CHAPTER IV 



THE INHERITANCE OF MENTAL DEFECT 



The problems connected with the inheritance of mental 

 defect have sprung into importance in recent years. 

 It is only within the last century that the mentally 

 defective have had much chance of survival for them- 

 selves, or any prospect of handing down their diseased 

 condition into another and yet another generation. 

 Before that period, the wardship of idiots and lunatics 

 had regard chiefly to the control of their lands and 

 estates in the interests of the Crown and the next of 

 kin, and was only gradually elaborated into some 

 attempt to control their persons also ; while those 

 lunatics who had no possessions were left to the tender 

 mercies of their relations or to the care of charitable 

 persons and the parish. Even in criminal law the plea 

 of insanity was unavailing except in extreme cases. 

 In fact, the general feeling in the society of the period 

 seems to have been that insanity itself was a crime, or 

 at the very least the punishment of a crime. The 

 repressive measures founded on such a beHef were 

 severe and effective ; there was little opportunity of 

 discovering whether mental defect was or was not 

 transmissible by heredity. 



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