184 
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters. 
Many criminals may be called insane and some are when they have money 
or friends to help them, and some insane have criminal tendencies. A 
very large per cent, of criminals become insane in prison or afterward. 
A considerable number of paupers become insane. The children of the 
one class pass easily into the other class. Street children who are the chil¬ 
dren of misfortune are easily drawn into crime. Here and there in our 
country, and in every other one are knots of defective classes all tangled 
up together, families closely related furnishing a whole population of 
criminals, paupers, idiots and lunatics among themselves. Such were 
the family in Ulster county, N. Y., called by Dr. Dugdale the Jukes family 
to disguise their real name. Such is the “ Tribe of Ishmael” recently de¬ 
scribed by Rev. O. C. McCulloch in Indianapolis. The interchangeability of 
these defects is very clearly shown in these cases. Another noteworthy 
thing is the general physical weakness of these hereditary defectives, run¬ 
ning easily into consumption and similar diseases. Even in good families 
with a hereditary taint of insanity it is noticable that it is interchangeable 
with consumption. One generation or one brother or sister has consump¬ 
tion, another has insanity. Or the same person has insanity but recovers 
of insanity to die of consumption. 
What are we now doing with the defective classes. With some excep¬ 
tions all civilized nations are pursuing the following lines of policy. Pau¬ 
perism is relieved and discouraged. The treatment fluctuates between the 
extremes of lavish relief and stringent discouragement, but is generally a 
compromise between these two extremes. Insanity is cured if possible, if 
not, it is usually protected in institutions of some sort. Crime is punished 
in prisons and prevented in reformatories. These methods express the 
average wisdom of the present generation, which is far in advance of what 
has previously been done for the defective classes. It does not follow that 
this is the best that can possibly be done for them. In fact here and there 
experiments are in progress which I believe represent not the average wis¬ 
dom but the best wisdom of our times. Here and there private societies 
have taken up the work of eradicating pauperism, not by relief, which 
often encourages it, nor by merely repressive measures, but by carrying 
out the motto of the charity organization societies, “ Not alms, but a friend.” 
And Rev. J. H. Crooker, of Madison, has recently shown by a remarkable 
historical investigation that this is not a new discovery, but is a century 
old, when it was more fully applied to public poor relief than it has since 
been. The methods of reforming criminals and these of reducing crime 
have been discovered and applied in the British Isles, while in America 
they have been only so applied in a few places. The methods of treating 
the insane have been growing milder and more humane in Europe and 
America within a few years. In my judgment the State Hospital of 
Alabama and the county asylums for the chronic insane of Wisconsin, mark 
the highest point yet reached in the direction of liberty for the insane. At 
the rate of progress which we are now making, it will take a genera- 
