I. THE GENERAL PROBLEM 



The mentally diseased or defective are those persons in 

 society who, in their associations with their fellows and in the 

 conduct of their everyday lives, are unable to meet the normal 

 standards of reaction. The former are those whose brain tissues 

 have followed the normal course of development but have been 

 attacked by disease. In this group are included those who have 

 a temporary disorder due to some exhaustive disease attacking 

 other parts of the body as well as those suffering from true insan- 

 ity. The latter are those whose brain-cells have never developed 

 normally and there is no more hope of their becoming normal- 

 minded persons, no matter what therapeutics or methods of edu- 

 cation may be adopted, than for the dwarf to become a normal- 

 sized man. 



The patients to be used for this study have been divided 

 according to diagnosis into the following groups: (1) the feeble- 

 minded; (2) the epileptic; (3) the insane; (a) true insanity; 

 (?)) the epileptic; (e) miscellaneous mental and nervous dis- 

 turbances. 



No hard and fast lines can be drawn between these groups as 

 they often overlap. A feeble-minded individual may also be 

 epileptic; an alcoholic may be feeble-minded; an epileptic may 

 develop paresis, etc. Where there is more than one diagnosis, 

 the individual has been classed according to his most outstanding 

 characteristic from the social point of view. 



1. The FeeMe- minded. The feeble-minded person has a 

 defective brain so that his mind can never develop beyond that of 

 a child. There are three grades : the lowest, the idiot whose 

 mental age never exceeds two years, no matter what his physical 

 age may be, and who requires the care of an infant thru life; the 

 imbecile, who has a mental age of seven or eight years and is 

 capable of attending to his own bodily needs and perhaps of 

 learning some simple manual tasks; the moron, who attains a 

 nkontal age of twelve years, and to the casual observer and often 

 to tka scientifically trained is not distinguishable from the nor- 

 mal. M.*^ is incapable of abstract thought, lacks judgment, and 

 has no mv>ral sense with which to meet emergencies, however, 

 hence is easily misled and tempted to wrongdoing. In the group 

 of defectives to be dealt with in Chapter II of this paper have 



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