CHAPTER XXV 



SAFETY FROM FEEBLE-MINDEDNESS 



For the sake of studying the matter of feeble-mindedness 

 at first hand, Dr. David Starr Jordan visited the Valley of 

 Aosta, Italy, four times in 1881, 1883, 1900, and 1910. 



After the first visit he wrote : " Cretins l were seen on the 

 streets everywhere and on the roads which lead to Aosta. 

 Everywhere were these feeble little people, with silly faces 

 and sickening smiles, incapable of taking care of themselves, 

 and all disfigured by the goiter at the neck. Not every person 

 with the goiter is an idiot, but every idiot has the goiter." . . . 

 " In fair weather the roads about the city are lined with these 

 awful human beings human beings with less intelligence 

 than the goose, with less decency than the pig. The asylum 

 for cretins in Aosta is a veritable chamber of horrors." 2 



In his book, Dr. Jordan emphasizes the following facts 

 about cretinism : 



1 . It is found nowhere save in mountainous districts. 



2. It is connected with disease of the thyroid gland, as 

 also is goiter. No person with healthy thyroid glands ever 

 has goiter or is ever a cretin. 



3. It may be passed on from ancestor to descendant, ac- 

 cording to the laws of inheritance. 



Now it was because certain inhabitants of Aosta appreciated 

 the point about inheritance that the tide turned at last and 



1 See " The Heredity of Richard Roe," by David Starr Jordan. 



2 A cretin is a special kind of idiot, found chiefly in the Alps and having 

 special bodily deformities. 



181 



