THE FEEBLE-MINDED 277 



community is due to the action of defective nutrition, 

 alcoholism, and lack of fresh air and healthy occupation 

 upon the parents, and that a deterioration of the repro- 

 ductive material, a twist, as it were, of the inner substance 

 of the stock or breed in the direction of feeble-minded- 

 ness, has been thus established. 



In reply to this somewhat hasty but at first sight 

 plausible conclusion, we maintain (i) that the definite 

 defect called feeble- mindedness is as common in well- 

 nourished, well-to-do families as in the poorest ; (2) that 

 it is not proved that lack of food and good air can act 

 upon the germs contained in a parental animal, so as to 

 alter it in such a way that the brain of offspring begotten 

 by that parent will not develop in normal structure and 

 proportion ; and, moreover, that " it has not been shown " 

 (that is the important clause of the statement) that 

 defective food and air can so alter the germs in a parent 

 as to cause other deformation or structural defect in the 

 young which grow from those germs. It is, on the other 

 hand, true that such defect of food and air may cause the 

 death of the parent, or may directly cause the death of 

 the young, if the young are subjected to such defective 

 conditions of life. It is necessary to point out, in reply to 

 those who hold the starvation theory, of feeble-minded- 

 ness that it is capable of being handed on by hereditary 

 transmission once it has appeared, and that in the most 

 wretched groups of the population, both in cities and 

 in country villages / the feeble-minded are not taken in 

 charge by any authority, but leave their parents and shift 

 for themselves, and, owing to their weakness, accompanied 

 by unrestrained animal desires, they become, in an irregular 

 way and at a very early age, themselves the parents of 

 feeble-minded children. Thus feeble-mindedness is in- 

 creased in the poorest class, but not in that of the rich. 

 The facts ascertained are too horrible and painful for 



