 ular; in some communities few are to 

 be found, while in the state of New York 

 alone the numlxT has been placed as 

 high as v30,000. These figures refer 

 only to the feebleminded who can 

 actually be distinguished as such — the 

 "patent" individuals. The number of 

 "latent" individuals, those not actually 

 feebleminded themselves but carriers of 

 the defect in their germ-])lasm and 

 ca])able of passing it on to their descend- 

 ants, is necessarily vastly larger. 



The taint, then, is so widesjjread that 

 the student of heredity is ami)ly justified 

 in looking on it as the most important 

 cacogenic factor in the community. 



Pp. 



' Fcchlcmindcdnt'ss, its Causes and Conscqucnci-s, by Henry Herbert Goddard, Pli. D. 

 xii + .S99, price S4.00 net. New York, The Macmillan Comiiany, 1914. 



* Every eugcnist should lie familiar with the jirineiples of the Binet test, which lias often liccn 

 described. "The Binct-Siinon Measuring Scale for Intelligence," l)y H. H. Goddard, is .sold by 

 the Training SehrxM, Vincland, N. J., for 15 cents. .See also "Tests for Mental Defect," l:)y Dr. 

 Howard A. Knox, in the Journ.\l of Heredity, V, 3, 122, March, 1914. 



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