EUGENICS AND EUTHENICS 259 



ished by vasectomy? To many it would seem that to secure 

 to a rapist his eroticism and uninhibited lust while he is re- 

 leased from any responsibility for offspring is not the fcay 

 to safeguard female honor. Castration for rapists would 

 seem preferable to vasectomy. Perhaps Indiana's experi- 

 ment will give an answer to these questions. 



Fifth. Is there any alternative besides sterihzation or 

 asexualization? There doubtless is, though it may at first 

 be more expensive. This method is the segregation through- 

 out the reproductive period of the feeble-minded below a 

 certain grade. If, under the good environment of institu- 

 tional life, they show that their retarded development is a 

 result merely of bad conditions they may be released and 

 permitted to marry. But such as show a protoplasmic de- 

 fect should be kept in the institution, the sexes separated, 

 until the reproductive period is passed. If this segregation 

 were carried out thoroughly there is reason to anticipate 

 such a reduction in defectiveness in 15 or 20 years as to 

 relieve the state of the burden of further increasing its in- 

 stitutions, and in 30 years most of its properties, especially 

 acquired to accommodate all the seriously defective, could be 

 sold. We have the testimony of Dr. D. S. Jordan (1910) 

 that the cretins who formerly abounded at Aosta in Northern 

 Italy were segregated in 1890 and by 1910 only a single 

 cretin of 60 years and 3 demi-cretins remained in the com- 

 munity. "Soeur Lucie, at the head of the work of the 

 Little Sisters of the Poor, summed up the position in these 

 words 'II n'y en a plus'"— there are no more. Such then, 

 would seem to be the proper program for the elimination 

 of the unfit — segregation of the feeble-minded, epileptic, in- 

 sane, hereditary criminals and prostitutes throughout the 

 reproductive period and the education of the more normal 

 people as to fit and unfit matings. 



