i9io3 Sa7te Genetics 



swollen goiter. Not every goitrous person is an idiot, 

 but every idiot has a goiter. Both classes are excused 

 from military service. With many normal men cut 

 off by battle, leaving the weak at home, the relative 

 number of goiters and of idiots had steadily increased. 



In 1910 I went to Aosta prepared to take a series "No more 

 of photographs. To my surprise I could not find a °j^^^'^ 

 single cretin or even anybody who knew the meaning 

 of the name! The landlord of the Hotel Centoz 

 suggested, however, that I might look in the Asilo 

 dei Poveri Vecchi (Asylum for the Aged Poor) built 

 by the city in 1890, the year of my last previous 

 visit. To my astonishment I was informed that all 

 the cretins and many of the goitrous had been then 

 gathered into the asylum, with complete segregation 

 of the sexes. Only one cretin still survived — an old 

 woman four feet high, with the manners of an affec- 

 tionate lap dog, even licking my hands like a dog. 

 There were also three semi-cretins, illegitimate sons 

 of cretin mothers. As to children, Suor (Sister) 

 Lucia, the Mother Superior, said simply: "// ny en 

 a plus'' (There are no more of them). 



It was true. Every child in a near-by orphanage 

 was bright and alert, with no touch of the taint. I 

 inspected the beggars standing in a row at the rail- 

 way station — weak, inconsequential, but not cre- 

 tins. Cretinism, like other forms of feeblemindedness, 

 is descended from its own. Its plain remedy lies in 

 segregation, "the guarantee that each individual 

 shall be the last of his generation." 



From Marseilles, where we made a collection of 

 fishes, we passed on to Carcassonne, the majestic Carcas- 

 medieval citadel which inspired one of the most ^°^^^ 



I 315 : 



