RURAL HEALTH MENTAL 219 



proportion of the urban population than of the rural 15.5 per 

 cent, of the one as compared with 46.1 per cent, of the other. 

 The characteristics of the rural population of the United States, 

 therefore, are affected to a large degree by conditions peculiar 

 to the South, while those of the urban population largely reflect 

 conditions in the North and East; and, in general, any com- 

 parison between urban and rural population is to a considerable 

 extent a comparison between the North, and East on the one 

 hand and the South and West on the other. 



WHAT IS PRACTICABLE IN THE WAY OF 

 PREVENTION OF MENTAL DEFECT 1 



WALTER E. FERNALD 



DURING the last decade four factors have materially changed 

 the professional and popular conception of the problem of the 

 feeble-minded. 



1. The widespread use of mental tests has greatly simplified 

 the preliminary recognition of ordinary cases of mental defect 

 and done much to popularize the knowledge of the extent and 

 importance of feeble-mindedness. 



2. The intensive studies of the family histories of large num- 

 bers of the feeble-minded by Goddard, Davenport and Tred- 

 gold have demonstrated what had hitherto only been suspected, 

 that the great majority of these persons are feeble-minded be- 

 cause they come from family stocks which transmit feeble-mind- 

 edness from generation to generation in accordance with the 

 laws of heredity. Many of the members of these families are 

 not defective themselves, but these normal members of tainted 

 families are liable to have a certain number of defectives among 

 their own descendants. The number of persons who are feeble- 

 minded as a result of injury, disease or other environmental con- 

 ditions without hereditary predisposition is much smaller than 

 had been suspected, and these accidental cases do not transmit 

 their defect to their progeny. 



i Read before the National Conference of Charities and Correction, Balti- 

 more, 1915, being the report of the Conference Committee on State Care 

 of the Insane, Feeble-minded and Epileptic. Reprinted from the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Conference. 



