INSANITY
DR. S. ADOLPHUS KNOPF IN THE SURVEY FOR NOVEMBER, 1916
That insanity, idiocy, epilepsy and alcoholic predisposition are often transmitted from parent to child is now universally admitted and corroborated by every-day experience and by an abundance of statistics. Countless are the millions of dollars expended for the maintenance of these mentally unfit. The state of New York alone spends $2,000,000 annually for the care of its insane. Whether sterilization of these individuals would be the best remedy is a question still open for discussion. The constitutionality of the procedure is doubted by some of our legal authorities. Segregation is resorted to in the meantime with more or less rigor according to state laws. Every year, however, many of the individuals who had been committed to institutions for the treatment of mental disorders are discharged as cured. They are allowed to procreate their kind. Would it not be an economic saving if at least the individuals whose intelligence has been restored were instructed in the prevention of bringing into the world children who are most likely to be mentally tainted and to become a burden to the community?
Of approximately every 500 persons in the United States in 1910, there was one an inmate of an insane asylum.
The exact figures expressed in a recent report (Hill, Joseph A. Report on the Insane in the United States, Bureau of the Census, Department of Commerce) that in a typical community of 200,000 persons, equally divided as to sex, 208 of the males and 200 of the females would be found in the insane asylums. In the course of a year 72 males and 60 females would be admitted to the asylums.
In 1880 the total of inmates in insane asylums in the United States included 20,695 males and 20,307 females. In 1910, thirty years later, the number of male inmates had increased to 98,695 and the number of female inmates to 80,096. The excess of men among admissions in 1910 indicated a still further increase in the proportion, namely, 128 males to 100 females.
BEING WELL-BORN. An Introduction to Eugenics. Michael F. Guyer, Prof. Zoology, University of Wisconsin. Bobbs-Merrill Co., Indianapolis, Ind. 1916.
The records of the inheritance of insanity, imbecility, feeble-mindedness and other forms of nervous and mental defects are truly startling. Active researches in this field have been in progress now for several years, and as each new set of investigations comes in the tale is always the same. It is questionable if there is a single genuine case on record where a normal child has been born from a union of two imbeciles. Yet the universal tendency is for defective to mate with defective. Davenport gives a list of examples, beginning with such a one as this: “A feeble-minded man of thirty-eight has a delicate wife who in twenty years has borne him nineteen defective children.” Little wonder, in the light of such facts as these, that the number of degenerates is rapidly increasing in what are called civilized countries. But it may be urged, these are exceptional cases, there is surely no considerable number of mental defectives who are married. Let us look at the available facts. In Great Britain in 1901, of 60,000 known feeble-minded, imbeciles and idiots, 19,000 were married, and in the same year, of 117,000 lunatics, 47,000 were married; that is a sum total of 66,000 mentally defective individuals were legally multiplying, or had had the opportunity to multiply their kind, to say nothing of the unmarried who were known to have produced children.
In the State of Wisconsin I note from the tenth Biennial Report of the Board of Control that of 574 patients admitted to the Northern Hospital for the Insane during the year from July 1st, 1908 to June 30th, 1909, 274 were married, and 29 others were known to have been married; this is a total of 303 out of 574, considerably over half. At the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane we find the conditions are no better, for out of 499 admitted in the year of 1909–10, 208 were married and 65 others had at some time been married, or a total of 273 out of 499. There is every reason to believe that conditions are approximately similar in other states. P. 231–232.
One of the most disquieting facts in the situation in most states is that many patients—an average of approximately 1,000 a year, in Wisconsin for example—are on parole, subject to recall. This means that although it is recognized that these patients are likely to have to be returned to the asylum or hospital, little or no restraint in the meantime is placed on their marital relations. P. 234.
SOCIAL ASPECTS. Wm. E. Kellicott.
In the U. S. the census of 1880 reported 40,942 insane in hospitals, and 51,017 not in hospitals, a total of 91,959 known insane. In 1903 the number in hospitals had increased to 150,151. The number not in hospitals was not known and cannot be determined accurately, but it is conservatively estimated as certainly not less than 30,000, and probably it is far greater than this. But taking a total of 180,000 known insane as a conservative figure, the ratio of known insane in the total population was 225 per 100,000 in 1903, as compared with 183 per 100,000 in 1880. P. 33.
