496 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



of feeble-mindedness accompanied with viciousness and 

 fits of anger followed hj a prolonged state of coma. 

 There are many criminals, police conrt cases, vandals, 

 petty thieves, incendiaries, and delinquents. One branch 

 of the family has been, at times, the occasion of mnch ter- 

 rorism in northern Kentucky and several members 

 of the family are now serving sentences in Indiana and 

 Kentucky prisons. 



As a result of this marriage five children were born, 

 four of whom are perfectly normal, but one is typical of 

 the degeneracy described above as characteristic of the 

 father's family. At the present time he is eleven years 

 of age, but has an intelligence quotent of 75, and is not 

 capable of carrying the work of the second grade in 

 school. He is a moral delinquent, already guilty of sex- 

 ual perverseness and numerous petty thefts, is belliger- 

 ent, high tempered and incorrigible. . There is not the 

 slightest doubt, even in the mind of his parents, that 

 sooner or later he will become a ward of the State of 

 Kansas. The family tree of this father, extending back 

 only to his immediate parents, and including all his 

 brothers and sisters with their children, is given below 

 in Chart I. 



The chart shows that this man's father was 

 feeble-minded and his mother epileptic; that he had 

 one normal brother and one normal sisfer; that he had 

 two feeble-minded sisters who are not yet married, and 

 one unmarried epileptic sister. It is little wonder that 

 an intelligent man should wish to remove himself from 

 such a home environment. The tragedy appears in his 

 marriage into a good family, and his responsibility in 

 bringing into the world offspring tainted with his own 

 bad blood. 



His feeble-minded son may never marry, and his other 

 children may marry normal individuals whose children 

 may all be normal ; but the tragedy of a single life such 

 as his son presents should be adequate warning against 

 allowing such individuals to marry. Knowledge of his 

 family tree would probably have deterred any intelli- 



