IMMIGRATION AND THE PUBLIC HEALTH 3 2 5 



The phase of public health which ma}- be termed mental health is 

 susceptible to many influences. There is no doubt that successive ages 

 of inbreeding, "racial incest," as Dr. H. M. Friedman calls it, results in 

 a racial tendency toward, or characteristic of, mental instability and 

 predisposition to a neurotic and psychopathic constitution. This is 

 illustrated in the case of the Jews, where their highly developed emo- 

 tional nature and predisposition to functional insanities may be laid 

 to absence of fresh blood and to close racial inbreeding for many cen- 

 turies. New blood is essential for racial or individual development. 



If the tide of immigration brought to us only the good blood that 

 this country needs, no restrictive examination would be required. But 

 the mentally diseased and defective come in large numbers, and if the 

 vigilance of the nation's sentries were relaxed ever so little, these num- 

 bers would swell to an overwhelming flood. Insanity and mental 

 defectiveness are of grave concern from the standpoint of public health. 

 The individual victim is predisposed to crime, is very likely to be not 

 self-supporting, tends to become a complete public charge and, most 

 serious of all, transmits a tainted heredity or actual mental disease to 

 his descendants. Moreover, where physical disease or defect tends 

 toward extinction, mental disease or defect is prolific and both insidi- 

 ous and far-reaching in its ramifications. 



Dr. H. H. Goddard has recently made a complete hereditary study 

 of the descendants of an Englishman of good ancestry who contracted 

 an illegitimate union with a feeble-minded girl. A feeble-minded son 

 married a normal woman and from this pair were descended 480 per- 

 sons. Of these 480 persons, 36 were illegitimate, 24 were chronic 

 alcoholics, 3 were epileptics, 33 were immoral, 8 kept houses of ill-fame 

 and 3 were criminals ; 143 were feeble-minded. In all that family only 

 46 were apparently normal. The legal union of the same ancestor 

 with a normal woman resulted in 496 descendants, of whom but two 

 showed abnormal mentality. Comment on this record is unnecesary. 

 Its lesson should be kept in mind in considering the fact that the alien 

 population of the United States is furnishing considerably more than 

 its proportionate number of feebleminded and insane persons. 



More accurate statistics are available for New York state than else- 

 where in the country. But while New York is chiefly concerned with 

 the problem of the alien insane and mentally defective, every other 

 state has or will have the same problem in varying degree. It is 

 authentically reported that about one per cent, of the school population 

 of New York City, or about 7,000 children, are distinctly feeble-minded. 

 In addition to these is an equal number of idiots and imbeciles, and the 

 large class of morally defective children and border-line types. Census 

 statistics show that the parents of 30 per cent, of the feeble-minded 

 children in the country at large are aliens or naturalized citizens. In 

 the first line of defence and prevention lies in a rigid primary exam- 