The latest census reports for the U. S. give data relative to the dependents and defective in institutions. Insane and feeble-minded, at least 100,000; paupers in institutions 80,000, ⅔ of whom have children and are also physically and mentally deficient: prisoners 100,000; juvenile delinquents 23,000 in institutions; the number cared for in hospitals, dispensaries, homes of various kinds in the year 1904 was in excess of 2,000,000. From these figures we get a rough total of nearly 3,000,000. The foregoing are representative data:—they are published by the volume. It is always the same story—rapid increase of the unfit, defective, insane, criminal, slow increase, even decrease, of the normal and gifted stocks. It is with such conditions in mind that Whetham writes: “This suppression of the best blood of the country is a new disease in modern Europe; it is an old story in the history of nations, and has been the prelude to the ruin of states and the decline and fall of empires.” P. 35.
EUGENICS RECORD BULLETIN. No. 5. A Study of Heredity of Insanity in the Light of the Mendelian Theory. A. J. Rosanoff, M.D., and Florence I. Orr, B.S. Reprinted from American Journal of Insanity. Vol. XXVIII ... 1911. Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y.
In the report of the year ending September 30th, 1909, the New York State Commission in Lunacy gives the number of insane patients in state hospitals and private institutions as 31,540, or one to 276 in the general population. This figure does not include the inmates of institutions for the feeble-minded and for epileptics, it does not include the neuropathic subjects who find their way into prisons, reformatories, almshouses, dispensaries, hospitals for incurables, general hospitals, neurological clinics, etc., and above all, it does not include the many neuropathic subjects whose infirmities are latent, or of such nature as not to incapacitate them for ordinary occupations and life at large. P. 245.
EUGENICS RECORD OFFICE. Bulletin No. 10 A. Report of the Committee to study and to report on the best practical means to cut off the defective germ-plasm in the American population. The scope of the Committee’s work. By Harry H. Laughlin, Secretary to the Committee. Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y. 1914.
According to the last census, 1910, .914% of the total population, or 841,244 persons, were inmates of institutions in the anti-social and the unfortunate classes in the U. S. Besides these persons who have been committed to institutions, there are many others of equally unworthy personality and hereditary qualities, who have, through the caprice of circumstances never been committed to institutions. In so far as the defective traits of the members of these varieties are inborn, they are to be cut off only by cutting off the inheritance lines of the strains that produce them. This is the natural outcome of an awakened social conscience, which is in keeping, not only with humanitarianism, but with law and order and national efficiency. Society must look upon germ-plasm as belonging to Society, and not solely to the individual who carries it. Humanitarianism demands that every individual born be given every opportunity for decent and effective life that our civilization can offer. Racial instinct demands that defectives shall not continue their unworthy traits to menace Society. There appears to be no compatibility between the two ideals and demands. P. 15–16.
J. H. KELLOGG, LLD., M.D., Superintendent of Battle Creek Sanitarium, Battle Creek, Mich.
A careful study of the returns of the Registrar General of England, according to Dr. Tredgold, an eminent English authority shows that out of every 1,000 children born to-day, as many infants die from “innate defects of constitution” as 50 years ago, and this notwithstanding that the total death rate of infants has been diminished nearly ⅓. The increase of insanity, is cited by Dr. Tredgold, as another evidence of race degeneracy. While the increase of the population of England and Wales in 52 years has been 85.8%, the increase of the certified insane has been 262.2%. At present there is one insane person to 275 of the normal population of England and Wales. Tredgold shows that mental unsoundness, lunacy, idiocy, imbecility and feeble-mindedness may be traced to hereditary influence in 90% of the cases. Mr. David Heron and others have shown that while there has been a marked decline in the birth rate in the population in general, the diminution is almost entirely confined to the healthy and thrifty class. In a section of population numbering a million and a quarter persons, thrifty and healthy artisans, the decline in the birth rate in 24 years, 1889—1904 was over 52%, or three times that in England and Wales as a whole. Study of a large number of families of the working class of incompetent and parasitic character found that the average number of children to the family was 7.4, while in thrifty and competent working families, the number was 3.7. In other words, the incompetent and defective classes are multiplying much more rapidly than are the competent and efficient. P. 440.
THE INCREASE OF INSANITY. James T. Searcy, A.B., M.D., LLD., Superintendent Alabama Hospitals for Insane. First National Conference on Race Betterment. January, 1914.
The population of the State of Alabama, according to the census during the ten years which the census includes, insanity increased 16%; the admissions into the insane hospitals increased 45%. These are appalling figures, and we can parallel them all over the U. S., not like them exactly in each state, for they differ. The general population of the U. S. increased 18%, and that of the insane hospitals increased 28% during the years of the census. P. 167.